Excavations took place in the south-west quadrant of the Roman and medieval town of Bath in advance of the redevelopment on the site of the former Beau Street Baths and Nos. 7–7a Bath Street. The deep and extensive foundations of the new Royal Spa building required total excavation in advance of the destruction. Associated hydrological investigations also provided the opportunity to study artefacts derived from the Hot Bath spring. Possible early Mesolithic ritual activity was associated with the Hot Spring, whilst exploitation of the river gravels for flint occurred in the late Mesolithic. Evidence for activity after the late Mesolithic period was absent until the Iron Age. An Iron Age coin had been deposited in the Hot Bath Spring, and represents the first evidence of a pattern of votive offering otherwise confined to the Roman period. In addition a few sherds of Iron Age pottery occurred residually in the Roman contexts, the first such find in central Bath. During the 1st and early 2nd centuries AD the area of the site appears to have been derelict and overgrown waste ground, cut through by a drainage ditch. In the Antonine period, a substantial and architecturally impressive building, which must have stood somewhere close by, was demolished to make way for a major redevelopment of the area. Materials from the building were incorporated in the new construction, which seems to have been a large public building with at least two wings arranged around a central courtyard. It was bounded by roads to the south and west and may have been associated with a baths complex known to the south. The development may have been built to create a major religious-leisure complex centred on the Hot Bath spring. Evidence for votive offerings at the Hot Spring was recovered in the form of numbers of Roman coins, which ranged in date from the 1st to 4th centuries. Nineteenth century truncation had destroyed the upper levels of the large building, together with much of the stratigraphy of later periods, resulting in an absence of evidence for buildings until the Georgian period. There is evidence for robbing of the Roman building in the late or sub-Roman periods, followed by its decay and the accumulation of a thick dark earth, possibly indicative of cultivation. Renewed occupation occurred in the 11th century with evidence for the digging of pits, an activity which gradually decreasing in successive centuries. Little trace of earlier post-medieval activity survived, the deposits having been almost entirely destroyed by the late Georgian spa facilities built in 1829–30, which were subjected to various alterations and rebuilds during the 20th century. At Bellott’s Hospital, observation of engineers’ test pits had shown that well-preserved stratified deposits of Roman date and a probable post-Roman dark earth were present over the entire site. In 1998 all post-Roman deposits, including the dark earth, were removed by machine with only minimal recording possible. The new construction level largely coincided with the top of the Roman structural layers, in which were also visible the remains of medieval pits following the lines of earlier walls and interpreted as robbing pits. The upper surface of the Roman deposits was planned and limited investigations were undertaken. Nearly a metre of Roman structural deposits representing three phases of Roman masonry buildings fronting a street were revealed together with the underlying buried soil. Hints of timber buildings preceding the masonry phase were also recorded. The latest building contained extremely well-preserved evidence of a Romano-British blacksmith’s workshop, with slag deposits and an anvil base.

The cemeteries around Roman Gloucester remain as windows through which the past populations of the town and preceding fortresses may be studied. Excavations by Oxford Archaeology in London Road between 2004 and 2006 revealed substantial parts of one of these cemeteries, at Wotton, lying by one of the main Roman roads east of the town. In addition to the nine cremation and 64 inhumation burials, a rare mass grave was found of at least 91 individuals, possibly victims of the Antonine Plague which swept the Roman Empire during the later 2nd century AD. This report analyses the burials for what they can tell us of the origins, health, status and funerary practices of the people living in Gloucester from the 1st to 4th century AD. The development of the Wotton cemetery itself is also studied, using evidence from excavations undertaken from the 19th century onwards.The current investigations also unearthed vertebrate deposits in the gravel cap dating to the Pleistocene, including hippopotamus and possibly bison and elephant. The significance of this assemblage in terms of the local geology is discussed.

