|
Bury St Edmunds
One major, now extinct, river was 310km in length, which has been named the Bytham River. It drained from the southwest Midlands and the Pennines through Warwickshire and parts of Leicestershire before turning south through the centre of East Anglia and eventually eastwards into what is now the North Sea but was then dry land. Its gravels included red quartzite pebbles and they are visible at Mildenhall and Icklingham. The deposits laid down by the Bytham River are called the Ingham series, after the prototype description derived from layers exposed in the gravel workings at Ingham in Suffolk.
This river, which was already some 250,000 years old at least, is traced along its presumed course through West Suffolk on the attached diagram. The diagram relies upon connecting up known sites of deposits of the Ingham series of sands and gravels. However, it should be noted that most of the gravel extraction along the Lark Valley, including West Stow and Lackford pits, comes from much later glacial and post glacial deposits. The Ingham deposits are, in contrast, much rarer and deeper layers.
The Bytham River was discovered by a geographer, Professor Jim Rose of the University of London, in the 1980s and named after the Lincolnshire village of Castle Bytham where Rose first identified it. The work of reconstructing this lost landscape has been carried out by several geologists and other specialists, with a major contribution being made by the research of Professor Fred Shotton. A large proportion of known human occupation sites, dating from before the Anglian Ice Age, have been shown to lie along the course of this river.
In 1986, a small gravel pit was investigated at Stanchils Farm at Hengrave, and the pre-glacial deposits categorised. The site seemed to illustrate the existence of Hengrave and Ingham sand and gravels which originated in the Midlands, transported here by the Bytham River, and deposited as it reached the area. In 1994, Professor Rose and John Wymer published a "Record of a struck flake and the lithological composition of ‘pre-glacial’ river deposits
at Hengrave, Suffolk" in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History.
The Bytham River was probably one of the most important routes of colonisation for Britain’s first human inhabitants. Professor Rose considered that its wide sand and gravel banks would have provided an easy route to travel along and the river would have provided water, vegetation and attracted animals making it a useful place for humans to exploit. So far 14 important archaeological sites have been discovered along the route of this lost river. These include High Lodge, West Dereham, Feltwell, Brick Kiln farm at Brandon, Hengrave, Lakenheath and Warren Hill in East Anglia, as well as Waverley Wood near Coventry in Warwickshire. This means that at this early time man knew the area around Bury St Edmunds and Lakenheath, when the landscape was very different to today. It would have been the largest river in Britain at the time although the second largest river, which was to become the River Thames, shows no similar indication of pre-Anglian human occupation.
These first colonisers of Britain, before 500,000 years ago, probably belonged to the ancient human species Homo heidelbergensis, an ancestor of the Neanderthals. The stone tools of this period are classified as Lower Palaeolithic, with the most characteristic tool type being the handaxe. Handaxes associated with this early colonisation of Britain have been found at sites along both the south coast route, such as Boxgrove, and along the Bytham River route, such as High Lodge and those already mentioned.
High Lodge itself is an important geological site just outside Mildenhall. Deposits indicate that it was in the lower middle part of the
Bytham river catchment (Ashton et al., 1992). High Lodge provides evidence for human occupance of this area dated to about 500,000 years ago, a time now linked to Marine Isotope Stage 13, or MIS 13.
The lower part of the Thames at this time flowed to the north of its current course, over much of South Suffolk laying down some ancient river gravels. Significantly there is as yet no evidence of colonisation along it at this early time.
The Kesgrave series of sands and gravels are thought to have been brought here from Southern England by the Thames on its course northwards at the time. A flint which could possibly show evidence of working by man was found in these early deposits which could be up to 200,000 years earlier than the date attributed here.
At this time it was probably warmer in Britain than it is today. This time is called the Cromerian inter glacial period. There would be two more glaciations of this country before our modern times begin. Early man was in Britain at this time, as we have seen, although he would be driven out again by later ice ages.
Some geologists believe that the change from warm to cold periods can take as little as 50 to 100 years. This was the biggest of all the glaciations as far as the UK is concerned, and some authorities have dated it as much later than this, perhaps from 350,000 BP to 200,000 BP.
This glaciation arrived from the north-west and the ice sheet reached the coast south of Lowestoft and aligned itself roughly from there to Ipswich at its edge. The Anglian ice sheet thus covered all of Suffolk except perhaps for the very south east. It also covered the Midlands and reached south of Essex. Suffolk was never again completely covered by ice in later ice ages.
As the ice carried massive sediments below it, these were both scraped away from some areas and re-deposited in others. The low lying Fens were scraped out in this way. The existing ancient river systems were either obliterated, like the Bytham and Mathon, or fundamentally altered by the Anglian glaciation, the severest glaciation known in British geological history. The River Thames was pushed nearly 100 miles south to somewhere near its modern course.This view of the coastline persisted from about 478,000 years ago until 425,000 years ago. The new lake had to overflow somewhere as the rivers continued to feed it, and a new channel was carved out to the south west, creating the breach in the chalk escarpment now called the Straits of Dover. The River Thames now joined up with the pre-existing Channel River. This was the first time that the British Isles was cut off from the continent, although there would be future periods when sea level falls would produce a dry land crossing again.
