Monument record IKL 127 - Mitchells Farm, Trench A

1997-2000: University training excavation on line of Roman road/trackway - predominantly Rom finds including complete horse burial. Details to follow? (S1). Summary below.
"Located to the east of Mitchell’s Farm (TL 7791 7211). Research excavations were undertaken between 1997 and 2000, by students from the Universities of Cambridge and Durham supervised by Dr Jess Tipper under the overall direction of Dr Catherine Hills (University of Cambridge). The principal aim of this work was to characterise the nature and date of the deposits and also to assess the level of preservation of features defined in a large-scale geophysical survey carried out by English Heritage in response to the continued destruction of the site by modern agricultural techniques and treasure-hunters. The results of this survey were spectacular, showing extensive multi-phase settlement remains with boundaries enclosing domestic and industrial features and with associated roads and tracks.
The small excavation, located on the western edge of the settlement contained a deep and complex stratigraphic sequence spanning the early Roman to post-medieval periods. Features survived as prominent earthworks and the excavation demonstrated an outstanding level of preservation; it is probably one of the very few sites to still survive in the region because it has not been subjected to modern agricultural techniques.
Several phases of a metalled Roman road with associated roadside ditches were defined, which remained in use until the eighteenth century. The pottery assemblage spanned the entire Roman period and suggests intense activity in the vicinity of this site during the late and latest Roman periods. The burial of a well-preserved Roman horse that had suffered extraordinary ill-treatment, radiocarbon-dated to between the second and fourth centuries AD, cut through the latest of three human burials defined on the northern side of the road. This burial, of an elderly woman, was lying face down in the upper level of a roadside ditch. There was structural evidence in the form of a beam slot, probably part of a property boundary or possibly part of a building, also extensive pitting on the north side of the road. To the south of the road was a bank of post-medieval date, sealing a Roman cobble surface." (S2).

Four weeks of excavation established the existence of complex undisturbed archaeological deposits within the field and showed a more complex, multi-phase, picture than had previously been drawn from maps and geophysical evidence.
The section of Roman road surface and associated ditches previously identified was further investigated. It was established that the main road surface overlay earlier Roman features, which were not excavated. At later dates, up to the 18th century, the road had been reused and new ditches cut through the earlier surfaces. From one of these, a coin of 1699, was recovered. At some date before the tithe award map of 1815, the road was moved to its present line: some 50m north of the Roman road. To the north of the Roman road was an area of cultivated soil, some 50cm in depth, which produced pottery of Roman to modern date. Beneath this was a pit containing the skeleton of a horse, without associated artefacts, which cannot be dated stratigraphically more closely than late Roman to 18th century. This cut a human burial, a female lying face down within the fill of one of the ditches associated with the Roman road. Burial was regulated in the Roman period and took place within organised cemeteries outside settlements. This burial is therefore atypical, although not without parallels. Such burials have been seen as evidence for the breakdown of society at the end of the Roman period, but it is possible that in rural areas unofficial practices existed at an earlier date, such as depositing burials in roadside ditches. In either case, this is an example of a type of burial which deserves further investigation. Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 1999 (S3).