London Under Ground: the archaeology of a city

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION: TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF LONDON ARCHAEOLOGY

Harvey Sheldon and Ian Haynes

The creation of full-time archaeological field units in London in the early 1970s stands as one of the most important developments in the study of our capital’s history. A quarter of a century on, in the academic year 1997/8, the Faculty of Continuing Education at Birkbeck College celebrated this development with a public lecture series reviewing 25 years of London archaeology. In preparing the lecture programme, colleagues concluded that the issues raised would be welcomed by a wider audience, and the idea of this volume was born. The editors have sought to achieve a broadly representative survey of major archaeological developments in the London area but recognise that certain periods are under-represented. This is at least partly due to the different rate at which current syntheses have been undertaken. It is to be hoped that other forthcoming publications, most notably the Museum of London Archaeology Service’s The Archaeology of Greater London: an assessment of archaeological evidence for human presence in the area now covered by Greater London, commonly known as the London Assessment Document, will help to redress any imbalance.

As a prelude to these papers it is worth outlining how archaeological fieldwork has evolved in a London that can be defined in different ways. In this volume London is taken in its modern administrative sense to include both the City and the much larger Greater London region beyond.

Yet defining London historically as a precise geographical area is difficult. In its narrowest administrative sense London can be equated with the City of London, the ancient urban core, which began life shortly after the Roman conquest under Claudius. Today, the ‘square mile’ of the City remains a proud, wealthy and independent entity, governed by its own Corporation.

Other ancient centres lie close to the City, Southwark directly across the Thames, whose history is almost inseparable from it, and Westminster, two miles upstream, the geographical seat of royal and governmental power in medieval England and modern Britain.

These historic nuclei may have remained largely constant through the centuries, but defining London in the wider sense of a hinterland or a territory is more problematic. While, from the 20th century onwards, we have become accustomed to speak of a defined region known as Greater London past perceptions of this area varied widely. How the area would have been viewed prior to the existence of an urban core is a matter purely for conjecture. Even after the foundation of London the affinities and allegiances of much of this region belonged elsewhere. From the late Saxon period, if not before, they lay outward to the shires of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent and Essex, rather than to the centre.

Nevertheless beyond the ancient enclaves of the City, Southwark and Westminster, at least until the 19th century, were areas of countryside cut through by communication routes to the centre. Along these routes lay small towns and villages, often also of much antiquity.

The growing power and population of London has produced demands on its environs, not only for raw materials and foodstuffs but in recent centuries for what might be called ‘living room’. The effects of what Cobbett disparaged as ‘The Great Wen’ and Cruickshank caricatured as ‘the march of bricks and mortar’, together with a growing social consciousness in the 19th century, necessitated efforts for more centralised control over this hinterland. Such vital matters as health and sanitation, law and order, education and communications, needed more planning, direction and resources than an uneven collection of individual parishes could provide.

Thus, in the Victorian period, there was the political will to create bodies with a wider remit for this newer London. These bodies included the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1855, which was succeeded by an elected London County Council (LCC) in 1889 with its 28 constituent metropolitan borough councils. The LCC’s 120 or so square miles of territory really covered only what is now termed ‘inner London’, however, and beyond it lay further land affected by the conurbation’s relentless spread. This land, together with ‘inner London’ was the Greater London described by William Walford in 1883 when he was writing about the history of the area covered or influenced by the metropolis.

To Walford, Greater London was ‘a vague and ill-defined term’ (Walford 1883, 1): indeed it only really achieved geo-political precision in 1965 when the Greater London Council (GLC) was established. This body was intended to be the strategic authority covering some 600 square miles, containing a population of more than 6 million (more than double that of the LCC) and with 32 constituent Greater London boroughs. Many of the latter were carved, sometimes against the wishes of their residents, from parts of the surrounding ancient shires. They looked outward rather than inward, a factor that to some extent was reflected in the local archaeological ‘units’ that were first established in the 1970s and are discussed below.

With the abolition of the GLC by central government in 1984, 32 boroughs survived within a ‘Greater London’ without a higher tier body. Their roles as planning authorities meant that they each had a particular importance for the fate of archaeological sites affected by development schemes.

Today Greater London has its own Mayor, and the region is once more perceived as a political and administrative entity. It remains to be seen precisely how this will impact upon London’s archaeology.

The development of archaeological coverage

Early stages c1850–1972

In the 19th-century City of London, antiquarians vehemently expressed their anger at the ‘wanton destruction’ undertaken by builders. Early in 1856 the newly formed London and Middlesex Archaeological Society attacked the ‘vandal brutality’ and ‘utilitarian ignorance’ of those who let precious information sink ‘into the abyss of oblivion’ (Hugo 1860, 28–9). The coming together of like-minded spirits provided solidarity and a vehicle for pressure, and led to some advances in the recording and preservation of London’s past. More than a century was to elapse, however, before archaeological investigations were permitted to take place routinely on prospective development sites.

