Watching Brief on Site Investigations for the Cavenham-Icklingham Water Level Management Plan

From 16th to 28th September 2009, OA East carried out an intermittent archaeological watching brief on land along a c.2km stretch of the River Lark within Cavenham, Icklingham and Tuddenham parishes, Suffolk (TL 736738 to TL 758729). The archaeological monitoring was carried out during the excavation of exploratory holes by a geotechnics team from A F Howland's Associates. No archaeological features or artefacts were uncovered within the geological test holes, although on higher ground adjacent to the south of TP 5, near to the south bank of the River Lark at TL 7577 7290, artefacts were found in the backfill of rabbit burrows within a c.90m by 40m area. These burrows were more than 1m above the floodplain on either a natural scarp or an earthwork. The artefacts comprised twelve flint pieces dating from the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age including a core and a scraper, a Late Iron Age and two Early Roman pottery sherds. A possible palaeochannel was found in one of the geotechnical exploratory pits (HD 1) at TL 736738 with peat encountered to a depth of more than 3.3m.