Docklands History Group meeting Wednesday 6th March 2019 Riverine Archaeology: deposition in watery places By Jane Sidell from Historic England

Jane said her talk would be mostly about prehistory. She said that she had started as an archaeologist with the Museum of in 1991. As part of her PhD she carried out research in sea level changes in the Thames. The Proto Thames was present north of London in the vale of St Albans but 440,000 years ago during the Anglian period it changed course when it was pushed south at the toe of the Anglian ice sheet.

The earliest people in Britain dated from roughly 800,500 years ago and there were tool using humans from this date. In London, people were present from 440,000 years ago and probably earlier. In the Thames gravel Palaeolithic tools had been found. In the last warm stage, roughly 120,000 years ago lions, hippos, woolly rhino etc. would have wandered where Trafalgar Square was now.

The Thames and the Rhine are some of the most important deposition sites in European prehistory for metal work. The and the Museum of London have collections. High status finds have been made of and Neolithic maces and axes, but there was a lack of obvious functionality. There were antler and bone artefacts and picks from the river and a jadeite axe from the Alps that would have been very prestigious. There have even been wooden artefacts found. One, known as the Chelsea beater, looked like a club and dated from the 4th millennium BC. From the 3rd millennium BC at Dagenham a wooden figurine had been found in peat. Figurines have been found in other watery places in Europe. These were potentially cult items or votive offerings.

From the Bronze and Iron Ages many swords and spear heads have been found. At Vauxhall, at the site Time Team filmed, two spearheads associated with the timber structure dating from 1600-1500 BC were found rammed into the shore. Whilst a suggestion is that the weapons may have been lost during battles, there was no firm evidence of battles along the foreshore, nor was there evidence of large settlements in the London area on the river’s flood plain. Settlements were on higher land.

She speculated that surely if an expensive item was lost it would not have been left in the river. Swords, daggers, shields were valuable, some of them were pristine, some had been chopped through or damaged which suggested they had been left in the river deliberately. They may well be there in connection with deaths or burials. At Battersea a shield had been found. Lots of skulls had been found, mostly men, not always with skeletons but often with metal work. A skull has been found at Swanscombe. At Brentford there were personal items found, a four-pint tankard, and a horned from Waterloo. At Putney more Iron Age finds have been made. It was possible the skulls might have fetched up there. It might be the bodies were excarnated and the bones later put in the river. Excarnation is the practice of removing the flesh and organs of the dead before burial leaving only the bones.

Jane recently discovered that the Natural History Museum has 200 skulls, many from the Bronze Age when a project was announced looking at the collection, their demography and origins. When Tilbury Docks were excavated in the 1880s ‘Tilbury Man’ dating from 7th Millennium BC was found in the peat. One skeleton was found with a pot on his head.

There have not been so many finds in central London. A barrow and ring ditch from 1700 BC south of London Bridge had been found. One child was found buried under the barrow and other children under the ditch. At Chelsea a body dating from 1600 BC has been found with a hole in the head, which indicated Bronze Age surgery had taken place. The patient had lived as the bone had re-grown. Many bits of skull had been found at Putney. With the erosion of the riverbed more finds are turning up but there is a concern about how much might be lost. The volunteers of the Thames Discovery Programme are monitoring the riverbed as it eroded. The Roman era is different. A few skulls came from the Walbrook but this would appear to be because they were moved due to a cemetery being located too near the Walbrook stream that eroded the cemetery. In Saxon times there were few burials associated with the Thames. There was one at Corney Reach at Chiswick which could be any date within the Saxon period. The body measured six foot four inches and was wrapped and possibly pegged down. At Bull Wharf a woman with a hole in her head was buried on the foreshore and again pegged down and wrapped. The body would have been exposed at every low tide. Another woman’s body was nearby. Was it a Saxon execution site? At Chambers Wharf a post-medieval body was found, which appeared to have been disposed of on the foreshore after the victim had been hit on the head. A second skeleton was discovered recently by the Tideway project and was remarkable as the boots of Spanish leather were found still intact.

Questions then led to a discussion on the accuracy of dating methods and use of stable isotope analysis and the types of wood the finds consisted of, mainly Yew but also Alder.

Sally Mashiter and Jane Sidell 27.03.2019