A start to excavations was made in 1914 when Frank Lambert, the first Museum Clerk at the Guildhall Museum (founded in 1867 as part of the Guildhall Library), examined Roman features beneath the old GPO in St Martins Le Grand. Yet virtually all development then, and after World War I, took place without any archaeological attention. The major initiative of the inter-War period, intended to alleviate this, was the employment by the Society of Antiquaries of London, between 1928 and 1937 of observers, paid to record building site developments.

The destruction of more than a third of the City during World War II led to the establishment of the Roman and Medieval London Excavation Council in 1947. In more than a decade of work labourers and volunteers under Professor Grimes of the London Museum (later Director of the Institute of Archaeology) examined more than twenty sites in the City and its environs. Amongst their most important discoveries were the Cripplegate Roman Fort and the Temple of Mithras.

Despite Professor Grimes’ unprecedented achievements it was clear that the resources available for archaeological investigations were hugely insufficient, particularly when set against the increasing scale of post-war development schemes. These seemed likely to devour without record much of the surviving archaeological resource, not just in the City, but within the other historic centres and the countryside of Greater London.

The beginnings of a response came from London’s major museums with the appointment of staff who might initiate and undertake excavations on what increasingly came to be called ‘threatened sites’. They included Peter Marsden, Excavations Assistant at the Guildhall Museum from 1958 to 1973, Francis Celoria, Field Officer at the London Museum from 1959 to 1965 and his successor, Roy Canham (1966 to 1975).

Marsden, primarily within the City, and Celoria and Canham in Southwark and west London, encouraged amateur help: indeed with excavations largely carried out at weekends and material worked on in the evenings, this was usually the only way that sites and the artefacts deriving from them could be investigated. Amateur bodies such as the Southwark and Lambeth Archaeological Society, the City of London Archaeological Society, and the West London Archaeological Field Group, were set up principally with the aim of assisting with the investigations.

But even so, as the 1960s progressed, it became increasingly clear to many involved in London’s archaeology that this level of response to development was hopelessly inadequate. It was an aspect of a concern being experienced elsewhere in Britain, increasingly publicly expressed and which eventually produced a financial response from government at both national and local level. It was realised that archaeological posts were needed so that a dialogue could be established with planning authorities and developers that would allow archaeological projects to be carried out.

The birth of the units: 1972–1982

Early in 1972 the London Borough of Southwark was persuaded to provide monies so that a Field Officer could be appointed by the Southwark Archaeological Excavation Committee. This body, established in 1962, was composed of representatives of the Guildhall, London and Southwark’s Cuming Museums as well as the London and Middlesex and Surrey Archaeological Societies. It had been set up to try and ensure that archaeological work took place ahead of development in the Boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth. By the summer of 1972 the Committee employed not only a Field Officer, but other staff as site assistants: London’s first full-time team, or Unit, was in existence.

Also in 1972, more or less exactly at the time that SAEC appointed its Field Officer, the site of Baynards Castle in the south-west corner of the City of London was examined by Peter Marsden. It became abundantly clear that the site contained a wealth of structural evidence that could hardly be examined properly with the time and monies available. There was much public criticism of the Corporation of London as planning authority and developer. It led, via a survey of The Future of London’s Past (Biddle & Hudson with Heighway 1973), to the establishment, late in 1973, of the Department of Urban Archaeology (DUA) within the City’s Guildhall Museum.

Efforts were soon made to extend this coverage deeper into Greater London. With assistance from the Department of the Environment, the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society was able to set up an Inner London Unit, north of the Thames in 1974 and the Surrey Archaeological Society created an organisation for the south-west London boroughs the following year.

The process was extended both by the London Museum whose archaeological staff, now working mainly in Brentford, provided coverage for the boroughs in west Middlesex, and the Passmore Edwards Museum, who undertook a similar service for the old Essex boroughs, east of the river Lea (Sheldon 1976).

Thus most of the Boroughs within Greater London received some sort of organised archaeological response to redevelopment from the mid 1970s onwards. The initial stages of this response involved examining the planning applications submitted to the Boroughs, selecting potential sites, persuading developers to allow access, and then raising the funds to undertake work from local and national grant awarding bodies. Though it enabled many archaeological sites to be examined, which would otherwise have been lost without record (see Appendix – Table I), there were obvious shortcomings in the system. The level of coverage was uneven and survival from one year to another was precarious, dependent on raising the necessary funds from London’s local authorities.

