Data from an Excavation of an early Anglo-Saxon cremation cemetery at Lackford, Suffolk, 2015-2016.
Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, 2023. https://doi.org/10.5284/1112791. How to cite using this DOI
Data copyright © Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service unless otherwise stated
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Primary contact
Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service
Bury Resource Centre
Hollow Road
Bury St Edmunds
IP32 7AY
Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 5492
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1112791
- How to cite using this DOI
Introduction
This collection comprises images, reports, and site records from excavations carried out by Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service on an early Anglo-Saxon cremation cemetery at Lackford, Suffolk in 2015 and 2016.
Cremations urns were found on Mill Heath, Lackford during the 19th and early 20th century, but the precise location was recorded following ploughing by Teresa Briscoe in 1945. T.C. Lethbridge of Cambridge organised an excavation between 1947 and 1949 which uncovered around 500 cremation burials in pots, many of them decorated and some with accompanying pyre and grave goods. An outline report was published in 1951 by the Cambridge Antiquarian Society and the artefacts were deposited at Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (CUMAA).
It was clear that Lackford was a large cemetery of the 5th and 6th centuries, comparable to sites such as Caistor by Norwich and Spong Hill in Norfolk, Cleatham in Lincolnshire and Sancton in Yorkshire. The cemetery was believed to be largely under a plantation after about 1950. However in 2015 a small group of pottery scatters with burnt bone were identified on the ploughed surface of the adjacent field by a metal detector user, and these were rapidly excavated by the Suffolk Finds Recording Officer. The next year, 2016, revealed a larger area of plough-disturbed cremation burials which were excavated over a couple of days by volunteers and members of Suffolk County Council Archaeology Service; altogether some 15 partially complete pots were lifted from the subsoil, and 37 scatters of pottery and bone recovered as soil samples.
The processing of the excavation material and assessment of it formed the first stage of a Historic England funded project. The reports assessing the excavation (Minter, F. with Anderson, S. and Plouviez, J. 2018) and looking at the archaeological context of the site (Minter, F. and Plouviez, J. 2018) are available with the archive. The project was broadened to include a reconsideration of the 1940s excavations because of the significance of these sites for understanding the earliest phases of post-Roman activity in Eastern England; it was clear from the CUMAA catalogue that some categories of artefact, such as glass beads, were very under-represented in the 1951 publication.
Material was analysed for a comprehensive analysis report (Anderson, S., Briscoe, D., Broadley, R., Minter, F., Plouviez, J. and Riddler, I., 2022) and the subsequent publication of key results in East Anglian Archaeology. It comprised all the pottery urns known from the site and the small finds from the 1947-9 and 2015-6 excavations. The reports include detailed comparisons with the Spong Hill results, particularly as discussed and phased in Hills, C. and Lucy, S., 2013 (The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Spong Hill, North Elmham, Vol. IX (Chronology and Synthesis)). The results show that cremation began at Lackford, as at Spong Hill, in the first half of the 5th century and continued to at least the middle of the 6th century, ending later than at Spong Hill. The 2015-6 material provides evidence about the cremated humans and animals, an aspect that is entirely lacking for the earlier excavation. A series of radiocarbon dates was also obtained.
The digital archive includes copies of all the assessment and analysis reports, the 2016 excavation records, including the subsequent excavation of the urn contents and images from 2016 site excavation and small finds, and key analysis tables for both the 2015-6 and the earlier finds.
