An area of land to the north of the operational quarry at Birch Pit was excavated by Colchester Archaeological Trust in advance of sand and gravel extraction. <1> This work followed a trial-trenched evaluation in 2001. The land that was stripped (approx 15,000 sq m) comprised the north-eastern part of the area covered by the evaluation, encompassing the trial-trenches N1, P1, Q1, R2 and N2. <2> The remains of a Middle Bronze Age cemetery were defined close to the site’s south boundary (and not defined during the evaluation). This cemetery comprised three ring-ditches. Sixteen Middle Bronze Age urned and unurned cremation burials were excavated in the area between them, in addition to two pits containing urns from which cremated remains were not recovered. The urns, which apparently post-date the ring ditches, belong to the ‘Ardleigh Group’, a local variant of the Deverel-Rimbury assemblage dating to the Middle Bronze Age and in use c.1400-1200 BC. No layers attributable as the remains of barrows could be identified in the ring-ditch fills. Some features encountered during the evaluation were re-investigated. These included two large pits, F23 and F24, and a parallel pair of shallow ditches aligned approximately east-west, F1 and F3. F23 and F24 were probably quarry-pits in use in the Roman period. The ditches F1 and F3, perhaps indicative of a droveway or trackway, are probably of later prehistoric date; they may signify the further development of a largely agricultural landscape subsequent to the construction of the Deverel-Rimbury cemetery. Located at the site’s south-west corner, an almost right-angled ‘enclosure’ ditch, F4/F11, had an atypical profile. It is possible that ditch F4/F11 enclosed a small Bronze Age settlement that was associated with the Bronze Age cemetery, located about 110m to the south-east of this feature. Alternatively, it is possible that F4/F11 defined an agricultural enclosure. Eleven pits were found of which six contained charcoal and one was lined with flint. It is possible that some of these pits were pyre sites linked with the Bronze Age cemetery, although the dating of these features is problematic. Note that a geophysical survey was undertaken over c.65% of the site, after the removal of toposil, by Tim Dennis; the results/report is not included in CAT Report 289. The reports states that the images obtained from the magnetometry survey highlighted areas of modern disturbance, whereas most archaeological features were faint or were not detected at all.