RIVERSIDES: Neolithic Barrows, a Beaker Grave, Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon Burials and Settlement at Trumpington, Cambridge

The 2010-11 excavations along Trumpington’s riverside proved extraordinary on a number of accounts. Particularly for its `dead’, as it included Neolithic barrows (one with a mass interment), a double Beaker grave and an Early Anglo-Saxon cemetery, with a rich bed-burial interment in the latter accompanied by a rare gold cross. Associated settlement remains were recovered with each. Most significant was the site’s Early Iron Age occupation. This yielded enormous artefact assemblages and was intensively sampled for economic data, and the depositional dynamics of its pit clusters are interrogated in depth. Not only does the volume provide a summary of the development of the now widely investigated greater Trumpington/ Addenbrooke’s landscape – including its major Middle Bronze Age settlements and an important Late Iron Age complex – but overviews recent fieldwork results from South Cambridgeshire. Aside from historiographical-themed Inset sections, (plus an account of the War Ditches’ Anglo-Saxon cemetery and Grantchester’s settlement of that period), there are detailed scientific analyses (e.g. DNA, isotopic and wear studies of its utilised human bone) and more than 30 radiocarbon dates were achieved. The concluding chapter critically addresses issues of local continuity and de facto notions of `settlement evolution’.