During the glacial/interglacial cycles the rivers cut down through earlier deposits and laid down fresh deposits of sands and gravels. This process has resulted in the creation of a series of terraces in some river valleys, with the highest terrace being the most ancient and the lowest the most recent. Much geological research and controversy surrounds the interpretation of these terraces and their correlation with specific glacial events.
Bone was also used as a resource, and barbed bone points have been discovered surviving from this time. One example was dredged from the North Sea 25 miles NE of Cromer, dating from this time when the area was still marshy land. Another example is from Feltwell. The diagram shows how these may have been used in pairs as fish or eel spears.
It is thought that the average July temperature rose from 8 degrees centigrade to 17 degrees within a short span of years. The earlier arctic animals were gradually replaced by the animals familiar to us today in East Anglia, together with other species which are now extinct. These included the elk, the tarpan, (a type of wild horse), the lynx, beaver, wolf, bear, wild boar, and the massive wild cattle known as aurochs. Of these animals, the wolf, beaver, and wild boar survived in East Anglia up to Anglo-Saxon times.
In 1998 the skull of an aurochs was dredged from the River Lark at West Row, dating from around this time. This was a very large specimen with a 90 cm span across the horns. Peat deposits were thought to have preserved it, together with cut marks attributed to butchery by the local inhabitants before eating it. It stood over 2 metres tall, and thus was larger than modern cattle. The aurochs died out during the Bronze Age. In this early mesolithic period, Britain was still joined to Europe by a land bridge, probably at modern day Denmark. The North Sea coastline was somewhere north of the Dogger Bank, so continental flora and fauna could migrate freely into Britain.
Causewayed enclosures from this period have been identified at Kedington and Fornham All Saints from aerial observation of crop marks. At Fornham a 'cursus', or processional way, has been identified, together with circular enclosures or henge-monuments.
Several thousand implements were found in a single little valley at Icklingham, and perhaps these people arrived up the Icknield Way from Southern England and Northern France.
By contrast, East Suffolk is thought to have been colonised more from the Low Countries and Denmark and Germany up the coastal estuaries.
Meanwhile in the west country at Stanton Drew a massive wooden henge of concentric circles of wooden posts was erected, twice as big as Stonehenge was to be.
With the growing availability of bronze the Stone Age era was now slowly drawing to its end, but it made up 98% of the time span that man has lived on Earth. Flint continued to be used where it was easily available, and bronze would have been too scarce to use for everyday tasks.
Elsewhere, several metalwork finds have come from Rymer Point. At Rymer Point there were a series of ponds, the only water in the area, and the ten parishes that joined here in medieval times possibly had origins in settlements and land claims as far back as this time. At Grimstone End, in Pakenham, near Ixworth a single round ditch was revealed by aerial photography. It was excavated in 1953 to reveal the base of an early Bronze Age barrow, containing an urn with cremated bones.
In our area, the people were still living in settlements in the north west of Suffolk on the light, well drained soils of Breckland. It has been thought that raiders from Belgium left sword scabbards found at Lakenheath. Nowadays, such evidence is much less readily attributed to invaders and more readily linked to trade or cultural exchange. Unfortunately nearly all of the iron objects have rusted away fairly quickly, and so the Iron Age is perhaps less evident in the ground than the Bronze Age. Nevertheless we are fairly sure that iron artefacts would not come into general widespread use until after 500 BC to 400 BC.
The iron age Iceni tribal heartlands were in North West Suffolk around Ixworth and the Blackbourne Valley and Icklingham, West Stow and the Lark Valley. They extended into South West Norfolk and north and south along the Icknield Way. The Iceni were widespread in Norfolk and archaeological remains there confirm the Roman descriptions of them using wheeled chariots drawn by a pair of ponies in warfare.
Most of their remains in Suffolk are from Cavenham to Thetford. These people kept cattle and water had to be available within a mile of the herds, a requirement which held true up to the 20th century.
In South Suffolk the people were known as Trinovantes and are also known as the Belgic or Belgae tribes and were supposedly later arrivals from the Continent.
The discovery of this cult centre has led some people to believe that the Iceni "capital" must have been moved here from a site near to Norwich, called Venta. However, there is no indication of a royal presence here, and very little evidence of any major or permanent occupation of this enclosed site.
After an unopposed landing, running battles were fought against British chariot forces under the command first of Togodumnus and then Caratacus. These two men were the leaders of the Trinovantes-Catuvellauni alliance, the most powerful of the tribes. The combined British were defeated at a decisive battle on the River Medway, during which Togodumnus received fatal wounds and his younger brother Caratacus was forced to flee with the rest of his family through Gloucestershire to Wales.
The Romans now attacked the homeland of the Catuvellauni, in revenge, and captured their fort at Camulodunum.
Claudius himself led the victorious Roman army into Camulodunum and spent sixteen days in Britain, holding audience with the leaders of several British tribes. Two of the tribes were made clients of Rome because they had played no part in resisting the Roman invasion. First were the Iceni from Norfolk and North Suffolk, and second were the Brigantes from the hilly Pennines in the north.
The Iceni probably did not have a single King at this time, something which confused the Romans. They wanted to deal with one man, and this seems to have been Antedios. Other Iceni chieftains were apparently Aesu and Saenu from coinage evidence. Claudius decided that Antedios was to be the ruler of all the Iceni.
|