The Early Iron Age Site at Micklemoor Hill West Harling, Norfolk, and its Pottery

Abstract

The Iron Age settlement on Micklemoor Hill, West Harling, (Nat. Grid 62/975857) was discovered by Mr H. Apling while prospecting for Bronze Age cooking-places on the course of the river above Thetford during 1932. The site is a prominent hill of glacial gravel approximately 300 yards long and 150 yards wide, rising some 20 feet above the level of the surrounding marsh and rough grazing pasture and bounded to the north at a distance of between 200 and 600 feet by the river Thet. Its most prominent feature at the present day is a mound covering a brick-lined ice-house of 19th century construction and surrounded by a group of conifers. The prehistoric features discovered by Apling comprised two enclosures, an ‘Eastern Camp’ (our Site II), consisting of a low broad bank with external ditch and well defined opening on the west, and a larger ‘Western Camp’ (our Site III) of which only slight traces of a ditch were visible.The excavations carried out by Apling in 1932 were mainly directed to the eastern enclosure: in addition to a number of trial holes he dug two-foot trenches across the site from two directions. No pottery was found in the interior, but the ditch which he located outside the bank yielded pottery, bones and flints. Accordingly a length of some 20 yards of the ditch-filling was removed on the eastern side and from this a really substantial quantity of material was obtained.