A line of time: Approaches to archaeology in the Upper and Middle Thames Valley, England

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A line of time: Approaches to archaeologyin the Upper and Middle Thames Valley,EnglandTim Allen a , Gill Hey a & David Miles aa Oxford Archaeological Unit , Janus House , Osney Mead , Oxford , OX20ESPublished online: 15 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Tim Allen , Gill Hey & David Miles (1997) A line of time: Approaches toarchaeology in the Upper and Middle Thames Valley, England, World Archaeology, 29:1, 114-129, DOI:10.1080/00438243.1997.9980366

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A line of time: approaches toarchaeology in the Upper and MiddleThames Valley, England

Tim Allen, Gill Hey and David Miles

Abstract

Since the 1970s large-scale archaeological projects have been undertaken in the Upper and MiddleThames Valley, driven by development pressures and strongly influenced by the evidence of aerialphotographs, most of which have been of the higher gravel terraces where cropmarks are most pro-lific. These sites have, however, usually suffered heavily from ploughing; water-logged deposits, occu-pation horizons and buried soils are rare. In contrast, the preservation of archaeological andenvironmental deposits are of much better quality on the valley floor, although the sites are gener-ally difficult to locate, being buried beneath alluvium deposited during the past 1-3,000 years. Pres-sure on gravel deposits means that mineral quarries are increasingly moving onto the lower ground.However, changes in planning policy in the UK now promote the archaeological evaluation of theseareas as a result of which buried prehistoric, Roman and medieval landscapes, including new typesof well-preserved site and activity areas, are being located close to the Thames, particularly atYarnton, Oxon, and on the site of the Eton College Rowing Lake, Bucks, where ancient landscapesare more complex and reflect a wider variety of human activities than those revealed previously bypast, economically focused research.

Keywords

Thames Valley; aerial photography; cropmarks; alluvium; Yarnton (Oxon); Eton College RowingLake (Bucks).

It seemed that the idea of the Thames as a line of time as well as a space was itself ashared tradition.... To go upstream was, I knew, to go backward: from metropolitandin to ancient silence; westward toward the source of the waters, the beginnings ofBritain in the Celtic limestone.

(Schama 1995:5)

The Thames and its potential

In terms of hydrological statistics the Thames is not one of the world's great rivers, a mere239km in length, with a catchment area of just under 10,000km2 (Fig. 1). In comparison,

World Archaeology Vol. 29(1): 114-29 Riverine Archaeology© Routledge 1997 0043-8243

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Archaeology in the Upper and Middle Thames Valley 115

Figure 1 The Thames Valley, south-east England.

for instance, the Rhine is almost six times as long, with thirty-three times the dischargeand sixteen times the catchment area. However, in terms of its evolution, its archaeologyand history the Thames is, in the words of Anthony Woods, 'one of the famousest riversin England' (Clark 1889:397).

The Thames is not only a small river by world standards, it is also unspectacular. Thereare no gorges along its entire length and it does not shift its course, like the Brahmapu-tra, or even the Trent; its width, compared with the Rhine - let alone the Mississippi - ismodest. The same applies to its longitudinal profile, given that the source of the Thames(near Kemble in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds) is only at 110m above sea level. Fromthese limestone hills, the Thames and its tributaries flow south and east into the broadexpanse of the Oxford Clay vale. At Oxford the Upper Thames cuts through the OxfordHeights, a ridge of Corallian sands and limestone. It loops past the historic towns of Abing-don, Dorchester and Wallingford to cut through the chalk hills of the Chilterns and Berk-shire Downs. On either side of this bottleneck in the valley, the Goring Gap, chalk hillsrise to about 150m. Below the Goring Gap, the Middle Thames flows eastwards pastReading, then northwards around the Chilterns and past a series of historic towns (Henley,Maidenhead, WindsorvStaines and Kingston). Just beyond Kingston, atTeddington Lock,the river becomes tidal and, as the Lower Thames, it flows through London and into itsestuary and the North Sea.

