A prehistoric site believed to be a temporary home for a tribe of herdsman that would have migrated from pasture to pasture on a planned housing development has bee unearthed in East Cambridgeshire.
Archaeologists discovered two human graves and also signs that timber structures had been erected in the area, which are believed to have been used to store grain.
However, the archaeologists failed to locate any homes and believe that the site was a temporary base for people that would have been migrating from pasture to pasture and used the base for a temporary stopover.
In their time there, to older members of the community died, and were buried on the location where the graves have now been discovered together with pottery, as well as animal and plant remains.
Part of the site also appears to have been used later, by the Romans, as evidence of Roman ditches were found, with Anglo-Saxon activity also concentrated around several pits in the West of the six-hectare site, with remains dating back to the Bronze Age.
The evidence of a Roman occupation however also did not include any signs of dwellings, and Mr Ingham said: “The identified remains may have formed part of a much wider landscape in which people and animals moved from pasture to pasture over relatively large distances.”
The dig is being carried out by Albion Archaeology who say that the first grave contained an elderly woman who suffered from arthritis in her shoulder and had lost most of her teeth, while the other was a middle-aged man who had suffered from a bad back.
Project manager David Ingham said they believed it was a Bronze Age site with some of the remains discovered going back as far as 2500 BC.
The area currently being investigated lies between Regal Lane, Blackberry Lane and the A142 in Soham has been scheduled for new homes, with the building work now put back to March of next year, with the dig to be completed next month (December).
The excavation of an Iron Age livestock enclosure 
An archaeological dig at an Orbit Homes site in Soham, Cambridgeshire, has unearthed two prehistoric graves dating back to the Bronze Age
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