Report on a Late Bronze Age Site in Mildenhall Fen, West Suffolk

Abstract

The history of the invasive movements associated with the diffusion of Deverel-Rimbury pottery during the Late Bronze Age in Britain can be studied from two main points of view. We may seek to discover the continental sources of the various components of the general complex, and in this way arrive at the origins of the movement and its chronology in terms of continental cultures; or we may adopt the less spectacular, if no less interesting, course, and see what can be learnt of the impact of the alien on the indigenous culture of the period in Britain. As Dr. Curwen's work on the Plumpton Plain site in Sussex has demonstrated, in conjunction with Mr. Hawkes's analysis of the pottery, the continental affinities of the Deverel-Rimbury folk are best studied within an area of primary diffusion. The mutual relations of the invasive and the indigenous folk, can, on the contrary, be appreciated most easily by working on sites peripheral to the Deverel-Rimbury distribution, such as the one in Mildenhall Fen, West Suffolk, to which attention is drawn in this paper (fig. 1).