The Greater London Archaeology Service: 1983–1991

Consequently, by the beginning of the 1980s the Greater London Council, the Department of the Environment and the new Museum of London (created by a vesting of the London and Guildhall Museums in 1975) had formed the view that a more unified, regional, approach was appropriate for handling London’s archae-ology.

Thus was conceived the idea of an archaeological service for London, carrying out work for local authorities and developers, for the benefit of the region as a whole. It involved organisational changes: principally the previously separate archaeological teams operating in Southwark and Lambeth, west London, southwest London and north London were brought together in a Department of Greater London Archaeology at the Museum of London (DGLA). The DUA, also within the Museum of London, retained its separate identity for the City of London, while the Passmore Edwards Museum continued to operate east of the Lea and the Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit (KARU) was encouraged to develop archaeological services in the boroughs to the south-east.

This ‘London-wide’ pattern of archaeological response characterised much of the 1980s. It was the decade also when developer funding, largely initiated in the City, rather than public grants, became the major source for undertaking archaeological projects. The archaeological organisations themselves had to become adept at advising planning authorities, negotiating with developers to obtain time and money as well as specialising in the range of activities necessary to carry out a complex series of excavation and post-excavation projects simultaneously.

It was a period that culminated in a large ‘boom’ of commercial construction projects and a sudden downward slump most evident in late 1990 and 1991. Archaeological employment increased considerably to meet the demands of the ‘boom’ – in the late 1980s some 400 archaeologists worked for the Museum of London alone – and then fell dramatically as recession began. Nothing could have indicated more clearly how reliant archaeology had now become on developer funding, construction, infrastructure and extraction schemes.

Curators and contractors: 1992 onwards

At much the same time, radical change to London archaeology was on the way. In November 1990, partly in response to the public debate about archaeology and development (including the 1989 excavations at the Rose Theatre in Southwark and Huggin Hill in the City – see Appendix – Table 1), the government issued guidelines to local authorities in England. Entitled Planning Policy Guidance Note 16: Archaeology and Planning (PPG 16) these put archaeological issues centrally into the planning process, for the first time, arguing that they should be considered before consent was granted and that provision for excavation or preservation should be built into the planning decision. To facilitate this a new model of archaeological response was favoured involving ‘curators’, offering advice to local planning authorities and ‘contractors’ competing for business of investigating archaeological sites. Under this system, developers might also receive assistance from ‘consultants’ who might manage the archaeological aspects made necessary by their schemes.

In Greater London, in the absence of a County authority, English Heritage assumed the mantle of providing the ‘curatorial’ advice within 31 of the 32 local authorities. Southwark, together with the Corporation of London, stood outside the system, taking archaeological advice from within their own planning departments.

The Museum of London transformed its own archaeological departments into the Museum of London Archaeology Service early in 1992 and became the largest contractor working within London. In the early 1990s it undertook nearly all of the archaeological investigations but by the late 1990s it was sharing the role with fifteen or more other organisations (EH/GLAAS 1999, 17).

The growth in London archaeology during the last quarter century or so has been, to say the least, substantial. To some extent this can be measured by the statistics contained in the London Archaeologist Annual Fieldwork ‘Round-up’.

These figures suggest that throughout the 1970s the annual number of site investigations varied between about 40 and 60, totalling 61 and 58 respectively in the last two years of the decade. By the late 1980s, at the height of the commercial boom the figures had more than doubled (127 in 1988 and 123 in 1989). Despite the recession of the early 1990s the ‘Round-ups’ reveal that from 1992 onwards the number of investigations was likely to substantially exceed 300 per annum. The 354 entries in the 1998 ‘Round-up’ suggest that the annual figure is now likely to be three times as high as the late 1980s.

Growth can also be seen in the number of site codes coming into use in each year and recorded by the Museum of London and its predecessors (see Appendix Tables II to IV). This number reflects the increasing archaeological response to the development process. A response that began with the inception of separate archaeological teams in the 1970s, leading to the attempts to create a more integrated London wide approach in the 1980s and to the acceptance of archaeology as an integral part of the development process in the 1990s.

The statistics contained both in the Annual Round-ups and in the English Heritage compilations (eg EH/GLAAS 1999, 17) also reveal that the large majority of archaeological ‘interventions’ are site evaluations and ‘watching briefs’. According to the English Heritage figures, both in 1997/98 and 1998/99, evaluations accounted for about 55% and ‘watching briefs’ about 35% of the fieldwork. In both years, further excavations accounted for less than 10%. Indeed, if any trends are discernible in the 1990s they suggest that excavations and evaluations are both declining as a proportion of the total and that ‘watching briefs’ are increasing.

