Monument record MRM 162 - Later Prehistoric roundhouse and occupation at Land South of Main Road, Martlesham (Area 2)

Excavation revealed a continuation of the later prehistoric landscape identified in the previous phase of open area excavation (MRM 157). The principal archaeological features were a ditch which appears to be a continuation of a field boundary in the previous area. Adjacent to this was the eaves-drip gully of a small (c. 5.5m diameter) roundhouse with an east-facing entrance. The roundhouse probably postdates the initial cutting of the ditch, but the boundary is likely to have still been visible and in use when the building was occupied. A few metres from the roundhouse, on the side opposite its entrance, was a small pit containing the base and lower portion of a flint- and quartz-sand-tempered large jar or urn of the Collared Urn or Deverel-Rimbury tradition. Although no cremated bone was present, this may be the plough-damaged remains of a Bronze Age cremation burial. The feature also contained a rare copper-alloy ‘votive wheel’ of probable Late Bronze Age date, similar to examples from Flag Fen. The pottery from the roundhouse drip gully and adjacent section of field boundary ditch is mainly of later Bronze Age/ earlier Iron Age date; both also contained assemblages of later prehistoric (later-2nd- to early-1st-millennium BC) flint-knapping debris. Subsoil finds of Bronze Age pottery and struck flint from across much of the excavation area suggest the original presence of a later prehistoric land surface or occupation layers that have been truncated away by post-medieval ploughing. An isolated pit containing large sherds from several earlier Bronze Age vessels, including a food vessel (rare in Suffolk) and several Beakers, was also recorded. The pit also contained knapping waste, a struck flint flake and burnt flint, all in a deposit of dark soil. The pit indicates some activity in the area prior to the formal subdividing of the landscape for agriculture in the Middle Bronze Age. Close to the pit were several possible postholes and stakeholes, which although undated, might relate to some kind of temporary shelter. Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2015 (S1) (S2).