Monument record LKH 644 - Late Iron Age inhumation, Roman ditches, pits and inhumation burial on Airfield Ground Lighting Vault RAF Lakenheath

Excavation revealed ditches, pits and burials sealed beneath a finds rich mixed layer of occupation debris. Most of the ditches were dated to the Late Roman period. The discrete pits on the site dated to the later Iron Age and Roman periods and Saxon pottery was also recovered as intrusive finds from layers and features on the site. The two burials uncovered were dated to the Late Iron Age and Late Roman periods. The Late Iron Age burial was a fully articulated crouched type infant burial and was recovered from a large pit, no grave goods were present. The Late Roman burial was a supine female, but was heavily truncated by modern disturbance and no grave goods were present (S1,S2).

The excavation revealed dense archaeological features including ditches, pits and burials sealed beneath a finds rich mixed layer of occupation debris. Many of the features on site were dated either to the Middle Iron Age or the Roman period, these latter features forming part of a wider excavated landscape of the Late Iron Age to Roman period. Of the two burials uncovered within the excavation, that of a small child was dated by radiocarbon to the Middle Iron Age and that of an adult female to the Late Roman period. Neither burial was furnished. Within the moderate finds assemblage was part of an Iron Age ring-headed pin, an assemblage of Middle Iron Age pottery suggestive of a small group of contemporary features and a rare Roman ceramic strainer. The site on its own is too small for detailed interpretation but it can be seen to be revealing another part of the wider system of Roman rectilinear enclosures and trackways identified across a much more extensive area. The Roman burial in particular falls into a pattern of burial associated with boundary ditches recognised in several of the adjacent investigation areas (S3).