This observation raises fundamental questions about the future of archaeology in both London and the rest of the country. Research is required to establish the usefulness of the evaluations that account for such a high proportion of the investigations. For example, are they undertaken on a scale sufficient to reveal the character of the archaeology? Are the results taken into account sufficiently in the planning decisions that are made about individual sites? Is the data resulting from them being synthesised both to advance understanding of the pattern of settlement and to predict the presence of archaeological sites elsewhere in London?

London archaeology in the twenty-first century

London’s archaeologists have responded to the challenges of the last 25 years with imagination and vision. Their work has generated new solutions to key problems and influential methodological innovations. For example, the on-site recording system developed by the Museum of London, Single Context Planning, is standard at many excavations across Britain and overseas. At the time of writing, it is in use in such diverse places as Romania and Libya, Greece and Lebanon. The impact of Single Context Planning is likely to grow as more archaeologists become familiar with the post-excavation procedures specially developed to manage data acquired through its use. Though the Museum’s Field Manual remains one of its best-selling publications, its guidelines on post-excavation procedures are not yet readily available to those outside the organisation.

Other important developments in the recent history of London archaeology will have a continuing impact into the new century. The Thames Foreshore Project, initiated by Gustav Milne and led by Mike Webber, was innovative both in its use of large numbers of voluntary groups and in its investigation of an extensive, largely unexamined landscape. The Project provides a model example of how collaboration with volunteers can contribute to research agendas. While the professionalising of the discipline has brought many dividends, it has severely reduced the number of studies in which the public can participate. Unless archaeologists continue to facilitate public involvement in field programmes, they will loose vital support, access to a rich variety of skills and talents, and crucial training grounds for future fieldworkers. Educational institutions such as Birkbeck can play an important role in this process, but it is an issue of concern for all archaeologists.

Work undertaken by the units will also enable archaeologists working in Greater London to undertake higher level analyses and to go beyond site-based studies to address more sophisticated questions of regional importance. This is not simply a matter of higher quality data, nor simply because more data have been recorded according to standardised methodologies; it is possible because of advances in research tools, such as geographical information systems. If such studies are to become a regular feature of work in the 21st-cenťury, three key principles must be upheld. First, it is vital that field archaeologists, whether curators, consultants or contractors, continue their pivotal role in protecting and recording London’s past. Second, site archives, preferably held centrally and recorded to a compatible format, must be protected, maintained and accessible. The foundation on a national level of the Archaeology Data Service and on a local level of the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre goes a long way towards achieving these goals. Finally, a constant exchange of research ideas between different parts of the archaeological community must be maintained. High-resolution data and high technology analytical methods are only as good as the thinking behind their application. Here, too, the outlook is positive. The Colleges of the University of London, notably Birkbeck and University College through its Institute of Archaeology, continue to enjoy an excellent working relationship with London’s field units. Furthermore, national bodies are increasingly recognising the importance of such interaction. In 2000, the first year of the Arts and Humanities Research Board’s innovative exchange awards, Birkbeck College received funds for an exchange post with Museum of London Specialist Services.

Undoubtedly, more exciting and important discoveries will be made by London’s archaeologists as the seemingly never-ending processes of redevelopment continue. Now archaeologists should be able to respond much more adequately than 25 years ago. When, a quarter of a century from now, new editors present a similar volume let us hope that they have at least as much progress to report.

Bibliography

Biddle, M. & Hudson, D. with Heighway, C. 1973. The future of London’s past, Rescue Publication, 4

EH/GLAAS 1999. Annual Report 1998/99

Hugo, T. 1860. ‘Introductory Address’ Trans London Middlesex Archaeol Soc, 1, 23–30

Museum of London Archaeology Service, 2000. The archaeology of Greater London: an assessment of archaeological evidence for human presence in the area now covered by Greater London

Sheldon, H. 1976. ‘Recent developments in the archaeology of Greater London’, Royal Soc Arts Journal, 5240, 411–25

Walford, W. 1883, Village London

Chapter 2

FORAGERS AND FARMERS: TOWARDS THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SETTLED LANDSCAPE IN LONDON, c 4000 – 1200 BC

Jonathan Cotton

Introduction

This contribution will seek to trace London’s story from the conventional beginning of the Neolithic period (c 4000 BC) to the conventional close of the Middle Bronze Age (c 1200 BC), a chronological span of nearly three thousand calendar years. The term ‘London’, of course, is shorthand for ‘Greater London and the surrounding region’ (the definition adopted in the Museum of London Act, 1986). In topographic terms, however, we might still better regard the area as that part of the Middle and Lower Thames Valley that surrounds the inner estuary of the Thames, with its (modern) tidal head at Teddington.

