Artefacts

In this chapter, the prehistoric finds have been divided out from medieval and post-medieval finds for greater clarity. Except for coins and jettons, all the small finds in the chapter are grouped by material and those illustrated are numbered consecutively within their different sections. All the material, some 30 boxes not including the medieval pottery, was deposited at Northampton Museum in November 1989, and later moved to Daventry with the exception of 11 groups of items which, according to the site archive, were left by Lawrence Butler with the Beers family in May 1990. The presence of patination after manufacture on some of the blades suggests substantial disturbance since they were deposited. The excavations at Faxton produced four 13th-to 16th-century coins which were originally identified and commented upon by Nicholas Mayhew, Michael Metcalf, Jeffrey North and Elizabeth Pirie. Jettons were produced in huge numbers in the medieval period, first in France and England and later in Germany, particularly at Nuremberg.