Freston is a Neolithic causewayed enclosure, an archaeological site near the village of Freston in Suffolk, England. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 until at least 3500 BC; they are characterised by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is unknown; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites.
The Freston enclosure was first identified in 1969 from cropmarks in aerial photographs. At it is one of the largest causewayed enclosures in Britain, and would have required thousands of person-days to construct. The cropmarks show an enclosure with two circuits of ditches, and a palisade that ran between the two circuits. There is also evidence of a rectangular structure in the northeastern part of the site, which may be a Neolithic longhouse or an Anglo-Saxon hall. In 2018, a group from McMaster University organized a research project focused on the site, beginning with a geophysical survey and a pedestrian survey to collect any items of archaeological interest from the surface of the site. This was followed by an excavation in 2019 which recovered some Neolithic material and obtained radiocarbon dates indicating that the site was constructed in the mid-4th millennium BC. Other finds included oak charcoal fragments believed to come from the palisade, and evidence of a long ditch to the southeast that probably predated the enclosure, and which may have accompanied a long barrow, a form of Neolithic burial mound. The site has been protected as a scheduled monument since 1976.
Background Freston is a causewayed enclosure,Oswald, Dyer, & Barber (2001), p. 155. a form of earthwork that was built in northwestern Europe in the early Neolithic period.Whittle, Healy, & Bayliss (2015), pp. 1–2.Oswald, Dyer, & Barber (2001), p. 3. Causewayed enclosures are areas that are fully or partially enclosed by ditches interrupted by gaps, or causeways, of unexcavated ground, often with earthworks and palisades in some combination.Andersen (2015), p. 795. The function of causewayed enclosures is debated.Whittle, Healy, & Bayliss (2015), p. 5. They may have been settlements, perhaps for a single family, or used for herding animals. The causeways are difficult to explain in military terms since they would have provided multiple ways for attackers to pass through the ditches to the inside of the enclosure, though archaeologists have suggested they could have been sally ports that defenders could emerge from to attack a besieging force. Evidence of attacks at some sites provided support for the idea that the enclosures were fortified. They may have been seasonal meeting places, used for trading. There is also evidence that the enclosures played a role in funeral rites: food, pottery, and human remains have all been found deliberately deposited in the ditches.Whittle, Healy, & Bayliss (2015), pp. 5, 10–11.
The construction of these sites would have required substantial labour for clearing the land, preparing trees for use as posts or palisades, and digging the ditches, and would probably have been planned for some time in advance, as the enclosures were built in a single operation.Andersen (2015), p. 807. Over seventy causewayed enclosures have been identified in the British Isles, and they are one of the most common types of early Neolithic site in Western Europe. About a thousand are known in all.Andersen (2015), p. 796. They began to appear at different times in different parts of Europe: dates range from before 4000 BC in northern France, to shortly before 3000 BC in northern Germany, Denmark, and Poland. The enclosures began to appear in southern Britain shortly before 3700 BC, and continued to be built for at least 200 years; in a few cases, they continued to be used as late as 3300 to 3200 BC.
Site
The Freston enclosure is in Suffolk, near the village of Freston, south of Ipswich. It lies above sea level on the Shotley peninsula in southeast East Anglia, between the estuaries of the Orwell and Stour rivers. A modern road, the B1080, passes through the site from south to northeast.Martin (2007), p. 1. Farm buildings (part of Potash Farm) along the southwest part of the circuit date from the 17th century, and in the 19th century two cottages (known as Latimer Cottages) were built to the southeast of the centre of the enclosure.Schofield et al. (2021), p. 109. The site became a scheduled monument in 1976.Carter et al. (2022), p. 81.
The ditch circuits, as revealed by cropmarks, consist of two concentric circles, with numerous gaps in the ditches. Cropmarks also show faint traces of a line between the circuits which may indicate where a palisade once stood, though this is only clear in the north and northeastern parts of the circuit. The remains of a rectangular structure, , can be detected within the enclosure in the northeastern corner.Carter et al. (2021), p. 121. The structure has not been dated, but it is likely to be either a Neolithic longhouse or an Anglo-Saxon hall. Few such buildings have been found, and either would make Freston a site of "potentially national importance", according to English Heritage.Hegarty & Newsome (2017), p. 21.Carter et al. (2022), p. 92. If it is a longhouse, it could have been built either before or after the enclosure was constructed.
