A Reused Bronze Age Barrow and Roman Religious Shrine Site at Red Lodge, Suffolk

Abstract

Investigations at Red Lodge, Suffolk, recorded a multi-period site spanning the Neolithic through to the medieval period, focusing on remains of an isolated Early Bronze Age barrow. While no associated burials survived, the monument was later incorporated into a Roman-period religious complex, being enclosed within a ditched temenos , probably in the second century. A small building interpreted to be a shrine structure was subsequently constructed alongside the barrow, the ring-ditch of which was recut around this time, suggesting its active use within this religious place. A number of structured animal deposits occupied the religious enclosure, the most notable of which comprise distinctive pig ‘head-and-hoof’ deposits in close association with the shrine. Further probable votive material was found dispersed in deposits in the immediate vicinity of the shrine and barrow. A possible pond, well and oven structure hint at other activities carried out in the enclosure, presumably allied to its religious function which continued into the late fourth century. No subsequent early Medieval land use activity was identified, though a documentary source indicates the presence of a late Medieval gallows in this vicinity, perhaps on the barrow earthwork itself. A single medieval inhumation later inserted into the top of the temenos ditch is therefore speculated to constitute an execution victim.