The use of the labels ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Bronze Age’ is increasingly being called into question too, and they are retained here to provide a broad chronological structure only. For the purposes of this account, the Neolithic is divided into an Earlier and Later phase, with the split occurring at c 3000 BC (as Whittle 1999, 59). The Earlier phase (c 4000–3000 BC) encompasses round-based, occasionally decorated pottery bowls, leaf-shaped arrowheads, causewayed enclosures and early hengiform monuments; the Later phase (c 3000–2300 BC) includes round-based Peterborough pots, flat-based Grooved Ware, transverse arrowheads, later hengi-forms and cursus monuments. The Bronze Age is divided into an Early and Middle phase, split at c 1600 BC. The Early phase (c 2300–1600 BC) encompasses metal flat axes, beakers, collared urns and ring ditches; the Middle phase (c 1600–1200 BC) includes metal palstaves, rapiers and looped spearheads, Deverel-Rimbury pots, settlements and early co-axial field-systems. The Late Bronze Age (c 1200–750 BC), which sees the adoption of Wilburton metalwork, post-Deverel-Rimbury pottery and the establishment of the earliest ring forts (as Needham 1996, 134–7), forms part of the following chapter (Merriman, this volume).

The present paper is in no sense a comprehensive survey of the three millennia in question, but an overview. It is divided into three sections. The first briefly reviews the evidence for the period by physiographic zone, the second outlines a narrative sequence for the London region, while the third, concluding, section frames some thoughts for the future. A select list of radiocarbon dates is presented in an appendix. Before sketching in the evidence from the physiographic zones, however, it would be as well to start by recapping on the situation as it stood 30 years or so ago, highlighting some of the major archaeological and theoretical developments that have occurred since then.

The situation in 1970 and after ...

At least three distinct, if locally overlapping phases of archaeological endeavour can be discerned in London since about 1970. The first of course long precedes that date and comprises a century and more of serendipitous collecting and fieldwork conducted alongside programmes of river dredging and gravel digging (eg Lawrence 1929; Barrett 1973). Much of this work was undertaken by individuals and local societies on an ad hoc basis in response to specific threats or opportunities (eg Akerman 1855; Grimes I960, 186–97; Robertson-Mackay 1987). The results were conveniently summarised in two important 1976 publications, Time on our side? A Survey of the Archaeological needs of Greater London, published by the Greater London Council, and The Archaeology of the London Area: Current Knowledge and Problems, London & Middlesex Archaeological Society Special Paper 1.

Fig. 2.1 Map of sites mentioned in text.

1. Eton College Rowing Lake, 2. Thorpe Lea Nurseries, 3. Runnymede Bridge, 4. Yeoveney Lodge, Staines, 5. Manor Farm, Lower Horton, 6. Stanwell cursus, 7. Burrows Hill Close, 8. Perry Oaks, 9. Prospect Park, Harmondsworth, 10. Holloway Lane, Harmondsworth, 11. Sipson Lane, Sipson, 12. Imperial College Sports Ground, Harlington, 13. Cranford Lane, Harlington, 14. Mayfield Farm, East Bedfont, 15. Staines Road Farm, Shepperton, 16. Hurst Park, East Molesey, 17. Ham Field, Petersham, 18. Church Street, Twickenham, 19. Corney Reach, Chiswick, 20. Chelsea Reach, 21. Rectory Grove, Clapham, 22. Nine Elms, Vauxhall, 23. Hopton Street, Southwark, 24. Bankside, Southwark, 25. Fennings Wharf, Southwark, 26. Lafone Street, Bermondsey, 27. Phoenix Wharf, Bermondsey, 28. Bricklayers Arms, Bermondsey, 29. Bramcote Green, Bermondsey, 30. West Heath, Hampstead, 31. Highgate Wood, 32. Fort Street, Silvertown, 33. Prince Regent School, Custom House, 34. Beckton, 35. Fairlop Quarry, Redbridge, 36. Dagenham Idol, 37. Erith/ Thamesmead, 38. Bexleyheath, 39. Launders Lane, Rainham, 40. Wennington, 41. Purfleet, 42. Orsett, 43. Hayes Common, 44. Wandle Valley. (Drawn by Susan Banks)

The second phase dates from the early 1970s to 1990. Initially, archaeological endeavour was tactical rather than strategic, and it was not until 1983 that the whole of the Greater London area was afforded full-time cover (eg Hinton et al. 1991). None the less, this was a period of considerable success as better funded organisations began to tackle larger and more ambitious projects on the surviving expanses of gravel terrace away from the city (eg O’Connell 1990; MoLAS 1997) and within the valley floor (eg Needham 1991; Serjeantson et al. 1991–2). The potential for the recovery of relevant data was less quickly recognised in the central urban areas where other imperatives obtained, although both here and further downstream significant attempts were made to understand the nature of the floodplain topography relative to changes in sea level (eg Devoy 1979; Nunn 1983). As a result it was now possible to begin to set the data recovered during the first phase of endeavour into some sort of local archaeological and topographic context.

