(che)+Recovering+from+ice

Around 478,000 years ago the ice sheets flowed down from the north covering most of Britain as far south as London. This cold period known as the Anglian Glaciation lasted for almost fifty thousand years. 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 date it as much later than this, perhaps from 350,000 BP to 200,000 BP. It is widely accepted that the low-lying area of eastern England comprising the Wash and the Fens was excavated by the Aice sheet. Moving first from the northwest and then from the north, the ice moved rapidly across Jurassic bed rocks and rode up over the Chalk escarpment. The eroded material was deposited beyond the basin as the Chalky boulder clay or till of the southeast Midlands and East Anglia.

The ice sheet reached the coast south of Lowestoft and aligned itself roughly from there to Ipswich at its edge. It also covered the Midlands and reached south of Essex. The River Thames was pushed nearly 100 miles south to somewhere near its modern course. Rivers created by melting glaciers flowed across East Anglia. One such system crossed today's Elveden and Barnham areas, and considerable stratified evidence has survived the jumbling up process often caused by glaciations.

The Anglian glacial stage is believed to be the last time that ice covered East Anglia. It brought with it a rocky and patchy earth filled with stones and flints. This so called 'boulder clay' covers nearly the whole of Suffolk. In High Suffolk it is described heavy clay loam, between 30 and 50 metres thick into which were etched in central Suffolk. When the glaciers melted vast amounts of water were released, generally following the route of the streams and rivers that we see today. During this period the sea level was some 200 metres lower than it is today. This large amount of water had a great erosive power, carrying a vast quantity of debris and flowing beneath the glacier under high pressure, to produce tunnel valleys. Since these valleys were confined by the ice this caused the water to pass along deep incised water routes with irregular bases, before rising at the glacier snout to flow from the edge of the ice sheet as outwash or meltwater streams.

When the ice melted it left behind boulder clays and the melt water carved out the estuaries of the Waveney, Deben, Gipping and Stour. Typical deposits include the Lowestoft Till found at the lower levels of Elveden Brickyard Pit.

Man was present in Britain at this time, even if he was probably living further south. In Britain generally, Paleolithic man may have pre-dated the Anglian Glaciation, but the earliest Suffolk evidence appears to be from Elveden and Barnham, dated at the end of the Anglian Glaciation.

In 1911, a wooden spear was found at Clacton on Sea dated to 450,000 years ago. It is the earliest wooden object yet discovered in this country. The Anglian glaciation is just one - if a very severe example - of a number of fluctuating climatic events that are known collectively as the Pleistocene (Ice Age). The Pleistocene in fact comprises a series of cold stages, known as glacials, and warm stages, known as interglacials, with many more minor climatic variations in between. Since the Anglian glaciation there have been eleven.

Sites showing evidence of human activity dating back as far as this time are extremely rare in Britain. The clay pits of Elveden and Barnham are about five miles apart, and both contain evidence that man was knapping flints here at the time. There is also evidence that both those sites were on the banks of an ancient river system. One tool from Elveden was a flint "spokeshove" for stripping bark and shaping wooden objects including spears. More than 200 flint flakes were found and these seemed to be two distinct layers of human activity.

At Barnham, there are similar lower layers to Elveden, but upper layers contain evidence of elephant, rhino, lion, bear, aurochs, deer and wild boar. At this time the climate here was several degrees warmer than today's conditions. Also at this time the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros lived in Britain.

As early as 1797, Hoxne near Eye in East Suffolk became a site famous for remains of flint tools of this period. The site gives its name to the Hoxnian Interglacial period. It was here that the great antiquity of man and his flint tools was first recognised in 1797 by John Frere.

The Lower Paleolithic period has left evidence of man at Bury, Icklingham, Kentford, High Lodge, Elveden, Lakenheath, Brandon, Santon Downham and Barnham. High Lodge, Mildenhall is among the oldest archaeological sites in Europe with many stone tools discovered in the 1960's. These sites are on the river valleys and light soils of the Breckland. Warren Hill at Mildenhall has also yielded many stone hand axes.

Recovery from glaciation would start with micro-organisms building up in the watery bogs left by melting ice sheets. Insects and worms then appear, followed by dwarf birches. After a few thousand years the fish and small mammals appear, and at Elveden they include roach, rudd, stickleback and pike. At Barnham, a terrapin shell was found and once small mammals like the water voles have moved in, their remains can sometimes be dated by minute evolutionary changes. The Hoxnian layers at Elveden Brickyard Pit are silts and clays up to six metres thick over the Lowestoft Till. In southern Britain there is prolific evidence of human occupation at this time, represented by literally thousands of handaxes and other stone tools. .

The effects of the glacial/interglacial cycles on Britain's rivers formed the landscape of the river valleys we know today. Fast-flowing rivers transported sands and gravels, which were deposited to a depth of metres in the valley bottoms. These deposits now form a valuable resource extensively exploited, in the Midlands as elsewhere, by the construction industry. The deposits also contain valuable evidence of past environments in the form of the fossilised remains of plants and animals as well as evidence of human activity in the form of stone tools. The majority of British handaxes have been found in these sand and gravel deposits.

