Ipswich Road, Holbrook, Suffolk

An area, which measured approximately 70m by 70m, was subject to a mechanical strip. All non-significant overburden was removed to the top of the archaeological deposits or natural, whichever was encountered first. This was achieved through use of a 360� mechanical excavator, equipped with a toothless grading bucket, whilst under constant archaeological direction. Thereafter, all cleaning and excavation was conducted manually by suitably qualified archaeologists. The excavation identified and recorded evidence for Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age Beaker period activity in the form of a pit cluster, with other possible dispersed pits nearby. The associated Beaker pottery and lithics assemblages were indicative of a domestic settlement and it is likely that the pits were utilised for the disposal of refuse. Some of the Beaker period pits yielded baked clay fragments, which may be indicative of limited pottery production in the locale; however, these artefacts could also be the re-deposited remains of a domestic hearth. There was also evidence that flints and stones had been burnt or heated, although the precise reason for this remained unclear. Evidence for available food items was present in the form of charred hazel nutshells and barley grains, whilst oak wood, some of which was gathered from well-established woodland, was utilised as fuel for burning. A charred hazel nutshell, which was recovered from one of the Beaker period pits, yielded a radiocarbon date range which spanned 2335 - 2060 cal BC at the 95% confidence level. Comparison with contemporary sites in the general vicinity has suggested that the Beaker period pits at Ipswich Road were likely to have been refuse pits containing domestic waste and that they were probably the remains of a small, potentially short-lived settlement. A ditched field system, which included part of a droveway, was most likely to be later than the Beaker period settlement activity. Due to a lack of securely stratified artefactual material and poor stratigraphic associations, the ditches remained poorly dated; however, a limited amount of pottery from the ditch fills, along with their general layout, suggested that they could possibly be of Iron Age/Roman date. The layout of the revealed ditches was generally consistent with those known from cropmark evidence in the vicinity of the site; however, these cropmarks are poorly dated and they appear to represent a potentially complex palimpsest of boundaries, which are currently not well-understood.