If the second of our three phases was a time of exciting if largely unregulated expansion, the period since 1990 has seen a number of far-reaching political and organisational initiatives, conducted within an ever more explicitly argued philosophical framework. These initiatives stemmed more or less directly from the introduction of Planning Policy Guidance note 16 in November 1990 on the one hand, and the promulgation of Exploring our Past: strategies for the archaeology of England (English Heritage 1991) on the other. Whatever else it did, the introduction of PPG16 in November 1990 resulted in the systematic carrying out of archaeological evaluations across a much wider range of geological strata. Most startling perhaps have been the series of discoveries located within the Thames floodplain downstream of the capital (eg Rackham 1994; Meddens 1996; Thomas & Rackham 1996), recently complemented by the work of the Thames Archaeological Survey (Milne et al. 1997; Webber 1999) and others. Knowledge of the traditionally better served areas of higher gravel terrace has kept pace too, with major programmes of work undertaken across the region, and particularly in the west (eg Andrews & Crockett 1996; Andrews et al. 1998; Wessex Archaeology 1998).

Alongside the phases of data gathering just described, wider theoretical influences can be discerned, though archaeological practitioners within the London region seldom acknowledge them directly. While much of the local evidence has been addressed from various straightforwardly culture-historical, typological and processual perspectives hitherto, so-called ‘post-processuaľ models borrowed from the social sciences have recently been brought to bear. These emphasise meaning and value rather than simply function (eg Thomas 1991; Barrett 1994; Bradley 1993; 1998) and attempt to explain how individuals may have perceived their place in the world in which they lived. Approached in this way, ‘fences were barriers, gateways defined paths and offered perspectives, and enclosed spaces were where some people may have gathered and from which others may have been excluded’ (John Barrett, pers comm).

1. Developments within local physiographic zones

The Thames floodplain

The modern floodplain can be defined as the area covered by Holocene sediments (‘alluvium’) in the valleys of the Thames and its tributaries. Broadly speaking, these sediments lie between current low water and the 10m OD contour and mantle the undulating surface of the sands and gravels belonging to the Shepperton or lower floodplain terrace identified by Gibbard and others (Gibbard 1985; 1994). The upper surface of the Shepperton deposits formed the early Holocene land surface prior to its progressive inundation by rising sea-levels (Bates & Barham 1995; Milne et al. 1997, 134). Thus defined the Thames floodplain varies in width from nearly 5km downstream of the city to a few hundred metres in upstream localities.

Sea-level change relative to the land is important for the impact it had on human communities operating within the greater Thames estuary. Work within the floodplain of the middle estuary by Devoy (1979; 1980) identified a sequence of five organic and four inorganic units, representing alternating phases of relative sea-level rise (Thames I-IV) and relative sea-level fall (Tilbury I-V). Although the detail and applicability of his scheme in central London has since been questioned (eg Rackham 1994, 193), there is currently no model with which to replace it (eg Bates & Barham 1995, 90, but see Long et al. submitted). However, in broad terms it is possible to correlate the Later Mesolithic with the close of a period of fairly rapid sea-level rise (Devoy’s Thames II), in which large areas of formerly dry land were flooded. By the start of the Neolithic, river level was probably at around -3 or -4m OD, placing it between 5.5 and 7m below present high water, i.e. very close to modern low water (Wilkinson & Murphy 1995, 212). The Later Neolithic corresponded with a decrease in the rate of relative sea level rise and an expansion of semi-terrestrial marsh, which re-exposed wide areas of previously inundated tidal flats (Devoy’s Tilbury III; Haggart 1995, 334–5). The Early/Middle Bronze Age was dominated by a series of progressive relative sea-level rises (Devoy’s Thames III), which resulted in an expansion of the floodplain and a locally fluctuating tidal head. By the close of the period, this probably lay somewhere close to modem Westminster (Sidell et al. forthcoming).

