Monument record COG 030 - OUTLINE RECORD: Concentric Ring dicth Rugby Ground EVAL and EXC Phase 2 (BACKLOG)

2009: An area of 0.66ha was excavated in 2009 in advance of a housing development. Two large ring-ditches, indicative of flattened round barrows had been recorded by aerial photography and could be seen as slight landscape features. This ring ditche consisted of two concentric ring-ditches of unequal size enclosing a central burial. The barrow had a total external diameter of 25m, the internal ditch was up to 2m wide and 1m deep with the outer ditch being 0.8m wide and 0.5m deep; vestiges of the mound material survived to a height of 0.5m. Beneath the mound was a large central grave 2.4m long x 1.5m deep in which lay a crouched burial of a young adult female. The grave was furnished with a Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age beaker and a necklace, placed either side of and slightly above the skull. The necklace is of an unusual composition: a large number of tiny jet and whale-tusk beads and a smaller number of larger amber beads. Small amounts of Late Neo/EBA pottery was also recovered from the mound and ditch fills. A secondary burial of a crouched infant was interred in the side of the mound at an unknown date. In addition to the large ring ditches a third previously unknown, smaller ring-ditch (COG 028 – 0512) enclosing a cremation and an isolated pit containing cremated bone were also found; these features are as yet undated.
The identified features are part of a wider landscape of funeral monuments of the prehistoric period, which includes a Bronze Age ring ditch (COG 025) to the south and another ring ditch cropmark (COG 006) to the east. Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2010 (S1).

Full report to follow.