The River Thames provides a gateway into south-eastern England and an artery intothe centre of the country. It is potentially a channel of communication, a barrier anddefence - a political and cultural boundary, or a transport route, and a provider of naturalresources, such as fish, wildfowl, plants, water and power. The valley floor may attract ordiscourage settlement depending upon changing cultural, political or environmental cir-cumstances. Historically, the Thames has been a tribal, cultural and legal boundarybetween Iron Age peoples (Bradley 1990: fig. 39), the West Saxons and Mercians (Blair

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116 Tim Allen, Gill Hey and David Miles

1994: fig. 35), the English and the Danes, the counties of Berkshire and Oxfordshire (Blair1994: 94,102), and the Royalists and Parliamentarians during the Civil War. The Thamesis also a gateway to the North Sea and to northern, continental Europe. But it is a gatewaythat appears to open and close - most clearly active in the late Bronze Age, the late IronAge, the Roman period and the Middle Ages. The concave landscape of the river valleyalso includes a range of environments which can promote specialized activities. However,the valley is not static; it changes through time as a result of environmental and culturalvariables.

The scale of riverine research must vary, from the small scale and specific - the locationof bridges, weirs, boats, waterfronts and artefacts associated with riverine activities (Goodet al. 1991) - to the study of settlement patterns and of regional processes, such as de-forestation and alluviation.

The influence of aerial photography

Since the 1930s the Middle and Upper Thames Valley has been subject to regular aerialsurvey. This has revealed extensive buried landscapes of the later prehistoric, Roman andmedieval periods (Allen 1938). The ploughed-out ring-ditches of Bronze Age barrows,Neolithic causewayed enclosures and henges, prehistoric and Romano-British settlementsappeared as cropmarks in the sort of numbers previously recorded only in the downlandsof Wessex. Most of these cropmarks are on the free-draining, higher, Pleistocene gravelterraces where the soils are prone to soil moisture deficit in the early growing season. Theclassification of the Pleistocene sequence of the Upper Thames basin has been haphazardand remains contentious (the details are complex and have been subject to recent dis-cussion by Briggs et al. (1985) and Bridgland (1994)). Cropmarks indicate, for the mostpart, sites which have been heavily ploughed, are dry and not well preserved. In the mid-1970s the cropmark evidence of the Upper and Middle Thames was, for the first time, sys-tematically plotted on to maps of the modern landscape (Benson and Miles 1974; Gates1975; Leech 1977). This allowed the patterns of ancient landscapes to emerge, rather thansimply discrete 'sites', and highlighted the remarkable density and variety of ancient settle-ment on the gravel terraces of the Thames.

These surveys also placed archaeology firmly in the public arena as they monitored theimpact of gravel quarrying and suburban expansion in this intensively exploited part ofBritain. The research agendas of the 1970s and 1980s in the rural Thames Valley were influ-enced by the data provided by aerial photography and by the pressures of development.Government funding was attracted to the clearly visible and the highly threatened. Exten-sive areas of gravel quarrying for the most part coincided with massive cropmark com-plexes, particularly at the confluences of the Thames and some of its tributaries. Thelarge-scale excavations of these cropmarks showed that it was possible by systematic sam-pling to establish comparisons and relationships between contemporary communities,their cemeteries and changing patterns of land use (Lambrick 1992b). On most of thehigher terrace sites, however, surviving biological evidence takes the form of animal bones,molluscs and carbonized plant remains; buried soils are rare and waterlogged deposits pre-serving microscopic plants and insects are found only in isolated deposits, notably wells.

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In the 1970s there were limited opportunities to investigate the floodplain and first terraceof the Thames Valley, for example at the reservoir construction site at Farmoor, Oxford-shire (Lambrick and Robinson 1979) and at road/bridge construction sites, e.g. Walling-ford, Oxfordshire (Lambrick 1992a: 214-15) and Runnymede, Surrey (Needham 1991).These excavations revealed the huge potential of wetland archaeology in the valley floor,with a much greater level of environmental and structural preservation than was presenton the higher sites.

