Monument record IKL 188 - Undated pits, SMS Area 2

Three undated pits were identified during the strip, map and sample. 8 undated natural features were interpreted as the archaeological remains of trees and bushes and reflect what the breckland landscape would have looked like before the transformation of the area for aravle agriculture,a nd the subsequent creation of tree plantations during the 20th century (S1).

The combined results of the Evaluation and SMS demonstrate that this area was never the focus of human settlement, but that it was employed during later prehistoric periods: first by small-scale hunter/gather/farmer communities during the Neolithic, and later as a peripheral agricultural area, probably during the late Iron Age. The evidence for this comprised a single Neolithic pit reflecting occasional, transient land-use by communities with low population-densities subsisting through hunting and gathering and/or through small-scale agriculture, as well as by two pits containing burnt flints: the latter finds being undatable in themselves, but a common inclusion and most significantly dated securely to the Later Iron Age features elsewhere within the current project (S1).