Between November 2000 and August 2008 Oxford Archaeology carried out a programme of underground monitoring and detailed recording of a section of the underground stone quarries at Combe Down, Bath. The works were carried out prior to and during the stabilisation of the quarries, a process that was carried out by concrete infilling. The quarries (legally mines during the Stabilisation Scheme), were situated below the central Conservation Area of Combe Down, which lies between 1.5 and 2 km south of the historic centre of Bath. A large proportion of the parish was subject to either quarrying underground or at surface over a long period, but mainly between 1730 and 1860, when the area provided the main building material for the ‘golden age’ of Bath. Quarrying in the outer areas of the parish continued, but the main supply of Bath Stone thereafter came from the much larger, rail-served Wiltshire quarries. The recording works were carried out as a long-running Watching Brief, during the construction of a network of supported engineering roadways designed to initially provide safe access to all areas of the mine and latterly to facilitate the filling of the mines with foam concrete. The recording was primarily by drawn and photographic methods, although a range of other techniques such as laser scanning and video photography were employed to augment the traditional techniques. The survey, augmented by programmes of documentary and archival research, has enabled a detailed chronology and technological analysis of the development of the underground workings to be established. These have demonstrated that although stone quarrying was certainly being carried out in the early 18th century and may have been undertaken as far back as the Roman period, the first large-scale exploitation of the quarries occurred during the middle years of the 18th century (c. 1730-1764) under the ownership of the entrepreneur Ralph Allen, who introduced innovative techniques and industrial organisation to the process. Extensive quarrying continued after Allen’s death in 1764 although the central organising influence was ended and the work was conducted by a number of independent quarrymasters or freemasons. Underground quarrying continued in the central Combe Down area until the 1860s and both underground and surface quarrying continued on the fringes of the area until the 1930s. The Combe Down Stone Mines Project is the first time in the UK that the full resources of a professional archaeological body, Oxford Archaeology, have been used to carry out a large-scale archaeological examination of underground quarries. The project successfully demonstrated that such works are compatible with ongoing mining operations where old workings are to be disturbed by development. The strategy integrated thorough archaeological investigation with an extensive examination of documentary and published resources, and the results are presented in this volume.

Southampton was one of England’s leading medieval ports. During the 13th century and again in the 15th century, its trade in major commodities such as wine, wool and cloth made it one of the most prosperous and cosmopolitan towns in the country. From the later 16th century, however, much of the international trade was lost to other ports (principally London) and Southampton suffered a long decline, until its fortunes revived with the growth of passenger trade to America in the mid 19th century. During the Second World War the city suffered devastating bombing, and here, as elsewhere, post-war reconstruction paid little regard to the historic character of the old town. Medieval property plots were widened or ignored, building heights increased, and the construction of the Castle Way inner ring-road during the 1950s sliced through the medieval gridded street pattern. In 2006 Oxford Archaeology were appointed by CgMs Consulting, acting on behalf of Linden Homes Southern, to carry out an excavation in advance of the construction of apartment blocks in the town’s medieval ‘French Quarter’. The site covered approximately 0.5 ha, bounded to the west and east by the historic frontages of French Street and the High Street (formerly English Street), where an impressive sequence of medieval vaulted cellars still survived. These were accompanied by numerous pits, cess pits and wells yielding significant finds and environmental assemblages, including rare and exotic items. The most significant property – Polymond’s Hall –had a distinguished history and was home to notable residents such as the Venetian Consul in the 15th century, and poet and hymn writer Isaac Watts in the 18th century. This book uses new evidence from the excavations to revisit many ongoing debates on the origins and development of Southampton. It also seeks to provide an evocation of the depth and richness of the town’s history and an insight into the lives of the occupants of the excavation area, in the heart of the late Saxon and medieval town. From the 13th century onwards, this included 22 tenements that survived for 650 years.

