Lancaster Imprints – serie

The replacement of the Number 9 Feeder Gas Transmission Pipeline has provided an important opportunity to investigate early landscapes and settlement either side of the Humber Estuary. A combination of techniques has been employed over an eight-year period by Oxford Archaeology in order to explore the geoarchaeology and archaeology within two landscape areas, at Paull, East Yorkshire, and Goxhill, North Lincolnshire.Geoarchaeological investigations at both Paull and Goxhill included borehole coring, lithological, pollen, and diatom analyses, deposit modelling, and radiocarbon dating, the results of which provide details of the evolving early prehistoric coastal landscape that was present in the Mesolithic and earlier Neolithic periods. All of the archaeological remains investigated by the project were confined to Goxhill, and evaluation trenching, open-area excavation, and archaeological monitoring, together with detailed post-excavation analysis, have greatly enhanced understanding of prehistoric and historic settlement in this area. Within this landscape, limited evidence for Bronze Age and post-medieval activity was recovered, with the vast majority of the excavated remains dating to the Iron Age, Roman, and medieval periods, relating to progressive phases of open and enclosed settlement.This synthetic volume arises from a multi-disciplinary approach to geoarchaeology and archaeology, with an emphasis on interpreting the evidence in terms of landscape development. It includes the work of a range authors drawn from Oxford Archaeology and several external specialists.

During 2008 and 2009, Oxford Archaeology completed an extensive campaign of archaeological excavation at Ronaldsway Airport, Isle of Man, as part of a programme of runway and taxiway extension, and other airport improvements, undertaken by the Isle of Man Airport Division (part of the Isle of Man Government Department of Transport). This investigation uncovered a range of highly significant archaeological remains that complement other important discoveries made at the airport in the mid-twentieth century, which have figured prominently in discussions of the archaeology of the island.This volume presents details of these recent discoveries, which included an extremely rare Mesolithic dwelling dating to the end of the ninth millennium cal BC, representing the island’s earliest known house, along with Mesolithic pits and artefact scatters. Other important discoveries included Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age timber structures, and well-preserved elements of a later Bronze Age ‘village’, which contained domestic roundhouses, ancillary buildings, and workshops engaged in the casting of bronze and lead objects. Evidence relating to an unenclosed Iron Age settlement was also identified, as well as two important Iron Age burials, one of which contained an Iron Age ‘warrior’ who had been graphically killed during an act of interpersonal violence. Other recorded remains, dated to the later medieval and postmedieval periods and furnish evidence for the form of the agricultural landscape that existed prior to the construction of the modern airport.This volume is the result of a multi-disciplinary approach to the archaeology, involving detailed analyses of buried remains, artefacts, and environmental remains, with the work of a range of authors from Oxford Archaeology, as well as several external specialists. The results greatly enhance an understanding of the archaeology of the Isle of Man, and, more generally, provide important information on prehistoric settlement, contacts, and connections in the Irish Sea region, and along Britain’s western seaboard.