Monument record COG 030 - OUTLINE RECORD: Concentric Ring dicth Rugby Ground EVAL and EXC Phase 2

2009: An area of 0.66ha was excavated in 2009 in advance of a housing development. Two large ring-ditches, indicative of flattened round barrows had been recorded by aerial photography and could be seen as slight landscape features. This ring ditche consisted of two concentric ring-ditches of unequal size enclosing a central burial. The barrow had a total external diameter of 25m, the internal ditch was up to 2m wide and 1m deep with the outer ditch being 0.8m wide and 0.5m deep; vestiges of the mound material survived to a height of 0.5m. Beneath the mound was a large central grave 2.4m long x 1.5m deep in which lay a crouched burial of a young adult female. The grave was furnished with a Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age beaker and a necklace, placed either side of and slightly above the skull. The necklace is of an unusual composition: a large number of tiny jet and whale-tusk beads and a smaller number of larger amber beads. Small amounts of Late Neo/EBA pottery was also recovered from the mound and ditch fills. A secondary burial of a crouched infant was interred in the side of the mound at an unknown date. In addition to the large ring ditches a third previously unknown, smaller ring-ditch (COG 028 – 0512) enclosing a cremation and an isolated pit containing cremated bone were also found; these features are as yet undated.
The identified features are part of a wider landscape of funeral monuments of the prehistoric period, which includes a Bronze Age ring ditch (COG 025) to the south and another ring ditch cropmark (COG 006) to the east. Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2010 (S1).

In advance of housing, 0.66ha of excavation focussed on two monuments that formed part of a prehistoric funerary group overlooking the Stour Valley. They had been recorded by aerial photography, topographic and geophysical survey. Several hollows and tree throws suggested activity in a forested landscape prior to monument construction in the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age (3200 - 1500 BC). A ring ditch 37m in diameter enclosed a small off-centre pit from which cremated human bone and a pair of Early Bronze Age bone tweezers were recovered. A substantial deposit which yielded over 900 sherds of Anglo-Saxon pottery, made in the backfill of the ditch, is evidence of revisiting of the earthwork. The more complex monument, 25m in diameter, comprised two concentric ring ditches of unequal size, enclosing a large central grave under vestiges of mound material up to 0.5m deep. The grave contained a crouched burial of a young adult female, furnished with a later-Neolithic/earlier Bronze Age beaker vessel and an unusual necklace consisting of large amber pieces and c.400 tiny black jet and white shell beads. A secondary, crouched, infant inhumation was made in the mound. A working hypothesis is that a large central pit may be evidence of a post for a medieval windmill and the outer ring ditch may be a secondary feature relating to this. Further features on the site include a smaller ring ditch enclosing a central pit containing cremated remains/pyre debris, an isolated pit containing cremated bone deposits and another (medieval) pit containing burnt bone (S2).