Archaeologists dig for answers at Mildenhall

  • Published
  • By 1st Lt. Rosaire Bushey
  • 100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
ROYAL AIR FORCE MILDENHALL, England (AFPN) --  To the untrained eye, it is a dug-up piece of ground. To the trained archaeologist, it is a treasure trove of information and a small mountain of history, and it was discovered because people here want to play softball.

In August, while preparing to clear a site for new softball fields, Defence Estates, the Ministry of Defence organization that works land issues for the Air Force, called in Suffolk County Council archaeologists to take a look at the building site.

“Basically, what we have is an area where there is known archaeology nearby,” said Keith Sturmey, Defence Estates project manager. “Whenever we have that situation, we call in the local professionals to do some test digs so we ensure we aren’t building on top of anything significant.”

The professional they called was Andrew Tester, an archaeologist with the county who has worked with both Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath for about 15 years and is familiar with the area and its historical significance.

“What we’ve found here is really very exciting in archaeological terms,” he said. “We’ve found several sets of remains, pottery, coins and sites where we know at least a couple of buildings were.”

The dates for most of the finds are from the early Roman Age (A.D. 43 to 410), but Tester believes some items could fall into the Neolithic Period -- roughly 3500 to 2000 B.C., and still others into the Bronze and Iron Ages.

“You can’t really quantify the value of this find in monetary figures,” Tester said. “The value here is really in the knowledge we can gain about the people who lived in this part of England so many years ago.

“For instance, round buildings were fairly common in the time periods we’re dealing with here, but we have what looks like a rectangular building of some considerable size,” he said. “Included in that is what seems to be a ritual burial of a horse under what would have been the middle of the building.”

Tester’s use of “what seems” and “what looks like” is not just a slip of the tongue. Archaeologists with Tester’s experience can often give a reasonably accurate dating of something when it is dug out of the ground, but more accurate testing is done later by other professionals who clean and inspect the items.

Some of the items, besides the buildings, include well-preserved Roman coins, more than half a dozen human burial sites, pottery shards and bronze coins.

“The area here used to be on the edge of the fens (low, flat, marshy land) which made it ideal for farming,” Tester said. “The soil was very fertile all along the fen edge so there was naturally a good deal of settlement along it as well.”

At an undisclosed location in Mildenhall in the early 1900s, a farmer found what has come to be known as the Mildenhall Treasure.

While Tester did not say the section of settlement being worked now is connected to that treasure, he did say that it is likely there was someone of wealth in the area.

“Looking at the size of the buildings and some of the coins we’ve found, I think we wouldn’t be far off in saying there was some wealth in the area if not right in this particular location. Of course, there’s a lot more study to do before we could say that for certain,” Tester said.

Perhaps as intriguing as the finds themselves is the explanation of why they still exist in the ground at all.

“Much of the reason these items are still here is because there is an active runway just a few hundred meters away,” said Paul Grace, Defence Estates manager. “If this were farm land it would have been tilled and used and much, if not all, of what we’re finding would be destroyed. If the land was owned by developers and they happened across this, the land would likely be left vacant as it’s fairly expensive to conduct an archaeological survey.”

The cost of the current survey is being borne by Defence Estates to the tune of more than $100,000.

“It can sometimes set back the construction timetable a bit, but we’re talking about history that can’t be gotten back and information that’s too important to let a timetable get in the way of unearthing, recovering and cataloguing it as best as we can,” Grace said.

Besides underground discoveries, Grace also said the base provides an ironic crucial habitat for various species of plants and birds.

“We have bird and plant species here that haven’t been seen in decades due to the way we manage the grasses and land around the airfield to prevent birdstrikes,” he said. “It truly is amazing that an airbase of this size can do so much to protect not only our history, but our present and future as well.” (Courtesy of U.S. Air Forces in Europe News Service)