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OXFORD ARCHAEOLOGICAL UNIT YARNTON FLOODPLAIN B POST-EXCAVATION ANALYSIS RESEARCH DESIGN: MODULES 3, 4, 5 and OVERVIEW Gill

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OXFORD ARCHAEOLOGICAL UNIT YARNTON FLOODPLAIN B POST-EXCAVATION ANALYSIS RESEARCH DESIGN: MODULES 3, 4, 5 and OVERVIEW Gill OXFORD ARCHAEOLOGICAL UNIT YARNTON FLOODPLAIN B POST-EXCAVATION ANALYSIS RESEARCH DESIGN: MODULES 3, 4, 5 AND OVERVIEW Gill Hey and Christopher Bell August 2000 YARNTON FLOODPLAIN POST-EXCAVATION MODULES 3, 4 AND 5 Contents Page List of tables List of figures List of plates 1. INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 The Neolithic and Bronze Age project 1.2 A brief history of the Yarnton-Cassington Project 2 1.3 This document 3 1.4 Original project aims of the floodplain excavations 5 2. SUMMARY OF FACTUAL DATA AND THEIR POTENTIAL 7 2.1 Excavation evidence 7 2.2 Dating 22 2.3 Pottery 24 2.4 Fired clay 29 2.5 Flint 30 2.6 Worked stone 33 2.7 Burnt unworked stone 34 2.8 Wood 36 2.9 Bone and shale objects 37 2.10 Metal objects 38 2.11 Artefact conservation 38 2.12 Human bone 39 2.13 Animal bone 41 2.14 Macroscopic plant and invertebrate remains 45 2.15 Pollen 50 2.16 Geoarchaeology 52 2.17 Phosphates 55 2.18 Geophysical survey 56 2.19 Evaluation techniques 58 3. OVERALL STATEMENT OF POTENTIAL AND THE NATIONAL CONTEXT 3.1 The results measured against the original research objectives 59 3.2 The national research context 64 3.3 The regional and local context 67 4. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT 68 4.1 National research aims 68 4.2 Project objectives 68 5. METHOD STATEMENT 72 5.1 Information and review 72 5.2 Dating 72 5.3 Pottery 73 5.4 Fired clay 75 5.5 Flint 76 5.6 Worked stone 76 5.7 Burnt unworked stone 76 5.8 Wood 77 5.9 Bone and shale objects 77 5.10 Metal objects 78 5.11 Artefact conservation 78 5.12 Human bone 78 5.13 Animal bone 79 5.14 Macroscopic plant and invertebrate remains 80 5.15 Pollen 82 5.16 Geoarchaeology 83 5.17 Phosphates 85 5.18 Geophysical survey 85 5.19 Spatial and structural analysis 86 5.20 Analysis of evaluation techniques 87 5.21 Descriptive text and illustration 87 5.22 Overview 88 5.23 Synthetic and introductory text and illustration 88 5.24 General project tasks 88 5.25 Research questions and methods 89 5.26 Archives 89 5.27 Health and safety 89 6. PROGRAMMING AND RESOURCES 94 6.1 Personnel 94 6.2 Task List 96 6.3 Cascade summary (main tasks) 108 6.4 Cascade 109 6.5 Costs 129 7. BIBLIOGRAPHY 135 8. APPENDICES 144 Appendix 1: Revised publication synopsis List of tables Table 1 The sites, modules and publication chapters 3 Table 2 Yarnton Floodplain and Yarnton Floodplain B fieldwork 7 Table 3 Prehistoric features excavated on the floodplain (excluding 14 Modules1 and 2, and features seen, but not excavated, in the observation areas) Table 4 Methods and research objectives 91 List of figures: (bound at the back of the volume) Figure 1 Location of the study area Figure 2 The study area showing sites and modules Figure 3 Excavation and evaluation areas Figure 4 Sites 1 - 4, showing areas already analysed in Modules 1 and 2 Figure 5 Sites 2 - 5, showing segregation of different activity areas Figure 6 Site 7, showing provisional feature groupings and phasing Figure 7 1998 fieldwork with provisional phasing List of plates Plate 1 Neolithic long house 13 Plate 2 Excavating the Beaker burial 16 Plate 3 The Beaker grave group 16 Plate 4 The limestone causeway and associated finds 19 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 The Neolithic and Bronze Age project The Oxford Archaeological Unit (OAU) conducted excavations at Yarnton from 1989, mainly funded by English Heritage (EH), and between 1992 and 1998 this work concentrated on the floodplain. The Neolithic and Bronze Age landscape that has been revealed is rich and diverse (Hey 1997). There are archaeological remains from all periods from the early Neolithic (such as a long enclosure, rectangular posthole structure and pits) to the end of the Bronze Age (with groups of buildings associated with other domestic features), allowing us to trace the evolution of settlement and landscape over three millennia and investigate changes in social and economic practices over this period of time. Intensive investigation of a compact landscape, rather than of separate sites, has opened a window onto a range of activities often under-represented or invisible in the archaeology of these periods. Features of all kinds are well preserved, thanks to the alluvium covering the floodplain; they generally form discrete groups; they contain well- associated assemblages unconfused by intercutting or redeposition; and they are in explicit chronological and spatial relationship one to another. There is an exceptionally full and continuous record of domestic settlement from the middle Neolithic to the end of the Bronze Age, whether clusters of pits and postholes representing short-stay encampments, or groups of circular buildings with