ABSTRACT
This chapter details the few pre-medieval features and finds discovered during excavation, among them a Beaker burial and part of an Iron Age and Romano-British settlement. The chalk-lands of the northern part of Hertfordshire attracted Neolithic activity and Greenstone axes and arrowheads have been found at Westbury Farm, Ashwell, about 2.5km to north-east of Caldecote. The area was widely settled by the end of the Bronze Age, particularly close to the ancient Icknield Way between Luton and Royston, exploitation being attested by many surviving round barrow burial mounds. The Iron Age saw widespread occupation of the chalk-lands in north Hertfordshire. Caldecote, Ashwell and Hinxworth lie alongside an ancient trackway, known in Middle Ages as the regio via and later as Ashwell Street which ran from Stotfold through Caldecote to Ashwell and beyond. The Caldecote excavations revealed no evidence of Roman occupation within the excavated area, although a few much abraded Romano-British potsherds were found in residual deposits in medieval contexts.