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 our 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. Around 364,000 BP the Hoxnian Interglacial or warmer period drew to a close at this time.

This would herald in another cool period, known as The Wolstonian Glaciation. The ice sheet stopped somewhere short of North Norfolk but permanently frozen ground conditions would have resulted throughout East Anglia. This period lasted until about 126,000 BP.

Various warm and cool or icy periods followed, with vegetation spreading and contracting at various times as conditions changed. Lake sediments were laid down, in warmer periods, including some found at Sicklesmere. These periods each covered hundreds or thousands of years, in some warm periods, Britain may well have become an island. During the exceptionally warm interglacial known as the Ipswichian (130,000 - 110,000), when hippopotami roamed Trafalgar Square, there is no evidence of human occupation. The rapidity with which the English Channel flooded may explain the inability of the Neanderthals to colonise Britain at this time. Indeed, current research suggests a gap in occupation that may have lasted from 180,000 to 60,000 years ago.

The Devensian cooler period began around this time. In the advance of the ice sheet down from the north, the ice may again have reached the North Norfolk coast. The ice probably advanced and retreated sporadically, but did not seem to reach its peak until around the period from 24,000 BP to 15,000 BP. This glaciation did not reach further south than the North Norfolk coast, but it locked up so much water that sea level fell by up to 60 metres.

The ice had disappeared from Southern Britain c.15,000 BP, but the North was still under the ice sheet. Britain was probably a treeless Tundra, but was joined to the continent.

Around 9000 BC the Late Glacial Period began and the Mesolithic period is the name given to human remains from after this date up to the time farming began. The Flandrian warm period is dated to c.8300 BC. This date is generally reckoned to herald the start of the warmer period in which we remain in today. Today's post glacial warm period began quite rapidly at this time and the treeless British landscape was gradually replaced by trees colonising from the south east. The first forests were of birch, an arctic tree, pollinated by wind as it was still too cold for insects in Britain.

Early Mesolithic (hunter-fisher peoples) sites believed to date from this period have been identified at Home Heath, Lackford. 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, larger than modern cattle. The aurochs died out during the Bronze Age.

In the early mesolithic period, Britain was joined to Europe by a land bridge, probably at modern day Denmark. The North Sea coastline was somewhere north of the Dogger Bank. In Britain, Pine trees began to replace the arctic birch, followed by hazel, elm, oak and alder. In the Late Mesolithic period, c.6500 BC the sea rose as the ice caps melted and retreated and Britain became an island when the sea broke through. The Suffolk coastline was several kilometres east of where it is now. Sites thought to date from the Late Mesolithic include Wangford, Lakenheath and West Stow and at various places in the Blyth valley system. The red deer was hunted by arrows fitted with small flint barbs.

Mixed oak forest was the dominant form of landscape. Small leaved lime trees had arrived in Britain and the warmer Atlantic period lasted until 3,000 BC. The lime is an insect-pollinated tree and so we know that the British climate could now support an insect population. The so called "wildwood" was probably developed to its fullest extent by now, following the last glaciation. The Neolithic Period dates from about 4,600 BC. This time is known as the Neolithic period or New Stone Age, and the first farmers came on the scene. Some of them settled in the Lark Valley. Forest clearance was an essential skill before settlements could be established.

The tools from this time are characterised by polished stone axes, and leaf shaped arrowheads of flint. Not all the tools were polished, and included flint as well as stone axes. Axes from the Lake District have been found in North West Suffolk, and from Cornwall in South East Suffolk. This suggests two separate trade routes in operation and possibly two separate peoples in Suffolk. One was the Icknield Way along the Chalk ridge, connecting East Anglia with Wessex and beyond.

From 4000 BC to 3000 BC is a period when the elm tree had a great decline and remains of nettles and plantains show an increase. This is probably the first large scale impact of agriculture on the Wildwood and its decline continues to this day. Elms like to grow on the edge of woodlands and are likely to be the first to be felled in a clearance. Nettles and plantains tend to flourish where man has his home. The treeless Breckland probably has its origins in Neolithic tree clearances from about 3700 BC. A Neolithic farmstead of about 3500 BC has been found at Hurst Fen, Mildenhall. As well as expertly worked leaf shaped arrowheads, the newly invented pottery has been found with round bases and decoration. Saddle querns and rubbers to grind emmer-wheat and barley were also found. Studies centring on the mere at Diss suggest that in 3200 BC a virulent strain of Dutch Elm disease wiped out thousands of elm trees. This mirrors the similar event in the late 20th century.

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.

The first metal tools of copper had appeared c.2700 BC in Britain, but flint was still important for another thousand years. In the Late Neolithic period there was a major industrial site at Grimes Graves until about 2000 BC. Some 360 shafts of flint mines have been located. The Cambridge Museum of Archaeology holds two wooden bows dating to around 2700 BC. These are the oldest bows found in England. One of them, called the Mere Heath Bow had a draw strength of around 100 lbs, making using it a substantial task. A round neolithic house has been found in Dorset which had its own henge adjacent, and is dated to this time.

