Settlement Sites to 1500 Scheduling Selection Guide Summary Historic England’s scheduling selection guides help to define which archaeological sites are likely to meet the relevant tests for national designation and be included on the National Heritage List for England. For archaeological sites and monuments, they are divided into categories ranging from Agriculture to Utilities and complement the listing selection guides for buildings. Scheduling is applied only to sites of national importance, and even then only if it is the best means of protection. Only deliberately created structures, features and remains can be scheduled. The scheduling selection guides are supplemented by the Introductions to Heritage Assets which provide more detailed considerations of specific archaeological sites and monuments. This selection guide offers an overview of the sorts of archaeological monument or site associated with settlements up to about 1500 which are likely to be deemed to have national importance, and for which of those scheduling may be appropriate. It aims to do two things: to set these within their historical context, and to give an introduction to the designation approaches employed. This document has been prepared by Listing Group. It is one is of a series of 18 documents. This edition published by Historic England July 2018. All images © Historic England unless otherwise stated. Please refer to this document as: Historic England 2018 Settlement Sites to 1500: Scheduling Selection Guide. Swindon. Historic England. HistoricEngland.org.uk/listing/selection-criteria/scheduling-selection/ Front cover The remains of the village of Carlton Curlieu, Leicestershire. It was probably depopulated soon after 1600 as arable land was converted to sheep pasture. Contents Introduction .........................................1 4 Considerations by Period ...........26 4.1 Prehistoric ..................................................26 1 Historical Summary .....................2 4.2 Roman .........................................................26 4.3 Anglo-Saxon and Viking .............................26 1.1 Prehistoric ....................................................2 4.4 Medieval .....................................................26 1.2 Neolithic .......................................................3 1.3 Bronze Age ...................................................3 1.4 Iron Age ........................................................5 5 Select Bibliography ...................28 1.5 Roman ...........................................................7 1.6 Anglo-Saxon ..............................................10 5.1 General prehistoric ....................................28 1.7 Medieval .....................................................14 5.2 Mesolithic and Neolithic houses ..............28 5.3 Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements ......28 5.4 Roman .........................................................28 2 Overarching Considerations ......20 5.5 Post-Roman to Norman Conquest ............29 5.6 Medieval .....................................................29 2.1 Scheduling and protection ......................20 2.2 Heritage assets and national importance ..21 2.3 Selection criteria ........................................21 6 Where to Get Advice ...................30 3 Specific Considerations .............22 Acknowledgments ..............................32 3.1 Period..........................................................22 3.2 Rarity and representativity ........................22 3.3 Documentation ..........................................23 3.4 Group value ................................................23 3.5 Survival and condition ..............................23 3.6 Diversity ......................................................23 3.7 Archaeological potential ...........................23 3.8 Extensive landscapes .................................23 3.9 Towns, cities and other active settlements ......................................24 3.10 Areas of archaeological importance.........24 3.11 Urban archaeological surveys and HERs...25 Introduction This selection guide offers an overview of the sorts of archaeological monument or site associated with settlements up to about 1500 which are likely to be deemed to have national importance, and for which of those scheduling may be appropriate. It aims to do two things: to set these within their historical context, and to give an introduction to the designation approaches employed. Settlement, as here understood, embraces the each case will require independent assessment entire range of dwellings, from individual houses and the deployment of professional judgement to the larger places which we today call towns and both as to whether it is reckoned of national cities. Their remains have a particular importance importance, and if so whether scheduling is the and resonance, as the most direct, and intimate, most appropriate management solution. After evidence of how our forebears lived in England about 1500 listing comes increasingly to the fore over approximately the last 950,000 years. as a designation option, as treated in the four listing selection guides on domestic structures. In terms of their archaeology, settlements can be placed under two headings. First, the One nationally-important group of sites, those of majority, are sites which have been abandoned. early prehistoric date which evidence where our Most of these (where they survive) lie in open earliest ancestors lived, are not presently eligible countryside, although some are buried beneath for designation by scheduling for legal reasons. later settlements. Second are ‘living’ settlements Those reasons, the nature of the evidence and – the places where we live today – with ancestries possible management approaches, are set of varying time depth. Some were new-founded out in the scheduling selection guide on Sites in recent decades or centuries, whereas others of Early Human Activity. For certain specific can trace their origins back a thousand years later settlement types up-to-date summaries of – or in some cases even longer. Given the understanding are set out in the Introductions enormous range of settlement types treated, to Heritage Assets (IHAs), available at. Individual this is inevitably a long and complex guidance IHAs are referenced below, where relevant. document. Nevertheless, it must be stressed that < < Contents 1 1 Historical Summary 1.1 Prehistoric as exceptionally evidenced at Boxgrove (West Sussex), is rarely preserved in situ. Early dwellings The long-held understanding of the We have only limited understanding of the archaeological landscape of Palaeolithic (before manner in which early prehistoric communities 10,000 BC) and Mesolithic (10,000-4500 BC) moved around the landscape taking advantage Britain has been one of a transient population of of seasonal variation, although there is evidence hunter-gatherers who obtained food by hunting, that the people occupying the Upper Palaeolithic fishing and gathering wild resources and lived open-air site at Farndon Fields (Nottinghamshire) in temporary camps or shelters. Settlement may also have inhabited the caves at Creswell evidence has come from both caves and open Crags. The oldest remains of semi-permanent or sites. The prevalence of material from caves in seasonally-occupied dwelling structures belong to the archaeological record for some early periods the Mesolithic (10,000-4000 BC). reflects their favourable preservation conditions rather than a population of ‘cavemen’; evidence In 2008 excavations at Star Carr (Fig 1), a of Lower and Middle Palaeolithic open-air activity, scheduled Early Mesolithic lake-side occupation Figure 1 Star Carr, North Yorkshire. An Early Mesolithic site of of carpentry in Europe. Here a birch tree with bark about 9000 BC, including the remains of a house and still intact (found in 1950 by the site’s first excavator a waterlogged timber platform – the earliest evidence Grahame Clark) is re-excavated in 2010. 1 < < Contents 2 site in North Yorkshire, radiocarbon-dated to discoveries are subjected to damaging erosion, about 9000 BC, identified a post-built structure as at Happisburgh. In the Isles of Scilly, some that probably represents a house. One of areas of Bronze Age field systems and settlement the earliest dwellings in Britain yet found, it remains have been scheduled even where they comprised 18 posts irregularly arranged around extend out into the sea. a depression 2-3 m wide. Previously, in 2000 at Howick, Northumberland, a larger circular hut built about 7800 BC was found which had 1.2 Neolithic been used for at least a hundred years. Other Early Mesolithic dwellings of similar age have The Neolithic period (4000-2200 BC) saw the been found elsewhere in Britain, whereas Late gradual adoption of farming techniques and Mesolithic structures are extremely rare. For a processes, and the transition towards agricultural fuller account of early prehistoric occupation sites communities, though the degree of permanence see the Sites of Early Human Activity scheduling or mobility in Neolithic settlement remains a selection guide, and the IHA on Caves, Fissures matter of debate. Some causewayed enclosures and Rock Shelters. (see the Religion and Ritual pre-AD 410 scheduling selection guide and the Causewayed Doggerland and other submerged landscapes Enclosures IHA) may have been used for Because of sea-level rise during the early seasonal occupation but most settlement sites Holocene, between about 8000 and 6500