Monument record ADT 016 - Bronze Age ring ditch

Ring ditch circa 25m diameter (S1). Partially(?) built over by `Frith Cottage' circa 1985.

2007: Monitoring of groundworks at Frith Cottage, Alderton, was carried out as a condition of the planning consent. The earliest activity was represented by a single flint scraper, a residual find in a later feature and was probably Neolithic in date. The most significant archaeology encountered related to the previously known ring-ditch. A section through the feature in an excavation for a septic tank revealed a V-shaped profile, with a smaller, possible secondary ring internal to the first. The ring-ditch clearly functioned as a funerary monument as two urned cremations were uncovered during the excavation of footings. Each upturned urn was packed externally with selected stones; in one case these comprised flint pebbles/cobbles, while the other was packed with sandstone/quartzite pebbles/cobbles. The urns themselves have been identified as a regional development of the early to mid Bronze Age Deverel Rimbury tradition. Radiocarbon dating of the cremations provided results consistent with a date in the mid 2nd millennium BC. One of the urns contained an adult female while the other comprised the less complete remains of an individual of indeterminate gender. One possible medieval feature was recorded along with a few sherds of unstratified medieval pottery (S3). Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2006 (S4).

April 2016. Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Beauty National Mapping Programme.
The cropmarks of the ring ditch relating to the previously excavated round barrow are visible on aerial photographs (S1-S2) and was 27m in diameter.
S. Horlock (Norfolk Historic Environment Service), 20th April 2016.