Monument record WLD 070 - Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age ditches and pits, and Post Medieval to modern ditches and pits at East Anglia One Site 31

2017: Excavation uncovered a cluster of pits and postholes of late Bronze Age/early Iron Age date, potentially including a roundhouse structure and rubbish pits; with the latter containing significant concentrations of post-Deverel-Rimbury pottery. To the south-east of this cluster was a sparse distribution of contemporary pits, and field boundary ditches. Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2017 (S1). Full report to follow.

The excavation of Site 31 encountered a re-cut north-south ditch dating to the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age. At the north end of Site 30, the probable earlier of the two ditches appears to have included a c.4-5m gap, around which the alignment rotates slightly; moving from north to south, the north-northwest to south-south-east alignment rotates slightly to the south. The presumed later, recut of this ditched boundary closed off this gap. This ditch line is mirrored in a pair of adjacent ditches c.150m to the east in Site 30 (WLD069), and again c.300m to the east in Site 29C (MRM173). Together, these regularly spaced boundaries are part of an expansive formal field system visible in cropmarks (MRM015) extending at least 1km to the north from Site 31. Also found at Site 31 was a small number of dispersed pits and possible postholes containing late Bronze Age/early Iron Age pottery; no discernible patterns or concentrations of the discrete features were evident, and it is unclear how this domestic activity relates chronologically to the two long ditches. Finally, although devoid of finds, a series of east-west ditches and a fence-line in the north of the site correlate with modern ditched hedgerows and fence lines on the edge of the farm adjacent to the east of Site 31, and are thus probably modern in date. An undated ditch on the same east-west alignment in the south the site can also be assigned to this modern phase (S2).