Monument record SUY 082 - Priory Stadium Sudbury

Evaluation located post medieval cultivation layers, a palaeochannel and peat layers that have been sampled (S1) and radiocarbon dated to between circa 11000 BP (lagoonal floodplain during Windermere Interstadial), then minerogenic floodplain sedimentation until circa 2100 BP (Late Iron Age, when return to organic sedimentation). Details in (S2 and S3).

A series of cores were taken during evaluation of the site at Priory Stadium, Sudbury. The fieldwork identified a stratigraphic archive consisting of alluvial clays and silts, with occasional layers of organic rich silts, sands and peats, with at least two phases of in-situ organic accumulation. A palaeochannel may also be present within the deposits, and may reflect an earlier channel of the River Stour (S1). Pollen and beetle assessments were carried out supported by radiocarbon dating to provided a chronology for the sequence. An initial phase of organic sedimentation was found to have occurred in a lagoonal floodplain setting of the River Stour c. 11000 BP, during the Windermere Interstadial. A shift to minerogenic floodplain sedimentation than occurred and it is believed to have dominated depositional conditions until the late Iron Age, c. 2100BP, after which a return to organic sedimentation is recorded. Pollen and beetle assessments suggest that this second phase of in-situ organic accumulation occurred in response to gradual infilling of an abandoned river channel. The pollen suggests that the area around has been largely open grassland since the Iron Age, with evidence of pastoral and arable cultivation (S3).