Bronze Age ring ditch, Ardleigh Ring Ditch Six, Ardleigh (EHER 82017)

This ring-ditch was first observed as a cropmark in 1959 and excavated over two seasons in the autumn of 1960 and 1961. Over one hundred sherds were recovered from the ditch which was fully excavated. A few were Bronze Age and one of these lay close to the bottom of the ditch. However, the majority were Roman found scattered through the fills at depths of between 0.3 and 0 .7 metres.

Excavation, 1960-1961 This ring-ditch was first observed as a cropmark in 1959 and excavated over two seasons in the autumn of 1960 and 1961. It is the most distant from the Bronze Age Cemetery and isolated from the other five ring-ditches in the same field. The excavation methodology was the same as that employed for rings one to three (EHER 82001, 82006 and 82010). The ditch was V-profiled, about 1m deep with a fill of 'stone free soil'. <1> Two holes (with infilling of pure soil) each about 2 feet from the true centre. A third, much larger, hole had been made almost at the circumference due east. The depth of the two central holes was 26 and 27 inches, and of the eastern one 33 inches. <2> The infilling of the ditch contained over a hundred sherds of pottery of which six were the thick (over 2 inch) Bronze Age Ware, Several more were of Iron Age “A” (detailed in EHER 3476). They formed part of a flat-bottomed porringer or bowl. The remaining pottery consisted of grey Roman ware (detailed in EHER 3492). One Bronze Age sherd was encountered at a depth of 3 inches and was presumably deposited at the time of the destruction of the barrow. The remaining sherds were at varying depths between 28 and 12 inches from the surface, many of the lowest ones being Roman. One can assume from this that the ditch had not silted up very much by the time of the first century A.D. <2> An interpretation was made in <2>. It suggested that Bronze Age people erected their barrows some months before a death occurred. If they did not actually raise the mound, at least they seem to have dug the circular ditch and a central hole or two holes. <2> suggests that as the ground was so hard in the summer the pits were dug in the winter people to construct their barrows when the weather was suitable, rather then when necessity demanded. This meant that if no cremation had taken place for a considerable time, the central holes got partially filled in from natural causes, and the burials when they eventually took place, were nothing like as deep as were originally intended. <2>