The Archaeological Service began a project in October 2019, funded by Historic England to enhance the records they held for the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Period. For this, they undertook a systematic enhancement exercise using nationally accepted methodologies to enrich the Suffolk Historic Environment Record (SHER). It was evident that the SHER was missing a lot of information on Palaeolithic and Mesolithic finds and sites, such as from published gazetteers, and many records did not follow current dating and finds identification paradigms.
By enhancing the SHER with all this information, we can begin to build a picture of early prehistoric Suffolk, which will help us to better understand and characterise the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic archaeology.
Not only is this information now available to the public and researchers, but it is also a useful resource for planning authorities for early engagement in the planning process to facilitate informed management decisions. The dataset is now publicly available on the SHER.
This project was kindly funded by Historic England (Historic England Project 7872).
