Earthworks and Buildings

Landscape archaeology isn't just about surface collection and find sampling. It's about looking for evidence of changes in the past and present across the entire landscape — right up to the present restyling of compartment layouts by Forestry Enterprise. On this page, I want to show images of a few of the earthworks and buildings in Thetford Forest. Afforestation caused a certain amount of damage to the heritage of the area, but it has also helped to preserve some earthworks that would have been ploughed away, if the land had instead been utilised for arable use.

Incredibly, many archaeological earthworks have been recorded in recent years, as local professionals, working hand in hand with Forestry Enterprise, have been surveying compartments due for restocking operations. Many of these new earthworks are post-medieval warren and field boundaries, but previously unrecorded prehistoric earthworks have also been discovered.