Bronze Age ceremonial landscape at Lanswood Park, Clacton Road (EHER 80553)

The discovery of a ring ditch and a cremation demonstrate that this landscape was used for ceremonial activity in the Bronze to Iron Ages. In Addition, deposits and oval cuts containing burnt flint and pottery were uncovered which are thought to have been ceremonial rather than domestic.

Evaluation and excavation, 2020-2021 The earliest cut feature discovered on site was a pit on the higher ground, on the northern edge of the excavated area. This contained 3.9kg of Middle Bronze Age pottery and a group of 33 struck flints and 360g of burnt flints. Two other adjacent prehistoric pits may have been part of the same small group. In the absence of any other features of this period, a ceremonial rather than a domestic function can be suggested. The next dated activity, by contrast, was on the lower ground near to Tenpenny Brook. Here was a group of fifty-one features arranged fairly convincingly in three oval arrangements, two of them overlapping. Nineteen of these features were well dated through pottery to the Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age. Whilst these could represent post holes for a structure, the varying depths mean that we may regard these as a series of cuts, roughly half of which contained deposits of Late Bronze Age pottery. Why they were in oval settings is unclear, except to point out that the settings mirror very closely the size and shape of the adjacent ring-ditch. The ring-ditch itself is not dated. Nor is the cremation burial enclosed by the ring-ditch (and containing the remains of an adult buried with a copper object surviving only as a bone stain). However, based on similarity of layout and size with the adjacent Late Bronze Age dated pit groups, and the complete absence of any features dated otherwise than to the Late Bronze Age with 200m of this spot, means it is not an unreasonable inference that the ring-ditch and the cremation are also Late Bronze Age. Again, in the absence of any features not associated with the ring-ditch or the pit groups, a ceremonial function for the features may be suggested. <1>