Many of the sites located by aerial photography and threatened by gravel extraction inthe 1970s were on the higher and drier gravel terraces. Unfortunately, these had limitedpotential for the survival of occupation surfaces, structures and biological material. Recentchanges in planning policy and development pressures have promoted the field evaluationof archaeologically invisible areas, notably the alluviated valley floor. As a result, the rich-ness and strangeness of the prehistoric landscape have been clearly demonstrated. Earlierprojects at Runnymede Bridge andWallingford (Needham 1991;Lambrick 1992a) revealedprehistoric riverside or'island' sites on the Thames. Here Bronze Age midden deposits andtimber structures survived in the waterlogged conditions. These sites command stretchesof the river in which prestige metalwork was deposited on a large scale, and may representcontrol points at one of the periods when the Thames acted as an artery to the Continent(though see Bradley (1996:40) for a possible alternative view). Other projects on the valleyfloor have shown the intensity and variety of late Bronze Age settlement, including exten-sive pastoral enclosure systems (Moore and Jennings 1992), mixed farmsteads (Bradley etal. 1980), burnt mounds (perhaps the remnants of saunas or meat-cooking and feastingsites: Serjeantson et al. 1992) and burials. Prestige metalwork and human skulls, probablybelonging to this period, are common finds in the river itself (Bradley and Gordon 1988).

Archaeology and planning policy

Since the later 1980s a major change in outlook and approach to public archaeology inEngland has come about, now encapsulated in Planning Policy and Guidance Note 16:Planning and Archaeology 1990. This modest-sounding initiative does not have the weightof legislation behind it - a PPG is guidance from the Secretary of State for the Environ-ment to local planning authorities. Nevertheless it has revolutionized both the environ-ment in which archaeologists operate and the means by which archaeology can beundertaken. Only a minority of sites in England have formal legal protection as Sched-uled Ancient Monuments and this status is rarely afforded to valley-floor sites, blanketedand invisible beneath alluvium. However, PPG16 recognizes the value, in principle, of allarchaeological deposits. It emphasizes that they are irreplaceable, that they should, wherepossible, be preserved in situ and that archaeology is a legitimate concern of the planningprocess. As a result, planning authorities can require the would-be developer to providesatisfactory information and to propose mitigation measures in order that archaeologicaldeposits can be preserved or investigated prior to development.

This has been especially significant on the Thames Valley where many developmentsare on a very large scale and where it is becoming increasingly apparent that manyarchaeological deposits are not easily detectable either by aerial photography or by

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surface field- survey. The result has been the proliferation of the field-evaluation - acombination of geophysical survey, field-walking and extensive trenching in order toestablish the presence, extent, character and state of preservation of archaeologicaldeposits. This approach has had spectacular results on the previously neglected Thamesfloodplain.

The alluvial blanket

The problem with the floodplain is one of archaeological invisibility. In this alluviatedlandscape, which has undergone substantial change over the past four millennia, sites areoften deeply buried, invisible and difficult to locate. As Coles and Coles have recentlyemphasized: "There is rarely anything to see - no walls, floors, mounds - just a blandness,innocent and deceiving' (1996:106). It is now clear, however, that the flat and featurelessfloodplain and other similar low-lying areas (e.g. Pryor et al. 1985; Needham and Macklin1992) mask a varied and subtle past topography. The present-day blandness is the resultof alluviation over the past 3,000 years, a blanket of silt which serves not only to hideburied archaeological landscapes but also to preserve them.

This alluvium has been subject to detailed investigation as it is a source of evidence ofanthropogenic change at the regional scale. Post-glacial increase in vegetation cover inBritain coincided with a distinct decline in discharge and sediment supply. As a result, theThames Valley floor of the Mesolithic to early Bronze Age (c. 6000-2000 BC) was rela-tively dry and accessible. Previous attempts to explain the distribution of Bronze Agebarrows in relation to alluvial pasture (Case 1963) have been discredited by the realiza-tion that the present floodplain of the Upper Thames Valley did not exist prior to the firstmillennium BC. Hydrological change resulted principally from agricultural intensificationin the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age. A rising water table and flooding in the middleIron Age was followed by alluviation in the later Iron Age and Roman period (c. 100BC-AD 350), and even more extensively in the late Anglo-Saxon/early medieval period (c.AD 900-1200).

