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A double-ditched sub-rectangular enclosure measuring c.42 by 48 m was excavated. It was shown to have been a Late Bronze Age settlement, with a single central roundhouse opposite the only entrance, and with a rectangular structure in one corner. The site produced a typical range of Late Bronze Age artefacts. The site is low-lying, and environmental data from the waterlogged fills of a well indicate an open landscape of damp grassland. These factors together with the absence of waste from the earliest stages of crop-cleaning among carbonized plant remains from the enclosure, point to a primarily pastoral economy.A few Neolithic features and artefacts were also found but these are not considered to represent permanent settlement.

Aerial survey in Essex has revealed a number of elongated enclosures interpreted as either long barrows or mortuary enclosures of Neolithic date. Excavation of one of these sites at Rivenhall in 1986 produced finds of flintwork and pottery which help to substantiate this hypothesis. A surface collection survey of the field containing the enclosure produced Mesolithic and Neolithic flintwork. A short discussion considers the Essex sites in their wider context.

This report describes Neolithic pottery dated 2730 bc and Beaker pottery found in apparently domestic contexts; and many Bronze Age funerary features. The latter begin with two food-vessel cremations and include two barrows about one of which were ten cremation graves. Close by were another 140 cremation graves, many yielding Deverel-Rimbury pottery. Carbon-14 dates indicate the use of this cemetery between 1556 bc and 762 bc.

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