Archaeology in the Severn Estuary 16

This note discusses the impact of modern day experiences in our historical understanding, outlines what work is happening in the estuary, and provides a status update for the SELRC

A selected total of 230 calibrated radiocarbon dates, chiefly from intercalated peats, are analysed from stratigraphically wellcharacterised localities in the estuarine-coastal Holocene outcrops of southern Britain (Bristol Channel-Severn Estuary (138), Southampton Water (10), Sussex coast and Romney Marsh (32), Thames Estuary-Essex marshes (26), Suffolk and East Norfolk (12), North Norfolk Barrier Coast (12). The analyses confirm the broad, tripartite lithostratigraphic subdivision of the Holocene in southern Britain, and the general similarity of the sequence to outcrops on the Atlantic and Channel coasts of France and in the Low Countries and Northwest Germany. The early Holocene sequence, dominated by silts (salt marshes, mudflats), formed when sea level was rising rapidly. The mid Holocene is characterised by intercalated silts and peats (high-intertidal to supratidal organic marshes). Sea level was rising at an intermediate underlying rate, but the rise was punctuated by several profound fluctuations (punctuations) which, moderated by local factors varying in strength from outcrop to outcrop, allowed peats/buried soils to form for periods. Silt-dominance returned in the late Holocene, at a time when sea level was rising at a low rate (excluding the last c. I 50 years). in southern Britain coastal silt (but not peat) wetlands offered resources to human communities over most of the Mesolithic, but varied in areal extent and spatial stability from outcrop to outcrop. The Neolithic period, the Bronze Age and the earliest Iron Age saw wetland resources that fluctuated between siltlands and peatlands on a time-scale of a millennium or less. The two kinds of wetland, each offering a different suite of resources, interchanged spatially at rates of the order of I -I 0 mlyr. The rapidity of change would have called for considerable resilience on the part of human groups that sought to exploit the coastal wetlands, and could have forced substantial changes in their economic basis, or led to migration or inter-group conflict. Environmental stability returned in the later Iron Age, when siltlands once again became widely available.

This is an interim report on research carried out at the intertidal site of Peterstone Great Wharf, located on the Wentlooge Levels, c. 7 km east of Cardiff The project is the first detailed survey and excavation of a site originally recorded in 1996-7 as part of a larger survey of the intertidal zone from Cardiff to the Second Severn Crossing. The 1997 survey produced important evidence for prehistoric human activity preserved within four palaeochannels. Significant erosion has taken place since then. A new survey of the foreshore has identified additional palaeochannels not seen in 1997 which form part of a more complex system of inter-cutting channels, many containing wood structures including short Lines of timbers on the channel edge. Artefacts include a wooden axe handle, antler artefacts, an animal bone assemblage and some pottery of Beaker and Bronze Age date. The finds are thought to derive from a nearby, possibly eroded, settlement. The channels have trapped artefacts and preserved evidence of a range of activities, including what are interpreted as possible boat landings and fishing structures.

Substantial ancient, semi-natural woods survive in and around the Lower Wye Valley. Historically, they were treated as wood-pasture, coppice and an intermediate form of patchily-coppiced, grazed woodland, often held in common. Three example woods are described in detail. Cadora Woods is a cluster of contiguous coppices. Lady Park Wood was part of Hadnock Woods, a very large wood that was coppiced by the 16 th century. The Hudnalls was a coppiced wood-pasture used in common which survives in part as a well-wooded common. These woods are, or were until recently, dominated by a combination of sessile oak, pedunculate oak, beech and small-leaved lime, supplemented with other tree and shrub species on alkaline soils, which is characteristic of the Lower Wye Valley ancient woods. The existing ancient woods are compared with the prehistoric woodland revealed by archaeological studies in the Wye gorge and the Severn estuary. In both composition and the responses of individual species to changes in land utilisation, the prehistoric woodland closely resembles the extant ancient woods. There are reasonable grounds for believing that the modern ancient woods, with their unusually high proportion of the native lime species, were derived directly from remnants of this prehistoric woodland, albeit modified by millennia of use as pasture and sources of wood products. Some wooded commons, notably the Hudnalls, remained in a prehistoric condition until 1800, and parts have now grown up into a condition that may resemble late Mesolithic, lime-dominated high forest.

Vol 16 2005 Table of Contents

Vol 16 2005 Publication List