associated pits, fences and waterholes. These living sites are part of a well-used landscape, which preserves traces of tasks carried out away from settlements, such as mounds and spreads of burnt stone, woodworking debris, and structures and deposits in watercourses, some mundane, some anything but. Routes across the area are marked by paths, tracks, and causeways. The Thames and its tributaries must also have been important routes and may have been the principal means by which non-local materials and artefacts were brought to the area. They were certainly a focus for the numerous monument complexes of the Upper Thames, and presumably a means of communication between them. Yarnton has its share of ceremonial and burial sites too (long enclosure, U-shaped enclosure, Beaker burials, pit and posthole alignments); they are exceptional in being visibly meshed into a web of everyday activity. The archaeological remains are complemented by an extraordinary environmental sequence derived from the sites themselves (charred plant remains and molluscs from dry-ground deposits and waterlogged macrobotanical remains, insects and pollen from waterholes) and from other locations, particularly the palaeochannels which cross the area. This documents the transformation of the landscape from relatively dry and dense woodland at the beginning of the Neolithic to a cleared alluvial floodplain in the first millennium BC. The interactions of population and landscape can be read in exceptional and illuminating detail. It is totality of the Yarnton record that is important, providing a more rounded picture of Neolithic and Bronze Age society than is normally visible. In the course of the project we have also investigated the most successful techniques for evaluating floodplain landscapes, which are increasingly under threat, and have been assessing the most effective techniques for investigating the scattered and ephemeral 1 remains of Neolithic and Bronze Age inhabitants. This methodological contribution gives the project strategic as well as academic value. 1.2 A brief history of the Yarnton-Cassington Project The Yarnton-Cassington Project was initiated as a result of gravel extraction in the parishes of Yarnton and Cassington in the Upper Thames Valley, 5 km north of Oxford. There was no provision for archaeological investigation (Fig. 1). English Heritage funding has been made available for this work because of the research potential of the archaeological resource, and the fieldwork has always been undertaken within a research framework. The gravel extraction area encompassed 140 hectares on the second gravel terrace and floodplain of the river Thames, the majority (c 100 ha) being floodplain (Fig. 2). The study area was expanded to 200 hectares to include adjacent sites which were relevant to research questions posed by the remains which were under threat (Hey 1994a, 8-10). Following evaluation of a cropmark site on second gravel terrace (Yarnton Worton Rectory Farm, YWRF), funded by OAU, excavations began in 1990 and the remains of an Iron Age, Roman and Saxon settlement were examined over the course of two field seasons (Hey 1993a; Fig. 3). Neolithic and Bronze Age pits and a flint scatter were also recovered. At the same time, fieldwalking was undertaken over 182 hectares within the extraction area and beyond it, to provide landscape evidence associated with the settlement site, for example Roman manuring scatters (Hey 1991). Environmental sampling was also undertaken within the palaeochannels which crossed the floodplain area, particularly around Oxey Mead in the south-east of the extraction area, and trenched evaluation of an adjacent site on Cresswell Field was carried out (ibid.; Fig. 3). The recovery of flint and burnt stone scatters on the floodplain during fieldwalking, as well as occasional Bronze Age sherds, was unexpected and led to the evaluation of three fields which were under immediate threat (Hey 1992a). The Yarnton Floodplain A excavations of 3.5 hectares (Sites 1, 2, 3 and 4) followed on from this (Hey 1993b; Fig. 4). Post-excavation analysis to descriptive level has been undertaken on the results from Sites 1 and 2, and Bronze Age settlement evidence in the east of Site 3. Analysis of the majority of Site 3 and Site 4 remains to be done in Module 3. The significance of the archaeological remains, in particular those uncovered on the floodplain, led to a full evaluation of the remaining study area with trenched evaluation, test-pit sieving, environmental and botanical survey, cropmark and geophysical survey and the assessment of documentary records and evidence of earlier discoveries (Hey 1994a; Fig. 3). Proposals for further work were developed from the results in order to investigate issues of settlement and landscape and their change through time (Hey 1994b; see below). It was initially suggested that the results of excavations on the floodplain would be published separately from those conducted on the gravel terrace.
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