Monument record HVH 072 - Middle Iron Age settlement at Westfield Primary School, Chalkstone Way, Haverhill

Evaluation and excavation inetified, Small amounts of residual pottery and/or worked flints suggest that there was transitory use of the site during the earlier Neolithic and the later Neolithic/earlier Bronze Age. In the later Bronze Age two un-urned cremations were buried in what was probably a small, unenclosed and informal cemetery. Permanent occupation of the site began in the Middle Iron Age, with the establishment of an unenclosed settlement. It contained at least three circular buildings, probably dwellings although one of them (represented by two roughly concentric and penannular ditches) was unusual and might have had a ritual/religious function. Other stratigraphic evidence for the settlement included several ditches/gullies (possibly defining small enclosures), some pits and occasional postholes. The artefactual evidence included a significant pottery assemblage (mostly cooking and storage vessels) found in association with worked flints, fired clay fragments, loomweights, a spindlewhorl and some worked antler fragments. Animal bones and some charred cereal grains are indicative of stock rearing and crop production. Subsequent phases of activity cannot be dated precisely. A linear boundary ditch, probably part of a Roman or later field system, truncated the remains of one of the Middle Iron Age buildings. The boundary ditch was cut by a large, irregular pit, probably a reservoir, with a complicated history of infilling and re-excavation. It contained a moderate assemblage of residual Middle Iron Age pottery and some of its fills were rich in charcoal and heated stones, on a scale that suggests industrial activity (S1 S2 S3). Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2010 (S4).