Factors which influenced hydrological change probably included forest clearance, theexpansion of arable farming, the increasing use of winter wheat and the construction ofditched drainage and land boundaries. These all occur, of course, within specific culturalcontexts, influenced by population dynamics, power relations, long-distance exchange andreligious beliefs. It is also important to appreciate that, while similar trends are observ-able in other river valleys, these are not uniform, even within the Thames Valley itself. Forexample, in the Upper Thames alluviation is associated with agricultural intensificationand population growth in the later first millennium BC/early AD. In the Middle Thamesand Kennet valleys alluviation began earlier, in the later Neolithic/Bronze Age. By 500 BCthe previously dense population of the Middle Thames seems to be much reduced. Severalfactors may lie behind this: deterioration of fragile upland soils; the rising water-table inthe constricted valley; and the decline in long-distance exchange networks, particularly inprestige metalwork, to continental Europe via the Thames estuary.

Such hypotheses can be subject to testing in the riverine environment and its catchmentarea. The study of forest clearance, for example, has traditionally been approached

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through the somewhat coarse medium (at least in the Thames Valley) of pollen studies(though see Day 1991 for more promising recent results). However, recent large-scaleexcavations of the floodplain at Drayton and Yarnton, Oxfordshire, and the Eton CollegeRowing Lake, Buckinghamshire (see below), have revealed extensive areas of tree clear-ance. Circular pits about 2m in diameter represent tree-throw holes where substantialtrees were probably ring-barked, pulled over and burnt. Most of these holes contain oakcarbon and, in some cases, artefactual material which accumulated as rubbish within them.

Radiocarbon dates from the Drayton tree pits ranged from 2990±80 BC to 1930±70 BC.At the time of writing many more of these tree pits are being located at Yarnton and theEton College Rowing Lake, which will enable a mosaic of dated, prehistoric forest clear-ance to be reconstructed across the valley floor.

During and following forest clearance, the valley floor of the Middle and UpperThames was much utilized for settlement, burial and ceremonial sites, prior to thehydrological changes of the later prehistoric period. The onset of flooding stimulated newstrategies of human behaviour. After the later Bronze Age there is a marked decline insettlement density in the Middle Thames Valley. In contrast, in the Upper Thames settle-ment proliferated on the stable, well-drained soils of the broader gravel terraces whilethe wetter floodplain was used for seasonal sites relating to pastoralism. By themiddle/later Iron Age some floodplain/first terrace areas were subject to artificialdrainage, allowing permanent pastoral settlements to be established, e.g. Claydon Pike,Gloucestershire (Miles 1984).

The evidence of cropmarks and extensive gravel quarrying has allowed models of sitedensity, diversity and specialization to be tested by excavation for the Iron Age andRoman period (Lambrick 1992b: fig. 27). For example, there is good evidence of mixedand specialist pastoral sites, site interrelationships, regional variation, settlement shift anddiscontinuities, and the influence of high-status sites on their hinterland.

Large-scale investigation of the floodplain: Yarnton and the Eton College RowingLake site, Dorney

Recently there has been a substantial shift of mineral extraction and other developmenton to the low-lying, first gravel terrace which is resulting in the investigation of theThames floodplain on an unprecedented scale. This has, fortunately, coincided with theimplementation of area evaluation and the improved opportunity to locate buried sites.Two current riverside archaeological projects in particular, at Yarnton, near Oxford inthe Upper Thames (Figs 2 and 5), and at the Eton College Rowing Lake, near Windsorin the Middle Thames (Figs 3 and 4), are revolutionizing our understanding of theNeolithic and Bronze Age exploitation of the river valley and are providing novelinsights into other periods.

