An oval-shaped pit had undercut sides and a concave base. It contained two fills. Within the lower fill was the skull of a horse, placed upright directly on the base of the pit. Small amounts of pre-conquest early medieval pottery were recovered from these fills. Radiocarbon analysis returned dates slightly earlier than those suggested by the pottery.

In regards to pottery, one is a jar rim with slight internal lid-seating in a smooth, hard-fired, reduced fabric identified as Late Saxon Nottingham ware; a body sherd in the same ware type came from the same context. The kiln in Nottingham where these wares were produced is provisionally dated c. AD 920–1020 on ceramics grounds. The other sherd is an inturned dish rim in Torksey ware, from the production centre on the Lincolnshire/Nottinghamshire border. The kilns at Torksey were operating between the late-9th to late-11th centuries AD (it is uncertain whether production continued beyond the Norman Conquest) but as a conservative industry it appears to have displayed little development in either fabrics or forms over that period. The sherd from the lower fill of the pit provides the only artefactual dating for this layer, while the two sherds from the upper fill were found with two later glazed sherds, likely due to some disturbance or slumping from the animal trample layer.

A semi-complete horse skull came from the pit. The skull is from a mature adult animal and has four parallel cut marks on the right lacrimal, adjacent to the orbit. The location and direction of the cut marks indicates that they result from skinning.

The deliberate burial of horse skulls within pits during the early medieval period is attested across northern Europe. Symbolic depositions of horse remains have associations with both construction and closing/demolition events for domestic and ritual structures in Scandinavia, and may similarly have such associations in Britain. This is particularly likely as Cropwell Bishop lies within the area known as the Danelaw that was under Scandinavian control during parts of the early medieval period.

In the pit, the ratio of free-threshing wheat rachises to grain is approximately 1:1.6, although this ratio rises to 1:4.2 if indeterminate (Triticeae) grains are included (assuming that these also derive from wheat). The original ratio of rachises to grain is likely between these two figures, and this is close to the theoretical value which would be expected for unprocessed ear where the rachis:grain ratio is 1:3. Consequently, it is possible that the pit contained whole ears of free-threshingwheat that had broken up during charring. The number of rachises may originally have been higher because ‘light’ chaff elements such as rachises are less likely to survive charring.

Ben Saunders, 2021, Early Medieval Rivet Wheat and Horse Skull Burial, and Medieval Animal Husbandry Enclosure at Cropwell Bishop, Nottingham (Unpublished document). SNT5803.