ABSTRACT
The first season of excavations at Faxton in 1966 was never fully written up by the excavator and no finalised descriptions of contexts or the minimal stratigraphy on the site now exist. At one time there were large inked-up versions of the excavations plans on linen but today only a selection of bromides survives in greatly reduced sizes together with on-site drawings, in some cases with features sketched in. The excavation account below is therefore frustratingly brief. To assemble it, the chapter is introduced by re-casting some handwritten notes by Lawrence Butler followed by a short description of the excavation recording system which has been amalgamated from four different drafts. Fortunately, an interim report on the 1966 excavations was provided to the Deserted Medieval Village Research Group and then re-cycled, with some minor additional interpretation, for a short article published in Current Archaeology in 1967 (Butler 1968a). The excavation text below integrates these two sources to create a new account which is as faithful to the excavator’s own observations as is now possible. Unfortunately the on-site notebook for 1966 amounts to just 6 short pages but, more happily, there is good photographic coverage. A new analysis of the faunal remains from this site is presented in Chapter 10 while further detail and interpretation of the buildings found in 1966 can be found in Chapter 11.
