Silvester Robert J. The Fenland Project, Number 3: Norfolk Survey, Marshland and the Nar Valley, Norfolk

The Norfolk Archaeological Unit, 1988. — 328 p. — (East Anglian Archaeology 45).This is the first of two volumes detailing the results of the Fenland Project's extensive fieldwalking programme in the Norfolk Fens. When the survey started in 1982, the Nar Valley and part of the large siltland tract known as Marshland were the two areas selected for field-by-field assessment during the first winter season. Because of the size of Marshland, it took a further four seasons to complete the field survey of the fifteen parishes involved. After the first winter, work in the Nar Valley only recommenced in 1986-87 and focused on parts of seven parishes. Together with the analysis of aerial photographic evidence and limited documentary research, the survey has led to a much more detailed appreciation of settlement and land-use in the two regions from the prehistoric period through to the end of the Middle Ages.
The marine silt covering Marshland was deposited at the end of the Iron Age and the area was then exploited early in the Roman period. Previously unrecognised, Roman settlement is evidenced by pottery scatters occasionally accompanied by briquetage derived from salt manufacture. In northern Marshland buried sites of Roman date attest a subsequent phase of marine flooding.
Few traces of Early Saxon activity were found, but in the Middle Saxon period a number of pottery spreads reveal the emergence of settlements spaced at regular intervals on the high silts close to the coast. Preferred locations appear to have continued in use into the postConquest period, giving rise to several of the modern villages in Marshland.