Brundall 2018 Test Pit Location Map
Brundall 2018 Pottery Report
The test pit excavations undertaken in Brundall in March 2018 were dug by 12 Year 9 students from Framingham Earl High School with four Year 10 to 13 students from the Holt Youth Project, who between them excavated a total of six one metre square archaeological test pits.
The test pitting was part of the Independent Learning Archaeology Field School (ILAFS) programme, formally known as the Higher Education Field Academy (HEFA) programme undertaken by Access Cambridge Archaeology (ACA) in East Anglia, which aims to raise the aspirations, enthusiasm and attainment of 14-17 year-olds with regard to higher education by making a valuable contribution to current academic research at the University of Cambridge, into the development of rural communities and settlements in the past.
The six test pits excavated in 2018 adds to the 40 already excavated between 2015 and 2017, to bring the total of pits excavated in Brundall to 46. The focus of this years excavations were in the north of the village, from which the earliest pottery identified dated to the high medieval and was found alongside Cucumber Lane (BRU/18/5). As this was only one sherd though, it is likely that this area of the village was utilised as open fields, away from the core of the medieval settlement, closer to the River Yare. None of the pits yielded any pottery of a later medieval date, which continues to support evidence from previous years excavations, in that the village likely contracted greatly due to the numerous and varied socio-economic factors of the 14th century. Brundall did expand again into the post medieval, with all but one of the test pits excavating pottery dating to the 16th century and later.