Monument record KIR 065 - Late Bronze age to Early Iron Age ditches, pit sand a probable trackway and Medeival ditch at East Anglia One Site 40

2019: The excavation encountered one pit cluster in the north of the site comprising three small features containing late Bronze Age/early Iron Age pottery. Broadly contemporaneous with the pit cluster, two parallel ditches oriented southwest-northeast, and containing late Bronze Age/early Iron Age pottery in their fills, crossed the southern area of the site. The two ditches are c.9.5m apart and appear to form a ditched trackway, the southwest projection of which appears to be aligned on the southeast edge of a c.15m diameter ring ditch (KIR052) visible as a cropmark in the adjacent field. The northeast projection of the parallel ditches appears also to be towards a second circular cropmark visible on Google Earth (2008) but not yet assigned a HER number. The distance between the two circular cropmarks, and thus the possible full length of the parallel ditches (trackway) recorded in Site 40, is c.350m. This late Bronze Age/early Iron Age trackway/boundary feature recorded at Site 40 is a northern extension of the expansive prehistoric field system, including a similar parallel ditched ‘trackway’ recorded at Site 39, c.200m to the south. The majority of the remaining linear features at Site 40 are aligned west south west to east-northeast and represent the southern edge of a medieval field with possible furrows surviving as shallow negative gullies across the northern third of the site. A very shallow gully projecting at a right-angle from the inner (northern) edge of the medieval field ditch in the south of the site, may represent a minor hedge line. A cluster of intercutting ‘pits’ with post medieval material in the central southern area of the site probably represent later agricultural disturbance. A small number of features remain undated and unassigned to a phase. These include a burnt pit with a charcoal-rich basal fill. In form and character this feature resembles other burnt pits found at several other EA1 sites (e.g. 25B, 36, 39) (S1).