Early Iron Age ring ditch, Ardleigh Ring Ditch Five (EHER 3473)

Early Iron Age ring ditch excavated by Colchester Archaeological Group with a central deposit of a situlate pot (probably broken before deposition) along with charcoal and bone fragments. The proximity of 'Ring 5' to the other rings in the same field suggests a continuity from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.

In the dry summer of 1960 R.H. Farrands took some photographs of cropmarks at Vinces Farm, Ardleigh. Some of these cropmarks were of circles, being ring ditches in Springhead field, south of Elm Park. Subsequently further ring ditches were discovered as cropmarks in an adjoining field belonging to Martell's Hall, which is now being taken as a gravel-pit. Ring ditch 5 was the last to be excavated and was done so by F.H. Erith with the Colchester Archaeological Group in the autumn of 1974. <1> At a depth of 0.25m (10 inches) below plough depth two small Iron Age fine-ware sherds were found. In the precise centre, and at a depth of 0.55m (22 inches) below ground level was a patch of black ash with two small fragments of bone. The patch was about 0.3m (6 inches) in diameter and about 6mm (quarter of an inch) thick. At the same level and about 0;.3m (1 foot) to the north were some large pieces of pottery, being about a third of a pot, complete in section from rim to base. It lay horizontally with the inside uppermost. At the same distance from the ashes, but to the south, was another similar concentration of pottery. Both lots were later found to belong to the same pot and fitted together, forming two-thirds of a situla-shaped urn. The pit continued down to a depth of 1.2m (4 feet), but nothing else was found in it. The two sherds of finer ware came from a pot with a curving profile, and a cordon indented with regular stabbings. The exterior colour was chocolate-brown, and the interior a dark grey-brown, burnished. They should be contemporary with the urn. <1> <1> states that the situla-shaped pot was intended to contain the ashes of a primary interment, but questions why the urn had only been buried at a depth of 0.55m (22 inches) when a pit four feet deep had been prepared for it and why the pot had been broken. The central urns of Rings 1, 2 and 6 were also deposited much higher than the bottoms of the pits dug out for them and it could be suggested that the ring ditch and central holes were prepared sometime before the death occurred, and silting or natural backfilling by time and weather had reduced the size and depth of the holes. It is possible that the urn cracked or collapsed when it was being removed from the locality of the funeral pyre, so that the only thing the attendant mourner could do was to bundle the fragments up as best he could, drop them in the hole prepared, and then to fill in with earth immediately. The proximity of Ring 5 to the other rings in the same field suggests a continuity from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. <1> Mapped in <1> and <2> Additional references: <2> <3> <4> For aerial photographs references, see EHER 3502. This ring ditch is one of the twelve recorded in EHER 3472