Recent study of the archaeology of the floodplain has vastly widened the perspectives glimpsed by earlier workers such as Spurrell (1885) and further anticipated by others, most notably Lacaille (1961; 1966). It is clear that, at any one time, the floodplain offered a diverse mosaic of ecological zones for exploitation far removed from the bland uniformity it currently presents. For much of the period under review, evidence for human activity focused on topographic highs adjacent to active channels and backwaters. Beaver traditionally thrived in such conditions, and traces of their activities have been noted on a number of sites (Coles 1992; Needham 1992; Allen & Welsh 1996). Furthermore a wooden dug out canoe containing a polished flint axe and ‘a very beautiful flint scraper’ was discovered in the Erith marshes in the 19th century (Spurrell 1885, opp 302). Various writers (eg Merriman 1992; Rackham 1994) have drawn attention to the difficulties of locating ephemeral evidence within this shifting, mobile environment, though the harnessing of predictive ‘digital terrain models’ (DTMs) based on borehole and other geotechnical data offers a solution. Use of DTMs at the Prince Regent Community School site at Custom House, for example, has successfully allowed the identification of an unsuspected Later Neolithic/Bronze Age artefact scatter sealed beneath later sediments (Nick Truckle, pers comm). The difficulties of site recognition are further compounded by the absence of cut features such as pits or ditches, as at Eton College Rowing Lake (Allen et al. 1997, 123) or Custom House, though there are exceptions like Runnymede Bridge (Needham 1991) and Corney Reach (Lakin 1996).

The traditional marker for the start of the Neolithic, the elm decline, has been widely identified in floodplain pollen sequences (eg Scaife 1988, 112–3) and those at West Silvertown and Bryan Road, Rotherhithe (Sidell et al. 1995, 282–3) have been dated to 3990–3690 cal BC and 3970–3700 cal BC respectively. Typically though, none of these are directly associated with evidence of human activity. The earliest Neolithic artefacts recovered from the floodplain comprise an isolated group of sherds of plain, carinated ‘Grimston’ pottery from Thamesmead sealed beneath peats dated to 4040–3700 cal BC (Bennell 1998). Occasional lithic scatters like that incorporating leaf arrowheads from Ham (Field 1983, 179) apart, however, the best and most complete evidence for Earlier Neolithic utilisation of the floodplain has been recovered much further upstream at Runnymede Bridge. Here, the published radiocarbon dates suggest that the main phase of activity spanned the range c 4000 to 3500 cal BC (Needham 1991, 352) and centred on one or more rectangular stake-built structures surrounded by midden deposits (Needham & Trott 1987; Needham 1992, 250). The wide range of artefactual and environmental data recovered will undoubtedly provide a focus of research for many years to come. The worked wood from the site (axe-hewn oak piles and a trimmed sheet of birch-bark (Needham 1991, 140–1)) was, until recently, our only such direct evidence for Earlier Neolithic woodcraft in the London region. The recovery of a robust alder wood ‘beater’, radiocarbon dated to 3530–3340 cal BC (Webber 1999), eroding out of an earlier peat horizon on the intertidal zone at Chelsea (Fig. 2.2) is therefore doubly significant.

Evidence for Later Neolithic human activity within the floodplain is limited, though numbers of prestige artefacts including Peterborough pottery and stone tools were recovered during 19th-century dredging operations. The best archaeological evidence comprises stretches of regenerating woodland later drowned by rising base levels. Spanning the Earlier/Later Neolithic divide, these have been located at Bankside in Southwark, Wennington and Purfleet, as well as the spectacular and probably two-phase sequence extending for over a kilometre at Erith, though this has yet to be secured by independent dating methods. The Bankside exposure is dated to 3350–2910 cal BC. Much of this submerged forest appears to comprise alder carr, though work on species composition at Erith is likely to add important qualifying detail (Sophie Seel, pers comm). The unexpected presence of yew trees both here and at Wennington is a case in point. Associated structures are few, but include a 4m length of a tangentially-split planked alder trackway located at Fort Street, Silvertown, dated to 3030–2700 cal BC (Meddens 1996, 329). This appears to have been constructed during a phase of woodland regeneration and in a locally dry environment (Crockett 1997). Somewhat later is the so-called Dagenham Idol, found ‘on the edge of the marshes’ at a depth of 9 feet (Wright 1923), and recently radiocarbon dated to 2459–2110 cal BC (Coles 1990). Ground axes from Purfleet, originally thought to indicate woodland activities (Wilkinson & Murphy 1995, 57, 98–9), may have been deposited on a largely treeless marshy surface (Devoy’s Tilbury III) and, along with others recovered from lacustrine deposits at Bricklayers Arms, Bermondsey, represent acts of ritual (as Bradley 1990). Such finds complement the well-known series of Neolithic axes dredged from local reaches of the river (eg Adkins & Jackson 1978).