The Yarnton-Cassington Project is investigating an area of approximately 2.5 X lkm onthe north bank of the river Thames, 8km north-west of Oxford, 140ha of which is sched-uled for gravel extraction. Around 10ha of the extraction area lies on a gravel terraceoverlooking the floodplain, and the archaeological work began as a rescue excavation ofa large Iron Age, Roman and Saxon cropmark settlement. This exhibited a pattern of

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I I Evaluated area

WM Palaeochannel

jigijiil; Areas of Neolithic andiliii Bronze Age activity

Concentrations of Neolithic andEarly Bronze Age domestic activity

B U I Burnt mound deposits

• Ring ditch

Figure 2 Yarnton, Oxfordshire: the prehistoric landscape.

U U- shaped enclosure

C Ceremonial site

B Beaker flat grave

T Tree clearance

BS Buried ground surfaces

• Long enclosure

settlement drift from the early Iron Age through to the modern village of Yarnton (1.5kmaway), an occupation record spanning nearly 3,000 years.

The majority (130ha) of the pit area, however, lies on the floodplain of the Thames. Itis apparent that these areas, having a lower water-table in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages,were favoured locations for settlement for some 2,000 years before the higher cropmarksettlements began. As well as the contrasting topography of the gravel terrace and flood-plain, the site is also crossed by several palaeochannels, tributaries of the Thames, wherethe waterlogged conditions have preserved both rich environmental data and organic arte-factual evidence, such as wooden timber structures and woodworking debris.

At the Eton College Rowing Lake an area of approximately 2.4 X 0.7km, again on thenorth bank of the Thames, at Dorney, is being developed as an international rowing lakeand, in the process, gravel is being extracted over 75ha. As at Yarnton, archaeological inter-est was drawn to the site by cropmarks on the gravel terrace, in this case a Bronze Ageenclosure system and barrow cemetery, and a Roman farmstead enclosure. Just outside the

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Neolithic >causewayed'.,enclosure? J SLOUGH

Bronze Ageenclosure system

Channels active inprehistory

| Silted glacial channel

Alluvial flood plain

: Mesolithic activity

| Neolithic 'midden'

Waterlogged stuctures

• Hearths/burning

A Knapping areas + Human remains

Figure 3 The archaeology and topography of the Eton College Rowing Lake site, Dorney, Buck-inghamshire.

site to both east and west are the cropmarks of Neolithic causewayed enclosures. Withinthe site the gravel terrace is dissected by several very broad palaeochannels, which gradu-ally dried out and developed floodplains upon which a succession of well-preserved occu-pation horizons dating to the early Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Ages were foundbeneath alluvium. One of the palaeochannels proved to be a major channel of the Thameswhich survived until the Anglo-Saxon period. The gradual migration of this channel haspreserved up to eight phases of bankside and channel deposits dating between theMesolithic and late medieval periods. This has not only provided an almost completeHolocene environmental sequence but has also preserved a series of six Bronze Age andIron Age timber bridge structures and other lesser wooden structures and artefacts (Fig. 4).

Problems of the site survey on the floodplain

At both sites there are problems in locating and evaluating archaeological deposits on thefloodplain. At Yarnton, despite the subsequent discovery of substantial ditched enclosuresand ring-ditches, none of these features has ever been visible from the air, and air-photography has been similarly unhelpful at the Eton College Rowing Lake. Geophysicalsurvey has been tried both on the gravel terrace and the floodplain, but, while the resultson the gravel terrace at Yarnton have enhanced the information available from cropmark-plotting (Linford 1995), results on the floodplain have been very disappointing. At Yarnton

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-1996 excavationN

double pairedtimbers

wattles

single \Sj - • pairs \

single .pairs .•;. \

Bronze Agechannel

edge

Figure 4 The Eton College Rowing Lake site: the Thames palaeochannel and prehistoric timberstructures.

slight anomalies were recorded over a long enclosure and a single ring-ditch has providedstronger readings, but otherwise the surveys on both sites have been very 'quiet', even overareas now known to have been Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement sites.

