Monument record WPT 054 - Early Neolithic and Early/Middle Iron Age activity and an unusual Bronze Age ditched enclosure, Land off Stowmarket Road

A detailed fluxgate gradiometer survey on land outlined for a proposed housing development revealed no significant archaeeological features. However several positive linear trends indicative of post-medieval field boundaries, linear areas associated with modern quarrying, negative features deriving from modern agricultural practices and fourteen discrete anomalies identified as possible rubbish pits (S1).

2019: An Early Neolithic pit, two possible Neolithic gullies and two Early/Middle Iron Age pits found across three separate trenches provided clear evidence for distinct periods of prehistoric occupation on the light, sandy soils at the south end of the site. The pits contained flint-working débitage, pottery, animal bone (some with butchery marks), charred cereals and other plant macrofossils, suggesting habitation in the immediate area.
There was no evidence for the use of the site area during the Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods. In the medieval period, the site was part of Woolpit Heath, and was apparently unoccupied.
Some post-medieval ditches, probably corresponding to agricultural field boundaries shown on the 1846 tithe map, represented piecemeal enclosure of former heathland.
In the second half of the 19th century, intensive quarrying of brickearth took place in the northern part of the site, probably associated with the nearby Woolpit Brickworks. At the south end of the site, sand and gravel deposits were quarried. Following the closure of the brickworks in the 1930s, the site was restored to agricultural use (S2).

2020: Archaeological excavation of three targeted areas. Area 1 contained three small pits with finds indicative of Middle Iron Age (c. 350–50 BC) occupation. Area 2 had a highly variable natural geology with numerous striations and lenses, some probably glacial in origin and others likely to be tree hollows. Some of these contained small amounts of mainly Early Neolithic (c. 4000–3000 BC) struck flint and/ or pottery, which are likely to derive from surface scatters of occupation debris that were present on the prehistoric ground surface, some of which became incidentally incorporated into underlying hollows as they filled in.
Area 3 revealed a few further Early Neolithic tree hollows and glacial features, but its principal interest was the exposure of an unusual rectangular/ sub-square ditched enclosure. This contained the poorly preserved crouched inhumation burial of a mature/ elderly adult male, radiocarbon dated to the Chalcolithic/ Early Bronze Age (2455–2204 cal. BC), accompanied by a Beaker vessel. (S3). Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2020 (S4).