Ainsbrook, Yorkshire

English Heritage summaries 2005/2006

This site was discovered by amateur archaeologists. Speculation that it represented a Viking ship burial was proved unfounded in an excavation underwritten and carried out by York Archaeological Trust. A subsequent project, funded by English Heritage, has sought to place the discovery in a firmer context by investigating the surrounding area. Some 31 hectares / 76 acres have been studied through desk-top survey, topographical, LiDAR and geophysical surveys and, currently, in assessment excavation.

Map regression shows that there has been no significant landscape change over the last 150 years, and there is no hint in the documentary evidence and secondary sources viewed to date that anything other than agriculture has been practised on this site since the High Middle Ages. Indeed, the reversed S lines of the field boundaries suggest that their layout is based ultimately on a pattern of open fields that may have originated within a few hundred years either side of the Norman conquest.

Geophysical surveys suggest a complex multi-period landscape. A principal component is a substantial curvilinear ditch, either D-shaped or sub-rectangular. On another alignment are linear and curvilinear ditch-like anomalies with an overall plan form that can be interpreted as representing enclosures, field systems and trackways, with parallels in the Iron Age – Romano-British period.

Assessment excavation is sampling the large curvilinear ditch; preliminary suggestions place its origin in the later Neolithic or Bronze Age. Some of the geophysical plots which suggested Romano-British droveways and other contemporary features have been shown to reflect variations in the underlying geology; but there appears to be some evidence for activity of that date, as well as for some early medieval activity.

This page was published on 18/01/2006