The enclosure is in area, which makes it one of the largest causewayed enclosures in Britain.Carter et al. (2022), p. 89.Oswald et al. (2001), pp. 72–75. The short sections of the ditch that have been excavated were found to be well over deep, significantly deeper than those of other nearby enclosures. The excavators calculated that, if the ditches were all equally deep, they would have taken between 2,800 and 4,200 person-days to dig, and stated that the project would have been "one of the greatest Early Neolithic engineering works of East Anglia".Carter et al. (2022), pp. 89–90. Freston appears to have at least two and perhaps as many as five entrances, defined as places where wide causeways line up in both circuits to make a broad path to the interior of the site.Carter et al. (2022). p. 93. Another possible explanation for some of the gaps in the circuit, where no cropmarks can be seen, is that the spring in the centre of the site may have periodically overflowed, carving an east-west channel which has since filled in, and eliminating the cropmarks that might have appeared at the points where the stream crossed the circuit.Carter et al. (2022), pp. 94–95. The site has no features that are visible above ground; all banks and ditches have been levelled by ploughing,Carter et al. (2021), p. 122. perhaps as long as 2,000 years ago.Carter et al. (2022), p. 90.
Neolithic farmers began to reach Britain in about 4050 BC, spreading from mainland Europe across the English Channel, and reaching southeastern England, including Suffolk, early in this migration. Freston is about from the sea; it would have been about from the sea at the start of the Neolithic. The location between two river valleys would have made it more easily accessible to the groups that crossed by sea from mainland Europe, and a spring within the enclosure would have made the site attractive—for practical reasons, and perhaps also for the ritual or symbolic significance of springs.Carter et al. (2021), pp. 119–122.
Radiocarbon dating suggests that the inner ditch was built between 3800 and 3500 BC,Carter et al. (2022), p. 98. with the most likely period around 3700 BC.Whittle et al. (2022), p. 209. The palisade was probably added some time after the initial construction of the enclosure, and the rectangular structure at the northeast corner of the enclosure was also probably constructed some time after the ditches were dug.Carter et al. (2022), pp. 98–99.
Archaeological investigations
Discovery, fieldwalking, and watching briefs Aerial photographs taken by the Royal Air Force in 1944 showed no sign of cropmarks; the site is partly visible in a series of photographs taken in 1966 by the Ordnance Survey, but was not noticed at the time. The site was discovered in 1969 by J. K. St Joseph, who ran the Cambridge University Committee for Aerial Photography (CUCAP) program for many years; he identified it on a reconnaissance flight that year and took aerial photographs that recorded cropmarks in the northern part of the site. Further photography was undertaken in the 1970s by CUCAP and the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME).Dyer (1995), p. 4. The site was included on a list of sixteen possible causewayed enclosures based on observed cropmarks published in 1975.Wilson (1975), p. 183, fig. 2, pl. XX Fieldwalking (surveying the site on foot) in the winter of 1979–1980 and again in 1985 found some worked flint, including an arrowhead, pot boilers, blades, and flint flakes. In 1995 Carolyn Dyer of the Air Photography Unit of the RCHME used aerial photographs to create a map of the site showing the cropmarks overlaid on the local topography.Wightman (2011), p. 2.
In 2007 a geophysical survey was performed on the northeastern quadrant of the enclosure, east of the B1080, using magnetometry and earth resistance measurements.Martin (2007), pp. 2–4. The survey identified several possible pits, some of which could be Saxon sunken-featured buildings, though this will require excavation to confirm.Schofield et al. (2021), p. 112. The survey also found a linear feature that might be a Neolithic trackway, running past the rectangular structure in the northeast of the site.Martin (2007), p. 4.Carter et al. (2022), pp. 92–93. In November 2007 construction work on one of the cottages within the enclosure required archaeological monitoring, which identified a single flint from the diggings.
Although the site is a scheduled national monument, the area of the road that passes through it is not protected, and in 2010 the local electricity provider excavated a trench alongside the southern part of the road, to bury a cable that had been run overhead on telegraph poles. The excavation was monitored, and the removed soil examined for artefacts.Wightman (2011), pp. 3–4. Four sherds of pottery were found; two were thought to date to the Middle Bronze Age (about 1400 BC to 1000 BC), but the other two could not be dated.Benfield (2011), p. 5. A total of 47 flints were recovered, dated from the early to late Neolithic. Three flakes were identified as a type of flint known to come from the Thames Basin.Martingell (2011), pp. 5–6.
FARM project