Oxford Archaeology carried out excavations for Skanska Construction (UK) Limited on behalf of the Highways Agency along a new road south of the then existing A2 between the Pepperhill and Marling Cross junctions. The road varied from 50m to 80m wide, and nearly 3km of the route (some 15ha) was stripped to archaeological levels prior to excavation. The route lay immediately north of the line of the previously excavated High Speed 1 (HS1). Additional areas (totalling 0.85ha) were excavated c 1km further east, where new ponds were being created north and south of the A2 alongside the Cobham services. Features of every period from Neolithic to post-medieval were found, together with residual Mesolithic flintwork. Early Neolithic activity included one very large posthole associated with a flint scatter east of Tollgate. Later Neolithic/early Bronze Age activity was slight, except for a Beaker pit containing a large assemblage of finds just west of Tollgate, not far from a double Beaker burial on the adjacent HS1.In the later middle Bronze Age two partial enclosures associated with probable metalled trackways were found, one containing a house, pits/hollows and fences, the other without internal features, but becoming a focus for later cremation burials. Scattered pits and cremations were also found further west. Late Bronze Age and earliest Iron Age activity was very sparse, but early Iron Age groups of pits were found at intervals along the route, often with fourpost structures and occasionally ditched boundaries. Some of the pits contained very rich assemblages of finds indicative of ritual deposition, and also included the largest collection of briquetage of this period from Kent. In the middle Iron Age activity became nucleated west of Tollgate, where another metalled trackway had enclosures, pits and four-post structures either side. This settlement continued in the late Iron Age, during which two high status burials took place, one in a bronze-bound bucket, the other accompanied by six brooches. Also in the middle Iron Age a major ditched boundary was dug overlooking the Downs Road dry valley, and burials were made within it and at its end. A ditched settlement was established at Cobham in the late Iron Age, but did not continue into the Roman period. In the early Roman period the focus of occupation shifted to a new, larger rectilinear enclosure overlooking the Tollgate dry valley. Only the northern edge was examined, but this contained one very large rich burial pit and an attached cemetery with two more high status burials, all dated AD 50–70. Other burials continued until the later 3rd century AD, when settlement activity also ceased. Fields were laid out alongside the major Iron Age boundary, and middle and late Roman burials continued in and alongside it, one of whom isotope analysis has shown to be a foreigner.Only a single isolated sunken-featured building could be dated to the Saxon period, but three low status medieval settlements of the 11th/12th centuries were found, two west of Tollgate and the third east of Cobham services. All three were characterised by sunken-featured buildings. Only one settlement continued and grew, but was abandoned in the mid 14th century.

This report presents the results of archaeological investigations carried out during improvements to five key junctions along a stretch of the A13 trunk road through the East London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Newham and Barking and Dagenham. The A13 at this location runs parallel to the River Thames, traversing the very edge of the Thames gravel terraces and alluvial floodplain. Previous archaeological work has shown the Thames gravel terraces to be one of the most intensively occupied regions of Southern England during the prehistoric period and locations on or adjacent to the terrace edge have high potential for preserving organic remains such as timber structures and palaeoenvironmental evidence in waterlogged conditions. The archaeology recorded covers a wide chronological range representing intermittent activity spanning the Mesolithic through to the post-Roman period. Regionally important evidence of Neolithic activity included artefact assemblages of pottery and worked flint. A rare cache of charred emmer wheat recovered during evaluation at the Woolwich Manor Way site provides definitive evidence of early Neolithic cereal cultivation in the vicinity, and a fragment of belt slider made from Whitby jet attests to long distance exchange networks. The greatest concentration of activity, however, dates to the 2nd millennium BC and includes several Bronze Age timber stake-built structures and brushwood trackways with associated wetland edge occupation. The A13 structures add to the corpus of regional evidence for trackway building and marshland exploitation during this period. The broadly northsouth orientation would suggest they were built to maintain access to the Thames floodplain during a period of increased wetness. This may have been to exploit a range of natural resources and to herd animals to seasonal pasture. To the west, at Freemasons Road, a double row of large oak piles may represent the remains of a wooden footbridge linking the drier ground of the terrace to an island on the Lea floodplain. The piles are among the most substantial known in the region and are of similar form to those from Runneymede Bridge and Vauxhall. The bridge structure seems to have been associated with a series of gullies and postholes representing some form of enclosure perhaps associated with the corralling of animals. At Movers Lane a burnt mound deposit and associated pits located at the edge of a palaeochannel appear to post-date trackway construction and date to the latter part of the 2nd millennium BC, as does a cremation deposit and series of linear features that may define boundaries or drainage systems. Evidence during the later periods was sparser and probably relates to a period of marine incursion, with the spread of saltmarsh environments and tidal creeks making the area unsuitable for activity. Extensive geoarchaeological and palaeoenvironmental sampling carried out during the lifetime of the project provides an important record of landscape evolution and periods of major change can be detected, both natural and anthropogenically induced. As well as providing a context for the archaeology along the A13, this raises a number of issues regarding the interaction of local communities with the natural environment, how they responded to change and to a certain extent exploited it. Ultimately this is of relevance not only to understanding the past but also to current concerns regarding environmental management along the Thames estuary.

