Monument record BIL 057 - OUTLINE RECORD: Later prehistoric land surface and a LBA/EIA pit, Land To The Rear Of 52 High Street Bildeston (PCA) Eval

Trenched evaluation found that the ground in this backyard plot to the rear of the street frontage had been disturbed to a considerable depth by 20th-century outbuildings, demolition and landscaping. Nevertheless, a disturbed subsoil in Trench 1 sealed a preserved later prehistoric soil horizon/ land surface, present at a depth of about 0.88m below existing ground level, which contained a moderate-sized assemblage of later Bronze Age to Iron Age struck flints. At the same stratigraphic level in the base of the trench was a small pit containing struck flint and a sherd of flint-and-sand-tempered Late Bronze Age–Early Iron Age pottery. The results of the evaluation are of some significance, this being the first evidence of later Bronze Age/ earlier Iron Age activity recorded in Bildeston. However, the wider landscape context of the site, on relatively light soil in the valley of the river Brett, just 160m from the river, is in keeping with known patterns of settlement and land use during later prehistory. Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2022 (S1).