On Wednesday (25th September), the Trust made an interesting find at Birch Quarry: this is a Bronze Age ‘bucket’ urn. We began an archaeological watching brief at the quarry, near Colchester, on the 9th September, and we are planning to finish the fieldwork on Monday. A ‘bucket’ urn is a large, crudely-made ceramic funerary urn, often found containing human bone. These urns often occur in cemetery groups, and the Trust has found such cemetery groups at Chitts Hill and at Birch Quarry, and the Colchester Archaeological Group have found such a group at Great Tey.
The watching brief is being undertaken on land which formerly included the WW2 Birch airfield, ahead of the quarry being extended into that area. Trust archaeologists Ben Holloway and Mark Baister are monitoring the machine-stripping of the area. There is considerable modern disturbance on the site, caused by the construction and demolition of the airfield, which was used by the US Eighth Air Force in WW2. Ben and Mark have also found rubble and three used bullets!
The ‘bucket’ urn had been vertically compressed from above, by the construction of the airfield, and it collapsed when it was lifted. It probably dates to the Middle Bronze Age. It had been deliberately deposited in a pit, in isolation, and no human bone has been recovered, so it may have been some kind of marker. The Trust has found a similarly deposited urn before, at Sandon near Chelmsford.
The Trust has undertaken a number of archaeological projects at Birch Quarry over the years. We excavated a Middle Bronze Age cemetery here in 2003 (published in the Colchester Archaeologist magazine, no 17, page 28). We conducted a series of excavations at Birch Quarry between 2005 and 2008, and recorded evidence of a Late Iron Age/Roman agricultural landscape, and some burials associated with a farmstead.
The images show the site; the ‘bucket’ urn as it was excavated; and the ‘bucket’ urn (photographed from above) at Roman Circus House today (27th September).
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