The report presents the results of archaeological investigation along the route of the 17-km long Gloucester Security if Supply water pipeline in the vicinity of Tewkesbury. The archaeological mitigation works were commissioned by Severn Trent Water; following evaluation of the whole route, three sites were chosen for excavation, at Fiddington and Pamington in Gloucestershire and at Bredon's Norton in Worcestershire The site at Pamington revealed oval enclosures if mid-late Iron Age date, that at Fiddington elements of a rural settlement spanning all of the Roman period. At Bredon's Norton the pipeline cut through a series of Iron Age and Roman settlement enclosures and their internal features, and also included human burials of both periods. Unusually, one Iron Age burial was accompanied by a saw, and among the Roman burials was a cemetery of seven newborn infants. An unexpected discovery was the remains of a Roman bath-house with a plunge pool flagged with stones and decorated with painted wall-plaster. This was later drained and had a central cistern inserted, while the loft was used to store grain. The building was destroyed by fire at the very end of the Roman period resulting in the exceptional preservation of charred grain, together with the fragmentary timbers, on the floor.

Projects supported by £8.8 million of funding from the British Government under the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF) administered by English Heritage (now Historic England) have completely transformed our understanding of the Palaeolithic and contributed to our understanding of Pleistocene environments in Britain. This is a period of multiple Ice Ages interspersed with warmer periods, which forms the backdrop for human evolution. The benefits to archaeology and for the interpretation of these fragile remains from this ancient epoch have been incalculable.In an effort to make this work better known, English Heritage (now Historic England) initiated the Lost Landscapes of Palaeolithic Britain project when the ALSF was cut in 2011. The project was designed and managed for English Heritage by Oxford Archaeology. It brought together a team of academic specialists, recognised as leaders in various aspects of the British Palaeolithic, but also crucially with experience of ALSF projects and developer-funded archaeology. The academic team was led by Professor Mark White of Durham University. Outputs from the project include an update of The English Rivers Palaeolithic Survey (TERPS) artefact database and a report to inform future research activities undertaken as part of the National Heritage Protection Plan.A key and concluding part of the project was the production of a peer-reviewed monograph (White et al 2016) drawing together the key results of ALSF research in a series of thematic chapters and illustrated text boxes, focusing on cutting edge techniques, investigative strategies and case studies. Insights obtained from projects have helped to define future priorities and milestones for Palaeolithic research. This book has been specifically designed to provide an engaging and accessible commentary for the non-specialist, reaching out to curators, planning archaeologists and those working in industry and commercial units. The aim from the outset has been to bridge the gap between achievement and awareness of the huge contribution of the ALSF to this remote and often enigmatic period.The Lost Landscapes of Palaeolithic Britain Project was monitored for English Heritage by Helen Keeley and Jonathan Last. The project was managed for Oxford Archaeology by Elizabeth Stafford.

Excavations by Oxford Archaeology in advance of a programme of improvements to the railway between Bicester and Oxford investigated part of the south-eastern extramural settlement associated with the Roman fortress and subsequent town at Alchester, Oxfordshire, as well as rural settlements in its rural hinterland. The investigations at Alchester extended across two successive routes south to Dorchester-on-Thames, the earlier of which by-passed the eastern side of Otmoor and was superseded by a more direct route across the moor at the end of the 1st century AD. Settlement beside the earlier road may have been a successor to a pre-Roman settlement and appears from artefactual evidence to have been of quite high status during the initial, military phase, although no contemporary structural evidence was found. Stone-founded buildings were constructed during the late 1st-early 2nd century, including two single-celled structures of uncertain function that may represent a gatehouse or a pair of shrines. The buildings were demolished by c AD 200, when the area was abandoned. An insight into the diverse lives of the inhabitants is provided by finds that included part of a priestly headdress, two pairs of slave shackles and a group of roof tiles bearing the footprints of a young child. The extramural settlement may have been partly rural in character, involved in farming the landscape around the town, which was intensively managed for agricultural production, probably as meadow and pasture. Ditched enclosures beside the later road may have been part of a second extramural area or a discrete farming establishment. No buildings were identified but two large pits contained domestic refuse and building material. Excavations at six other locations investigated farmsteads that dated from the middle Iron Age to the 3rd century AD and included a rare deposit of debris from copper and iron working from a middle Iron Age enclosure ditch.

