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Report on Excavations on the Cambridgeshire Car Dyke, 1947

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

Extract

The excavations described in this report were aimed at establishing more about the character of the Cambridgeshire Car Dyke and at defining the period during which it was in active use. The dyke, which traverses with several changes of direction the low gravel and loam promontory between the fork of the Cam or Granta immediately south of Waterbeach and the alluvium of the Old West River (and present Ouse) north-north-east of Cottenham (fig. 1), varies in character considerably in its five-mile course. Most of it has been degraded to a field ditch, and over some stretches cultivation has overrun the banks on either side and encroached upon the bed, but the dyke survives reasonably intact at Waterbeach and on the site of the present excavations at Bullock's Haste and Setchel Fen.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1949

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References

page 145 note 1 The Medallic History of Marcus Aurelius Valerius Carausius, Emperor in Brittain (London, 1757), p. 125.Google Scholar

page 145 note 2 Op. cit., p. 180.

page 145 note 3 An Anglo-Saxon Hut on the Car Dyke, at Waterbeach’, Antiq. Journ. vii (1927), 141–6.Google Scholar

page 146 note 1 Plan of the Parish of Cottenham, in the County of Cambridge, 1847, University Library, Cambridge.Google Scholar

page 146 note 2 Earthworks at Cottenham, Cambs., the supposed site of a Roman Camp or Settlement’, Trans. Cambs. and Hunts. Archaeol. Soc., vol. i (1904), 5576.Google Scholar

page 157 note 1 Information kindly given by Mr. Hull.

page 157 note 2 Antiq. Journ. xviii, 367–71.

page 158 note 1 Arch. Journ. cii, 85–91.

page 158 note 2 Antiq. Journ. xxvii, 61–79.

page 158 note 3 Ibid. xvii, 172–6.

page 158 note 4 According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. v, p. 169a, ‘the ordinary inland canal is commonly from 25 to 30 ft. wide at the bottom, which is flat, and from 40 to 50 ft. at the water level, with a depth of 4 or 5 ft….’

page 158 note 5 Trollope, Ven. E., Sleaford and the Wapentakes of Flaxwell and Ashwardburn in the county of Lincoln (London and Sleaford, 1872), pp. 70–1.Google Scholar

page 159 note 1 Op. cit., pp. 125–6.

page 159 note 2 Geogr. Journ., lxxxiii, 1934Google Scholar; Proc. Camb. Antiq. Soc. xxxiii–xxxiv, 19331934. The subject is more fully treated in a forthcoming research memoir from the Royal Geographical Society.Google Scholar

page 159 note 3 As suggested by Sir Cyril Fox, op. cit., p. 179 n.

page 159 note 4 For a convenient summary see Bonnard, L., La Navigation intérieure de la Gaule (Paris, 1913). I am grateful to Rev. M. P. Charlesworth for this reference.Google Scholar

page 159 note 5 Tacitus, Annals, bk. xi, 20.

page 159 note 6 Stukeley, op. cit., especially bk. ii, p. 136, but also bk. i, pp. 125–6 and 170; Fox, op. cit., pp. 179–80.

page 159 note 7 The Pig Water is the name of a natural water-way which flows in a north-easterly direction between Whittlesea Mere and Peterborough (between 3 and 2 on fig. 9). At present it flows into Whittlesea Dike at Field's End Bridge. Whittlesea Dike is an artificial cut replacing a tributary of the former Ouse. The best available map of these waterways is that by our Fellow, Gordon Fowler, printed in A Guide to Wicken Fen (3rd edition, 1947), published by the National Trust.Google Scholar

page 160 note 1 The evidence has been summarized by Mr. C. W. Phillips in Arch. Journ. xci, 117–23.

page 160 note 2 Arch. Journ. ciii, 26 ff.

page 160 note 3 Op. cit., bk. i, p. 125; bk. ii, pp. 129–45.

page 162 note 1 Samples of the coal were submitted to the Fuel Research Station at Greenwich and to the British Museum (Natural History), but it has not proved possible to identify the source.

page 162 note 2 It may be mentioned that we were fortunate to have the assistance for ten days of a party of young Swedish archaeologists on an exchange visit sponsored by the British Council. We also had visits from Prof. A. E. van Giffen of Groningen and from Prof. Sune Lindqvist of Uppsala, as well as from English colleagues.

page 162 note 3 A happy outcome of the excavation was the formation of a Cambridge Field Archaeology Club, through whose activities the work has been continued during 1948 with special attention to the settlement.