Catesby Business Park, Balby Carr, Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Archaeological Excavation

A sequence of ditched rectilinear field enclosures and ditched droveways was excavated at Catesby Business Park, Balby Carr, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, in advance of a retail development. Two phases of ditch construction were identified. The field enclosures were part of a complex of 'brickwork plan' field systems similar to those previously identified, to the south of the site, by aerial photography. An unfinished Neolithic flint arrowhead was recovered, redeposited within the recut of one of the ditches. No pottery and very little bone was recovered from the enclosures and droveway ditches, during the excavation. Radiocarbon dating of waterlogged wood recovered from the ditch fills indicates the site dates from the mid to late Iron Age to the early Romano-British period. The environmental evidence from the site suggests that the fields may have been used as pasture, with no evidence for the cultivation of crops on the low-lying waterlogged site itself. However, crops may have been cultivated locally on better drained drier areas of land. The surrounding landscape was probably mainly cleared of woodland with fields and copses of managed woodland.