Between 2002 and 2014 MOLA Northampton carried out evaluation and
excavation work over an area of approximately 49.65ha ahead of mineral
extraction for the quarry at the Manor Pit, Baston, Lincolnshire. The
earliest activity dated to the Neolithic with the first occupation
dating to the early Bronze Age, but it was within the middle Bronze Age
that significant occupation took place within the site. Part of a large
co-axial field system was recorded over an area approximately c800m long
and up to 310m wide. Cropmarks and the results from other archaeological
excavations suggest the field system continued beyond Manor Pit for c4km
and was up to 1km wide. The field system was a well-planned pastoral
farming landscape at a scale suggesting that cattle and other animals
were being farmed for mass trade. The site was reoccupied in the early
2nd century AD when two adjacent Roman settlements were established. One
of the settlements was arranged along a routeway which led from the Car
Dyke whilst the other settlement connected to this routeway by a long
straight boundary. In both settlements there were a series of
fields/enclosures situated in a largely open environment, with some
evidence for cultivation, areas of wet ground and stands of trees.
Well/watering holes lay within these enclosures and fields indicating
that stock management was a key component of the local economy. In the
later medieval period a trackway ran across the site, associated with
which was a small enclosure, which perhaps contained fowl. During the
early post-medieval period the land was subject to a final period of
enclosure, with a series of small rectilinear fields established aligned
with Baston Outgang Road, forming the basis of the current landscape.
