Source/Archive record SSF62169 - The geoarchaeological, chronological and palaeo-vegetational setting of the Deben valley at Rendlesham, Suffolk

Geoarchaeological fieldwork was carried out by Prof French and Dr Taylor and a number of volunteers, including clients of Suffolk Minds, in the summers of 2021 and 2022, building on an initial augering assessment survey by French and Taylor in 2015 (French and Taylor 2016). This study has produced stratigraphic, sedimentological, palynological and chronological data on the development of the river valley at Rendlesham and human impacts upon it during the last 10,000 years. This involved a series of hand augered borehole transects across the Deben valley to the north and northeast of the 2022–3 excavations in Park Field (Figs 1 & 2). In order to retrieve intact core monoliths from the large palaeo-channel feature thus discovered for palynological and sedimentary analyses and radiocarbon dating, a series of four percussion core boreholes were made in selected locations to further sample and investigate the palaeo-channel deposit sequence. Of these, Core 2 and the adjacent BH 26 were selected as the most representative of the riverine/floodplain sequence for further analyses (Figs 1 & 3).