Field-walking over sites blanketed by alluvium is usually uninformative, and there havebeen very few finds in the ploughsoils overlying the floodplain at the Eton College RowingLake. At Yarnton, 170ha were field-walked, mainly to identify manuring scatters on fieldsbelonging to the Roman settlement, but also to locate other sites in the area. Surprisingly,struck flints, burnt flint and occasional sherds of Bronze Age pottery were recovered fromthe floodplain. Subsequent work has shown that this material is coming from Romanarable fields situated on higher gravel islands in the floodplain. Roman cultivation cut intoearlier features and brought the finds into their plough horizon; modern ploughing islargely reworking later alluvium but is occasionally cutting into the Roman ploughsoilbringing prehistoric and Roman finds to the modern surface. Test-pit sieving transects

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show that, where alluvial deposits are deep and/or Roman cultivation is absent, there isno vertical movement of finds.

On both sites the extent and character of earlier prehistoric use of the floodplain waseffectively established only by the use of machine-trenched evaluation. A 2 per centsample of much of the area under threat was examined, largely by 30m-long machine-cuttrenches either dug on a grid or targeted to cut through palaeochannels and explore linearcontexts or clusters of features. The problems were exacerbated at the Eton CollegeRowing Lake, where there have been very few dug features on the floodplain. Instead,occupation consists of in situ knapping scatters, pottery and bone spreads, hearths andother burnt deposits. These activity areas are localized, sometimes only a few metresacross, and occur within a progressive alluvial build-up within which land surfaces may beshort-lived and are often very difficult to distinguish. This has forced the development ofnew strategies for area excavation using control sections to anticipate the underlyingstratification and stripping sample areas for excavation at different levels through thealluvial build-up.

The importance of scale

Three important factors are contributing to the success of these two projects: (1) the scaleof the investigation and the wide range of techniques that it has been possible to use; (2)the varying topography of the study area, allowing the comparison of different activitiesand forms of evidence on the higher gravel terraces, gravel islands on the floodplain, lower,buried ground surfaces and palaeochannels; and (3), most importantly, the long timescaleof occupation on both sites. These factors allow a study of the character of settlement ofparticular periods, including those which are poorly understood, and examination of therelationship of settlement to its landscape. They also enable the investigation of changethrough time, in terms of settlement, land use, landscape and human impact on theenvironment.

Neolithic occupation

Work on the gravel terraces has long demonstrated that evidence of Neolithic domesticsettlement is usually confined to pits. On the floodplain at Yarnton large-scale investi-gation is revealing clustering in the distribution of these pits, many of which containeddeposits which appear to be deliberately placed, including the majority of the decoratedpottery from the site (Fig. 2). Substantial assemblages of Peterborough Ware, GroovedWare and Beaker have been recovered. Because of the state of preservation, associatedgroups of postholes are also being located. Most of the groups of postholes do not formobvious structures, and these sites are believed to represent insubstantial and short-livedstructures, with associated domestic pits, perhaps indicating seasonal occupation. A largerectangular building was excavated in 1996, however, which is so far not closely dated buthas parallels in the earlier Neolithic. The base of a hearth containing Peterborough Warelay in its western end and there are associated finds of human bone. Neolithic ceremonialand burial features have been found near domestic features, although they are spatiallyseparate from them. Sacred spaces were apparently avoided by domestic sites, but the two

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were sited in close proximity, in a manner which suggests that they formed an integratedsettlement landscape.

At the Eton College Rowing Lake, in contrast, pits and postholes are few. Here in situoccupation layers offer the chance to examine types of deposit which rarely survive else-where, and to attempt to reconstruct in detail how tool manufacture and other activitieswere carried out. The preservation has enabled a hierarchy of knapping events to be dis-tinguished, from single core reduction through group knapping episodes to major activityareas used for longer periods, and large-scale investigation is gradually revealing the pat-terning of such activities across the floodplain. In its Neolithic phase there is much bank-side activity beside the former Thames channel, with placed deposits such as a human skulland a concentration of occcupation debris around a beaver lodge.

