NHER 52482 (Cropmark and Earthwork record) - Site of Early Bronze Age round barrow

February 2010. Norfolk NMP.
The cropmarks and excavations described below were previously recorded as part of NHER 9585.
An Early Bronze Age round barrow is visible as soilmarks and cropmarks on aerial photographs (S1)-(S9), centred at TG 2396 0534. Together with a second, larger barrow located only 30m to its southeast (NHER 52481), the site was excavated in 1989-90 in advance of the construction of the Norwich Southern Bypass. The excavations demonstrated that the barrow was used for at least one cremation burial; this was carbon dated to the later third millennium BC, although the Collared Urn containing the cremation was thought to date to around the mid second millennium BC. At its extreme, the date range for the site spans the period from the end of the Late Neolithic to the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age, but an Early Bronze Age date seems most likely. Details of the excavation results and a wider discussion of the barrow in its topographic and archaeological context are given in the published site report (S10). The NMP mapping has demonstrated that the barrow lies in the southwest corner of what appears to be a large dispersed barrow cemetery (NHER 53403), located on a west-facing slope overlooking the confluence of the Rivers Yare and Tas.
The NMP mapping for the site largely accords with the results of the excavation, showing a slightly oval ring ditch, flattened on its northeast side and defined by a continuous ditch; as with the barrow to the southeast (NHER 52481) the excavation plan shows the ditch to be somewhat more substantial than is indicated by the cropmark. The internal mound, visible as soilmarks on aerial photographs taken in 1946 (S1), was not identified in the excavations, although the relationship between the barrow and the later parallel ditches which skirt its northwest side indicated that a visible earthwork must still have survived when the ditches were laid out. Slight indications of additional external ditches are of doubtful archaeological origin and consequently have not been mapped. As with the barrow to the southeast (NHER 52481), no internal features other than the mound have been mapped by the NMP. Of those visible on the aerial photographs, while some might relate to archaeological features, all are indistinguishable from the naturally-occurring pits visible in the surrounding area, and those that correspond with features identified in the excavation relate to seemingly unexcavated and/or unphased features, presumably also of natural geological origin.
Linear features in the surrounding area are part of a large group of ditched boundaries (NHER 52489) which appear to represent several phases of field systems and trackways, most or all of which are likely to post-date the barrow site. These include the two parallel ditches which cut across the northwestern side of the round barrow, which remain undated (beyond the fact that they post-date the barrow) despite their partial excavation. It was suggested by the excavators that the ditches perhaps lay on either side of a hedge bank, but they might equally represent a narrow trackway. In either case the barrow, presumably still existing as a prominent feature despite the infilling of its surrounding ditch, appears to have been used as a marker when they were laid out.
As mapped by the NMP, the ring ditch measures up to 21m in diameter.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 15 February 2010.