NHER 44906 (Monument record) - Site of undated pits or possible grubenhauser

August 2006. Norfolk NMP.
A cluster of pit-like features is visible as cropmarks on aerial photographs (S1)-(S3), in a line between TG 4240 1548 and TG 4244 1545. The cropmarks are light-coloured against a dark background, as if they reflected positive features, but a ditch (part of NHER 44907) which runs up to them from the north and crosses both light- and dark-coloured crop, demonstrates (by changing colour) that the marks are negative features showing as ‘reversed’ marks. The features lie within what may have been a palaeochannel, or at least a band of less free-draining soil and/or geology. They are undated but lie close to the cropmarks of a probable Bronze Age round barrow cemetery (NHER 15805) with which they could be associated. They perhaps reflect ceremonial or funerary depositional activity; similar pits have been mapped 740m to the northwest (NHER 44926) in close proximity to several ring ditches (e.g. NHER 21839). Alternatively, they might represent grubenhauser, presumably of Saxon date. Such features have also been noted close to probably Bronze Age ring ditches, as at NHER 1009 at Bacton. The features could instead have a more mundane origin, perhaps as extraction pits, but they appear too small, neat and well defined for this explanation. It is unclear whether they are associated in any way with the undated ditches (NHER 44907) that surround them.

The pits vary in shape from rectilinear to oval/curvilinear. The largest (which is oval) measures 19m long and 7.5m wide. The smallest, which is sub-rectangular, measures 7m long and 5m wide. The central, sub-rectangular pit, which is partially truncated or masked, measures 9m by 7m. It should be noted that due to an inadequate number of control points, the photographs could not be properly rectified and this may have had an adverse effect on the accuracy of the mapping.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 10 August 2006.