Healing Road, Stallingborough
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A geophysical survey and trial trenching were carried out on a greenfield site on the edge of the historic core of this village near Grimsby. The site had extant earthworks indicating medieval ridge and furrow ploughing. A geophysical survey was carried out by our sister company, Grid Nine Geophysics, which identified a number of anomalies that appeared to predate the medieval earthworks. |
  Greyscale and interpretive plans of the geophysical survey, with trench locations superimposed in red
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| Seven evaluation trenches were excavated by machine to investigate the earthworks and geophysical anomalies. A similar sequence was observed throughout the site, with a modern ploughsoil sealing a medieval ground surface formed by the ridge and furrow ploughing of the site. |
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In Trench 5, two parallel features identified by the geophysical survey contained discrete dumps of what appeared to be carefully selected fragments of animal bone, dominated by jaw and skull fragments.
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 Possible ritual deposit of animal bone in Trench 5 ditch. A sample of bone was radiocarbon dated to the 5th century AD.
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The two ditches were stratigraphically earlier than the medieval ploughing of the site, but there was no dating evidence recovered to provide an absolute date. Therefore, as a final mitigation for the site, two samples of animal bone were submitted for radiocarbon dating, producing dates in the Early Anglo-Saxon period (5th century AD).
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