Monument record LKD 001 - Mill Heath Anglo Saxon cremation cemetery

Large cremation cemetery. Numerous urns found but not located prior to identification of site following ploughing in 1945.
1947: Partial excavation by Lethbridge of an area circa 350 square yards revealed about 390 cremations. Wide range of decorated urns, includes Illington- Lackford stamps.
Associated objects: cruciform brooches, square headed brooches, annular brooches, decorated bone combs, miniature bone combs, bronze tweezers, small iron tweezers, sword scabbard fragment, glass bead, pottery spindle whorl, a Rom finger ring, a Rom spoon, a pierced Rom coin (gloria exercitus imitation). No other Sax features, ditch system possibly Rom and two small Rom structures. Flints and Rom tiles found over cremation urns - excavator suggests these heaps were intended as visible memorials. Date range early C5 to C6 (S1).
ESax glass bowls found at Lackford. Now in Cambridge Museum (S2)(R1). Probably from this site.
Anglo Saxon cemetery on Mill Heath.
For 1945 excavations by Leney and K Kenyon and 145-1946 excavations by Rev Tyrell-Green - see (S6).
March 1947: Excavations by Owen Williamson (part of Lethbridge team? - check S1) recovered four pots now in Luton Museum (S7)(R2).
In August/September 1947 Basil Brown visited the site with Stanley West and Richard Green and got permission to make investigations.
In May 1951, he presented a hand thrown, plain cinerary urn found at Mill Heath, that he had obtained from a workman, to the Ipswich Corporation Museum. There are innumerable newspaper cuttings, with photographs, describing the site and the finds, scattered throughout the volumes. However there is no reference to exactly where the urn was found (S4).
Note by Edwardson on border of map states `V.F. Anglo-Saxon Cinerary urn (and others at Cambridge)' and marks findspot with cross at (see 'Not to be published on web' tab for finder/s and/or findspot/s) (S5).
Circa 1978: Very large pieces of Saxon decorated pottery ploughed up (see 'Not to be published on web' tab for finder/s and/or findspot/s)(S8).
Details of further finds included in Lethbridges site diary (see parish file)(M5). These mainly relate to cremation urns, their patterns and distribution across site along with associated finds.
1981: Pottery sherds including stamped sherds, occur on the ploughed area to S of plantation (JP 1981).
June 2015: Cremations excavated by SCCAS PAS team. Details to follow.
June 2015: Site visit with landowner, agreed to expand the game belt (maize) c 4m to south and to keep ploughing depth as shallow as possible.
May 2016: Rescue excavation by SCCAS. Burials were found in two groups with one outlier, consisting of 39 surface scatters and 13 burials in pots partially surviving below the ploughsoil. The pottery includes substantial amounts of at least 59 vessels, with variable amounts of damage and dispersion; the majority were narrow mouthed jar forms in granitic and quartz tempered fabrics, many of them decorated. The cremated bone was in good condition, allowing the identification of individuals in both the surface scatters and the more complete burials; there was also a high percentage of cremated animal bone, including a horse burial and a cow. Eight of the urned burials contained grave goods, and others were found associated with the surface scatters. The radiocarbon dating of all the cremations in urns suggests that deposition may have been during a fairly short period within the second half of the 5th or early 6th century, and this seems to correlate with the preliminary dating for the finds (S9).