Fragments of a Bronze Age landscape based around a series of topographic highs are starting to emerge from what must have been an increasingly wet floodplain in central and east London. Pollen data indicate a marked reduction in lime values at the expense of alder and oak in the earlier part of the 2nd millennium BC, an episode likely to be related to the rising base levels of Devoy’s Thames III. The corresponding archaeological evidence encompasses both funerary/ritual and settlement/domestic activity. Lithic scatters and features containing beaker and occasionally collared urn pottery have been located in several localities on both sides of the river; the site at Prince Regent Community School, Custom House being the most extensively excavated to date (Nick Holder, pers comm). The occurrence of beaker material, which includes a placed deposit in the form of a complete bowl buried in a small pit at Hopton Street, Southwark (Fig. 2.3), is especially noteworthy. These recently excavated finds complement earlier casual discoveries from the river and adjacent floodplain (eg Clarke 1970). A pair of beakers found ‘5 feet apart’ during gravel digging at Erith prior to 1908 may have accompanied burials, for example, though no bone survived. Token deposits of cremated bone recovered from a small ring ditch at Fennings Wharf on the northern edge of the main Southwark island included the remains of one adult and between four and eight children (Bill White, pers comm). Activity on the south-east edge of the Horselydown island at Phoenix Wharf, Bermondsey centred initially on a burnt mound and associated cooking pit dated to 1688–1506 cal BC (Jane Sidelł, pers comm). The mound was later flattened by a series of cross ploughing episodes represented by ard marks etched into the surface of the natural sands. Ard marks have now been widely reported on sites in the Horselydown/Jacob’s Island area and beyond (eg Fig. 2.4); all share the same roughly N/S and E/W alignment. Other marks at Phoenix Wharf have been interpreted as evidence for the use of hoe or spade (Bowsher 1991). Dating evidence for this cultivation phase is sparse: a broad terminus post quem is provided by the Phoenix Wharf cooking pit, while a plough soil overlying ard marks at Lafone Street is dated 1520–1220 cal BC (Bates & Minkin 1999, 327).

Fig. 2.2 Neolithic alder wood ‘beater’ from the Thames foreshore at Chelsea, length 67cm (Thames Archaeological Survey. Photograph: Museum of London).

Fig. 2.3 Decorated beaker bowl buried in a small pit at Hopton Street, Southwark. Height 110mm, rim diameter 135mm. (Pre-Construct Archaeology & Gary Brown. Photograph: Museum of London).

Further downstream a remarkable series of structures were thrown across local obstacles within the floodplain. These include timber trackways of various forms together with wooden ‘platforms’ and, at Dagenham, a broad gravel causeway that may have allowed the passage of cattle down onto marshland grazing (Meddens 1996, 326). On current evidence the two phases of axe-hewn log trackway from Bramcote Green, Bermondsey are the earliest in the series; three radiocarbon dates from the second phase oak log track combined to give a date of 1740–1530 cal BC for its construction (Thomas & Rackham 1996,241). Later trackways, like that at Beckton (radiocarbon dated to 1510–1070 cal BC), made opportunistic use of alder brushwood; several of these employed a more sophisticated cradle construction (Meddens 1996, 327) (Fig. 2.5). Further upstream at Vauxhall, movement within and across the floodplain and river channels is hinted at by traces of a substantial pile-driven ‘bridge’ or jetty some 4 metres wide dated to the earlier part of the Middle Bronze Age (Webber 1999; Haughey 1999, 18–19) (Fig. 2.6). It can be compared with successive though smaller structures crossing a sub-channel of the Thames at Eton College Rowing Lake (Allen & Welsh 1996), the earliest of which appears to be broadly contemporary with the London example. The Eton structures seem to have been connected with the disposal of human remains in the river. Similar remains have been recovered from local reaches of the Thames, including a skull from the Vauxhall locality itself dated to 1388–1336 or 1330–1000 cal BC (Bradley & Gordon 1988). A pair of side-looped spearheads found between two of the wooden piles at Vauxhall confirm the Middle Bronze Age date (Fig. 2.7), and may have acted as some sort of event marking foundation deposit (Cotton & Wood 1996, 14–16 & fig. 7). These spearheads can be added to the famous sequence of metalwork finds recovered from the west London Thames, weaponry prominent amongst them (eg Rowlands 1976; Needham & Burgess 1980; Bradley 1990).

Fig. 2.4 Bronze Age ard marks etched into the surface of the natural sands at Lafone Street, Bermondsey. (MoLAS)

Fig. 2.5 Bronze Age cradle-supported alder brushwood trackway at Beckton (Newham Museum Service. Photograph: Pamela Greenwood)

Fig. 2.6 Pairs of oak piles up to 0.5m diameter discovered on the Thames foreshore at Vauxhall may represent the remains of a Bronze Age ‘bridge’ or jetty (Thames Archaeological Survey).

The terrace gravels

The Thames gravel terraces make up something approaching one third of the landscape within the London area, and are locally capped by brickearth of varying age and depth. They offer the best opportunities for examining landscape development in plan, and work conducted over the last 30 years has begun to exploit something of this potential. On the debit side, however, terrace sites are often truncated, sometimes severely, and unlike the floodplain seldom