Mammalian Bones from Suffolk River Beds

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Matricaria matricarioides, Rayless Mayweed. Alien. N. America.

Common thirty years ago but has steadily increased and now abundant and one of the commonest farmyard weeds.

Chrysanthemum segetum, Corn Marigold. More frequent than formerly and often very abundant on light arable fields of East Suffolk from the Stour to the Blyth.

Lactuca virosa, Acrid Lettuce, and L. serriola, Prickly Lettuce.

Both species have become frequent. Waysides, banks, quarries and waste places especially near the coast.

Sonchus palustris, Marsh Sow-Thistle. Colonies on the NorfolkSuffolk border at St. Olaves, Oulton Broad and Barnby have spread in recent years.

Crepis taraxacifolia, Beaked Hawk's-beard. A very frequent alien. Naturalised. Waysides on a gravelly soil, walls, banks and waste places.

Festuca arundinacea, Tall Fescue. A frequent and variable grass of rough pastures, waysides and waste places near the coast.

It has increased considerably during the past ten years.

Spartina townsendii, Townsend's Cord-grass; Rice Grass. A fertile hybrid, S. alterniflora and S. maritima. Planted in the Stour estuary at Brantham about 1928 and has now spread into all our Suffolk estuaries and is increasing rapidly. Of very strong growth, fixing soft mud and collecting debris helping to reclaim land. However this grass is changing the pattern of our salt marsh flora and the sandy foreshores are disappearing rapidly.

MAMMALIAN BONES FROM SUFFOLK RIVER BEDS By

HAROLD E .

P.

SPENCER,

F.G.S.

The presence of mammalian remains in the river bed deposits of the Gipping suggested there might be interesting material to be found during repair or building of bridges and culverts, and the East Suffolk County Surveyor, Mr. J. B. Lund, kindly arranged for the preservation of finds made during the progress of such work. So far most of the bones recovered are those of familiar domestic animals, the true age of which it is very difficult to determine owing to the absence of associated datable objects.

During 1953, work was carried out at Mariesford and a few bones were obtained from the bed of the River Ore ; these consisted of an incomplete skull and a humerus of a horse. Such bones are to be expected in the vicinity of a ford which must

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have been used for centuries before a bridge was erected and one would have assumed much more material would have been recovered.

A slightly greater variety came from Sanctuary Lane Bridge, Letheringham, from the bed of the Deben. The best specimen was a well preserved skull of a fair-sized dog. Unfortunately the incisors, canines and pre-molar teeth were lost which seems to have happened with several such skulls now in Ipswich Museum.

Ox remains were most common, including a nearly complete mandible of an adult and another of a calf; also an odd right mandible of a second calf. The horse was represented by a tibia and a broken right mandible. These were found at about four feet and can be of no great age.

The greater part of a horse skull and some detached incisors were discovered at Huntingfield at a depth of seven feet which offer no occasion for comment.

From the Hundred River at Latymere Dam, various bones of horses were found, also some ox bones. These came from various depths in the bed of peat, which has accumulated since the mouth of the river was closed by geologically recent beach deposits some time during the last few thousand years and has now been proved to be ten feet thick. They are undoubtedly remains of animals which were trapped in the marsh.

Among the animal bones from the Buxhall New Bridge were those of horse, ox and dog. The dog skulls all appear to be similar to remains found during recent excavations in the Buttermarket, Ipswich which, from associated pottery, can be dated about the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It must not be inferred, however, all remains of similar type would be of the same period, as mandibles of the same form from the Orwell alluvium have been referred to the Neolithic period. Should it happen that a series of dog skulls of mediaeval age all of corresponding type be collected, data for further consideration will be available. It is of interest to note that a pair of tibiae of a very short-legged dog with bent limbs was found associated with late Saxon or Norman pottery in Ipswich.

Work of a limited character at Mendlesham produced part of a skull and a tibia of a pig. These probably date back to a time before selective breeding was practiced. The skull is of a smaller slender type with a proportionately longer tibia than modern pigs.

During August of the current year, a find of greater interest was made at Shotford Bridge, Weybread, consisting of the distal end of a femur of the Urus, or extinct Giant Ox, Bos primigeniu The Urus existed during the Roman period and was referred to by Julius Caesar and its continued existence is demonstrated during Anglo-Saxon times by the presence in the Sutton Hoo Ship

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Burial of a pair of huge drinking vessels made from the horns of one of these animals which are estimated to have had a capacity of six quarts. The Shotford bone was found at a depth of about eleven feet and it may well have belonged to one of the last of its race in this country. Othsr bones include those of red deer and horse.

Much dredging of river beds was carried out during the late war as part of the defence programme. A number of bones were brought up from the bed of the Waveney, downstream of Scole bridge. Among the remains of the types of animals normally found were the skulls and horn cores of goats. It is believed this is the only record of goat remains from the river beds of Suffolk and it may be due to the Roman settlement which existed at Scole in the vicinity of the bridge. A new bridge has been made recently on the site of that built by the Romans. Only remains of horse, fox and a limb bone of a bird were found during the recent excavations.

In 1942 large numbers of bones were dredged from the Gipping between Ipswich and Sproughton, in particular near the Railway Bridges and the Beet Sugar Factory. These were accompanied by very large numbers of walnut shells of the large variety. Not only were bones of common animals recovered, such as those of red deer, fallow deer, ox, horse and pig, but a massive horn core and two large cervical vertebrae of Bison priscus were included among the finds, also flint artefacts. They had been embedded in a peat bed associated with a tufaceous, or marly deposit, of which traces remain on the bones. (A tufaceous bed with shelly peat was investigated during 1938 by the writer in a deposit of Holocene age in the Finn Valley.) From their condition these bones are clearly more ancient than the majority of bones discovered. The ox bones appear to be of a small Celtic type which survived largely in a feral condition until Saxon times and perhaps later.

A dog skull from the Gipping is interesting by reason of the posterior end of the sagittal and the upper part of the occipital crests having been sliced off at an angle of 60°. This is just the angle at which a sword cut would be made by a mounted swordsman striking at a leaping hound. There is nothing to indicate the age of this relic, but its condition suggests it is not as old as the other bones ; it need not, however, be more recent than the Mediaeval period, the S t a t e of preservation being similar to the thirteenth Century skull from the Buttermarket.

The rarest discovery was an incomplete humerus of a Badger from among the finds from the River Gipping.

No bone of this animal either fossil or sub-fossil had hitherto found its way to the Ipswich Museum.