This publication presents the results of 12 excavations within the
Cambourne Development Area, a new settlement on the clay 'uplands'to the
west of Cambridge. The excavations revealed evidence for intermittent
human occupation of the Cambourne landscape from at least the Middle
Bronze Age to the present day but mostly of Middle Iron Age to
Romano-British date. From the Middle Iron Age, the Cambourne landscape
was settled by small farming communities occupying roundhouses, set
within enclosures linked by droveways to extensive field systems. Apart
from the largest and most complex site investigated, at Lower Cambourne,
the Late Iron Age seems to have seen something of a recession with
abandonment of earlier settlements probably as a result of increased
waterlogging making farming less viable. From the middle of the 1st
century AD, new settlements consisting of roundhouses set within
enclosures and field systems emerged. Three 'placed deposits' comprised
pewter vessels, glass vessels, and the iron elements of a plough. Stock
raising and some arable cultivation seem to have formed the main
constituents of the economyand settlement may have continued into the
early 5th century There appears then to have been a hiatus until the
12th or 13th century when the entire area was taken into arable
cultivation leaving the ubiquitous traces of medieval ridge and furrow
agriculture.