An infilled glacial palaeochannel crossing the gravel terrace has provided the rarest sur-vival (Figs 3 and 4). Within the shallow hollow left in the top of the channel two areas ofmidden deposit have been found, some of the largest assemblages of early Neolithicdomestic material, including animal bones, in Britain. In a landscape apparently withoutritual monuments this scale of early Neolithic activity is unprecedented. Within thedeposits virtually complete vessels have been smashed in situ and fragments of polishedaxe suggest ritual destruction. As at Yarnton, these sites have the potential to shed lightupon the role of placed deposits in apparently domestic contexts.

Scientific techniques

One of the advantages of working in these environments is the range of dating techniquesapplicable. As well as radiocarbon dating, the preservation of wood has allowed the useof dendrochronology in the palaoeochannels and the lower floodplain areas. At the EtonCollege Rowing Lake oak trees growing on the bank of the former Thames channel wereundermined by the river and preserved where they had fallen; large timber objects withinthe channels have also been submitted for dating by this means. At Yarnton optical stimu-lated luminescence (OSL) dating has been applied with some success to the palaeochan-nel sediments, and at the Eton College Rowing Lake it has been used to date successivebankside phases within the former Thames channel. Phosphate analysis has been usedwith mixed success in Britain, but preserved floodplain horizons can provide ideal con-ditions for this technique; at Yarnton it has suggested interesting patterns of use in aNeolithic ditched long enclosure. Magnetic susceptibility survey has also been carried outover the stripped surface in conjunction with phosphate analysis.

The intensification of settlement

Research at Yarnton clearly demonstrates changes in settlement pattern over time. Com-pared to the Neolithic evidence, domestic activity in the Bronze Age becomes more visibleand substantial; for example, a small circular structure 4.5m in diameter yielding Biconi-cal Urn. From the middle Bronze Age nearly twenty circular and oval buildings have beenidentified, associated with a range of domestic features, such as wells, cooking areas andburnt mound deposits. The contrast with the earlier evidence is marked. Use of the flood-plain for domestic purposes ceased at the end of the Bronze Age (700 BC). By this time

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deeper features held water throughout the year and low-lying ground was inundated. Bio-logical data from the channels also show an increase in species adapted to flowing waterconditions.

At the Eton College Rowing Lake the Bronze Age sees a wide variety of activitiesacross the site (Fig. 3). On the north side of the former Thames channel a small barrowcemetery develops in the early and middle Bronze Age, while further west the gravelterrace is divided into a lattice of rectilinear enclosures in the middle-late Bronze Age,including a cremation cemetery. South of the river scattered waterholes, pits and gullies,with human and animal inhumation burials, indicate a different settlement pattern, butthe two are linked by a succession of timber bridges crossing the former Thames channel.Knapping scatters and hearths show that the floodplain continued to be used, though,compared with the Neolithic activity, on a much smaller scale.

The ritual Thames

The religious/symbolic role of the Thames is a complex one, starting with the name itself,probably meaning 'dark'. Richard Bradley has discussed in detail the ritual deposition ofvotive objects and human bodies in his book, The Passage of Arms (1990; see also Bradleyand Gordon 1988). He sees the water cult as principally a pre-Roman phenomenon,though there is substantial evidence for Roman cult activity associated with water inBritain and on the Continent (de Izarra 1993:136,230).

At the Eton College Rowing Lake, the opportunity to examine, for the first time, a sub-stantial, undisturbed stretch of prehistoric/Roman Thames channels provides an oppor-tunity to test theories relating to cult practice, ritual and belief. Deposits of human andanimal bone were found adjacent to some of the Bronze Age and Iron Age bridges at Eton(Fig. 4) and, upriver, complete pottery vessels were placed alongside upright mooring postsaround a sandbank upon which human bones were also found. Deposits of animal boneswere also found along the bank of the former channel, demonstrating the close interrela-tionship of secular and ritual activity and the importance of the river in the lives of thosewho lived alongside it. In the Roman period a complete pair of quernstones, a completepottery bowl and part of a wooden cart were placed at the channel's edge, remote from anysettlement, suggesting that this veneration continued into the historic period.

