Fox Covert, pit alignment

An alignment of rectangular and oval pits excavated in advance of open cast coal mining in 2005. The length of the alignment was 385m. The upcast from the pits was probably used to form a low earthen bank. It probably represents a prehistoric landscape boundary heading straight towards Preswick Carr, which was at that time, a post-glacial lake. No dateable artefacts were foundd in the fill of the pits, but quartz from one pit was Optically Stimulated Luminescence dated to the Late Bronze Age or Iron Age (lower fill 920 BC +- 395 +- 430), suggesting the date of the digging of the pits. The pits were allowed to silt up in the Romano-British period (upper fill 280 AD +- 70, +- 130). There is another pit alignment at Milkhope, 2 km to the north-east which was associated with an Iron Age settlement. This runs parallel to to that at Fox Covert. The pit alignment did not show up in the geophysical survey of 2002 nor on aerial photographs. The pit alignment may have remained visible as a landscape feature in the early medieval period as a 10th century enclosure ditch respected its line.