Mucking - Prehistoric and Roman
Cambridge Archaeological Unit, 2008. https://doi.org/10.5284/1000060. How to cite using this DOI
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This work is licensed under the ADS Terms of Use and Access.
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Christopher
Evans
Cambridge Archaeological Unit
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CB2 3DZ
England
Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 879
- ALSF Project Number: 5220
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1000060
- How to cite using this DOI
Introduction
Intensively excavated between 1965 and 1978, the Mucking, Essex campaigns led to open-area excavations across 18ha, and the site was renowned in its time as the largest excavation to date in Europe. What it revealed was a dense, multi-period landscape palimpsest ranging from Neolithic to Medieval times, but primarily involving later Bronze and Iron Age, Roman and Saxon settlement; in total, more than 44,000 features were excavated. Notable among these were over a thousand burials (including four Romano-British and two Anglo-Saxon cemeteries), the LBA South Rings enclosure, 110 roundhouses, a similar number of four- and six-post structures, and a Romano-British settlement with over twenty pottery kilns and associated structures and enclosure systems.
While the Saxon settlement has been published (Hamerow 1993), along with the Site Atlas and generic specialist summaries (Clark 1993), the rest of the site has remained unpublished (although the major Anglo-Saxon cemeteries are in press (Hirst and Clark forthcoming)). At the behest of Dr JD Hill of the British Museum, the Cambridge Archaeological Unit (CAU) agreed to progress the publication of the prehistoric and Roman aspects of the settlement sequence, for which initial funding was granted by English Heritage via the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF).
References:
Clark, A. 1993. Excavations at Mucking, Volume 1: The Site Atlas. English Heritage Archaeological Report 20.
Hamerow, H. 1993. Excavations at Mucking, Volume 2: The Anglo-Saxon Settlement. English Heritage Archaeological Report 21.