Forest clearance and the pattern of land use

At Yarnton environmental information (from molluscs, insects, charred plant remains andpollen) demonstrates the gradual opening of the forest canopy from the earlier Neolithic,when small and shifting clearings were created, to the middle Bronze Age when the flood-plain was substantially clear and used as pasture. Throughout this period, although thefaunal remains are almost exclusively of domesticated species, particularly cattle, cerealremains are scarce and plant-food assemblages are dominated by wild foods, especiallyhazel nuts. That arable is at a low level supported by the unmixed nature of the floodplainsoils in features of these periods and low counts of cereal pollen.

Environmental analysis at the Eton College Rowing Lake has only just begun, but asimilar opening up of the landscape is evident from the extensive middle Bronze Age

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I I Evaluated area mm

Gravel •••••«

H H Ü Ponds - remains of palaeochannel

Figure 5 Yarnton, Oxfordshire: the Anglo-Saxon landscape.

Settlement site

Parish boundary

Double ditched boundary

enclosures north of the former Thames channel. The sequence of channel phases offersthe chance to examine the wider interaction of the inhabitants with their landscape, uti-lizing the pollen record, waterlogged organic remains and the changes in sedimentationrate.

The integration of landscape and settlement evidence has proved particularly effectiveat Yarnton for the normally elusive Anglo-Saxon period (c. AD 450-1000). Within thechannels alluviation occurred through the Roman period but slowed down in the earlierAnglo-Saxon period, suggesting a diminution in the intensity of cultivation (Fig. 5). Atthat time settlement became more small-scale and scattered. At around AD 850 a well-organized nucleated settlement was established, with timber halls lying within fenced andenclosed areas, adjacent to animal enclosures, pens, paddocks, pits and wells. The plantremains from this site indicate a change in cultivated crops, with a significant increase inrye and oats, and the first appearance of peas and legumes, e.g. lentils and other foddercrops. Around this time alluviation also recommenced and the channels were reduced toa series of ponds, some of which were used for flax retting. The use of the riverside fieldsas hay meadows has been dated to the same period and the enclosure of these fields withinsubstantial double-ditched boundaries may be part of a major contemporary reorganiz-ation of the landscape. This may hint at the origins of the medieval three-field system ofagriculture with common pasture and hay meadow, which can be documented in themedieval period, within the mid to late Saxon period.

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Conclusion

The archaeological study of the Upper and Middle Thames Valley during the past twodecades has been influenced principally by the evidence of aerial photography and theopportunities presented by mineral extraction. Both of these have promoted excavationson a large scale of interrelated rural settlements and the land which they exploited. Theapproaches have been large scale in terms of area, and also diachronically, avoiding theperiod bias of earlier studies. They have also laid considerable emphasis on environmentalreconstruction.

The complexity of the prehistoric landscape is now beginning to be demonstrated byprojects such as those at Yarnton and the Eton College Rowing Lake. However, the excep-tional preservation found within the floodplain and on waterfronts should not tugarchaeological researchers entirely to the riverside. As John Evans had emphasized:'Whatwet sites share are preservation factors and similar environments. To divorce them fromtheir (dry) regional, cultural/chronological context necessarily pushes their interpretationtowards functional universals and environmental determinism' (Evans 1990:339). Never-theless these areas of exceptional preservation indicate that past human activities, socialand religious as well as economic, spread over very wide areas. Archaeologists need, there-fore, to question the scale of their research and formulate research designs appropriate totheir questions.

Oxford Archaeological UnitJanus HouseOsney Mead

Oxford, OX2 0ES

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Documents

A line of time: Approaches to archaeology in the Upper and Middle Thames Valley, England