Monument record HGM 023 - OUTLINE RECORD: prehistoric worked flints and multiperiod pottery FIELDWALKING MARCH 2012

A two-day fieldwalking project was undertaken with 32 volunteers to walk a field NW of Stratford St Mary (in Higham parish) that has a number of undated cropmarks. The aim of the project was to try to provide dating evidence for the underlying archaeology. The most significant finds were a small number of Iron Age pottery sherds and a scattering of worked flints. Five sherds of Roman pottery, including one piece of a Samian plate, were found in four squares, and a small proportion of the ceramic building material (CBM - brick and tile) recovered was Roman. Medieval and post-medieval pottery was found across the site, reflecting the visible origins of Stratford St Mary and Higham, as was a large quality of CBM, which may have come from earlier buildings in the SE corner of the site or from 17th century buildings to the W and NE of the field.
The survey did not produce definitive dating results for the cropmarks, but the presence of twelve sherds of hand-made Iron Age pottery is significant as such fragile pottery rarely survives long in the ploughsoil and therefore it is likely to have been found close to the location of its original deposition; the flint assemblage also is more typical of Iron Age flint working than earlier periods. This supports a suggestion that some of these cropmarks represent Iron Age activity. The small Roman assemblage, attests to Roman activity in the vicinity but the absence of metal finds, and in particular coins, given the extensive metal detecting carried out may suggest that the Roman material had been brought onto the site from nearby rather than occupation on the site itself.
Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2012 (S1).