In 2670 BC the first pyramid was built in Egypt at Saqqara. It was markedly stepped, built in a number of stages out of stone, and looked quite unlike the smooth sided Great Pyramid built about a hundred years later. Around this time, Stonehenge was erected in Wiltshire apparently based upon the design of the wooden henges erected for the previous 500 years. It was probably started several hundred years earlier, and enlarged and developed over this period, and work probably continued as new ideas arose.

Bronze technology seems to have reached Britain from Europe in about 2200 BC, having originated earlier in the Middle East. Bronze is commonly an alloy of 9 parts copper and 1 part tin. The earliest bronze weapons were flat headed axes which copied the shape of polished stone axes. These occur in the Beaker culture.

Pots known as Beaker pottery dates from c.2100 BC, the early Bronze Age, as do many round barrows. For many years these people were referred to as the Beaker People. Some 825 round barrows are known in Suffolk by 1999, including How Hill at Icklingham. Settlements are still in river valleys and on the light soil areas.

By this time Salisbury Plain was a vast centre of burials and sacred sites, temples and henges. Stonehenge was at its centre. Bronze axes were used to clear woodland from the Plain to produce the open grassland landscape that we see today.

In 1999 a startling discovery of a wooden henge monument of a "family" size was made on the sea-shore at Holme-next-the-Sea in Norfolk 2050 BC. A bronze axe head was found and attracted the finder's attention to a circle of wood stumps newly visible above the sand as the tide receded. After considerable difficulties the timbers were excavated and removed to Flag Fen by the Fen side at Peterborough for conservation and recording. The circle was six to seven paces across, surrounding an upturned tree stump of a 150 year old oak tree, with its roots pointing skyward. A supposed entrance faced the direction of the Mid-Winter sunset and the structure was thought to be a mortuary. It was dubbed sea-henge but was originally built not on the beach, but possibly in salt-marsh and the timbers were carbon dated to 2050 BC and 2049 BC, and had been worked by bronze axes and adzes.

A three dimensional laser scan of the 55 oak posts of the circle shows that at least 38 different bronze axes were used to cut and shape the timbers. Francis Pryor, the head of the Flag Fen archaeology centre has commented that "it is remarkable that this tiny community was able to lay hands on such a large number of tools only about 100 years after the knowledge of how to make bronze arrived in this country." This reveals an unexpected level of development and social organisation in these communities.

A settlement has been found at West Row, Mildenhall dated between 1,700 and 1,500 BC, and one bronze age house was circular, some 161/2 feet in diameter. Its inhabitants used pottery, worked flint, grew cereals and processed flax.

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 this era a man might die of old age at 34 and women at 37, based on the average remains found in Suffolk Bronze Age barrows and graves.

A few Iron age artefacts have been discovered in the area.

It is thought that there were two separate peoples in Suffolk at this period, with a boundary roughly from Newmarket to Stowmarket and Aldburgh. To the north were the Iceni, and in the south the Trinovantes. Their names are known from Roman writers. 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.

In South Suffolk, Clare Camp, formerly Erbury, may have been an iron age fort of the Trinovantes but no archeological evidence exists for this idea. These people also had a settlement at Long Melford and this Stour Valley group looked to Camulodunum next to where Roman Colchester arose. They were known as Trinovantes and because of their origins are also called the Belgic or Belgae tribes and were possibly late arrivals from the Continent. They were an organised society able to produce luxury goods such as the gold torcs found at Ipswich.

The Iceni have to be one of the best-known of the Brythonic tribes. As a coin-issuing tribe it is known that the Iceni occupied the modern counties of Norfolk, as well as the major part of Suffolk and eastern Cambridgeshire. The Iceni seems to be an agglomeration of smaller tribes that grew to dominance in the period between 200 and 50 BCE. The various gold hoards obtained from Iceni territories (including the Snettisham torcs) indicate that the Iceni were a wealthy peoples. Unlike their southern neighbours, however, the Iceni seem to have actively shunned contact with the Roman world. This may explain why, when the Romans granted the Iceni the status of civitas they ignored the traditional centres at Snettisham and Thetford and instead founded a new city at Caistor (Norwich). Despite this, the Iceni were initially hospitable to the Roman invaders. So much so that Prasutagus (the ruler at the time) became a client king of the Romans. However, after his death (just as would later happen to the Atrebates) the kingdom was incorporated into the Roman province and a spate of very harsh rule ensued. As a result of these abuses, in 60 CE Prasutagus' widow, Boudicca, led what was to become the most successful revolt against Roman rule in Britain.

The end of Roman rule in Britain came in the early fifth century, probably around A.D. 410, but for most people life would have changed little, and there is increasing evidence that the many Roman soldiers and their families continued to occupy the forts of Hadrian's Wall, albeit as subsistence farmers rather than professional soldiers. The basic socio-political building block of Anglo Saxon Britain was the estate, some of which in the north were enormous - it is thought that some of the Northumbrian shires such as Hexhamshire preserve the boundaries of these landholdings. At the centre of each estate was an administrative villa, comprised of a large hall and associated buildings. Blything is thought to have been a tribal division of the Iceni which was consolidated as the northern estate of the Wuffinga Dynasty with its headquarters (moot hall) at Blythburgh.