This richly illustrated book presents the fascinating results from a major project to examine the heritage of Finzel’s Reach, the site of the former Courage and Bristol Breweries near the centre of one of England’s greatest port cities. Archaeological, geoarchaeological and historic building investigations have revealed a fascinating story of change and urban evolution at the site. Naturally a tidal marsh, the area played an important role in the late Saxon defensive system protecting the settlement of Brycg Stowe. From the twelfth century large scale land reclamation provided the conditions for speculative urban street and tenement development, promoted and administered under the ownership of the Knights Templar, and from the fourteenth century by new owners, the Knights Hospitaller. These medieval urban landlords oversaw the growth of an established and densely populated area full of life, trade and production on one of the town’s principal roads, Temple Street, and crossroads, Temple Cross. Later medieval and early post-medieval decline gave way to new enterprises in the age of Empire, leading to the site’s long-standing association with sugar production and brewing.

The Yarnton landscape, extending from the floodplain of the Thames up onto the higher Second Gravel Terrace, has witnessed a long history of topographic and vegetational change linked to human activity. Settlements on the edge of the Second Gravel Terrace were occupied throughout the Iron Age and Roman periods. Associated with the middle Iron Age settlement was a small cemetery of some 35 crouched inhumation burials. Further burials were made in the Roman period. The Roman settlement is marked by its ditched enclosures and small paddocks suggesting intensive stock management, although the presence of an extensive surrounding field system shows that arable agriculture was also intensive, at least in the early Roman period.

Extensive excavations near the village of Broughton, which lies on the outskirts of Milton Keynes, revealed the fluctuating fortunes of neighbouring settlements from the Iron Age to the medieval period. A middle Iron Age ‘hamlet’ was succeeded in the 1st century BC by various farmsteads which were at their height in the early Roman period. Associated with these were richly furnished cremation cemeteries of Aylesford(-Swarling) type, with burial continuing into the Romano-British period. The cemeteries provide the largest group of such burials yet found in Buckinghamshire and reflect the position of Broughton within the territory of the Catuvellauni. Cremation burial ceased in the mid 2nd century and two of the farmsteads were abandoned soon afterwards. The main settlement continued to develop during the late Roman period, while a new farmstead nearby survived into the early 5th century. Elsewhere, a cluster of sunken-featured buildings yielded early Saxon pottery in Roman form and possible feasting waste. These settlements were in turn abandoned, to be replaced after the Norman Conquest by a farmstead and surrounding ridge and furrow field system which formed an outlying part of the village that had, by the time of Domesday, taken the name of Broughton – ‘the farm or settlement by the brook’.

Excavations took place in the south-west quadrant of the Roman and medieval town of Bath in advance of the redevelopment on the site of the former Beau Street Baths and Nos. 7–7a Bath Street. The deep and extensive foundations of the new Royal Spa building required total excavation in advance of the destruction. Associated hydrological investigations also provided the opportunity to study artefacts derived from the Hot Bath spring. Possible early Mesolithic ritual activity was associated with the Hot Spring, whilst exploitation of the river gravels for flint occurred in the late Mesolithic. Evidence for activity after the late Mesolithic period was absent until the Iron Age. An Iron Age coin had been deposited in the Hot Bath Spring, and represents the first evidence of a pattern of votive offering otherwise confined to the Roman period. In addition a few sherds of Iron Age pottery occurred residually in the Roman contexts, the first such find in central Bath. During the 1st and early 2nd centuries AD the area of the site appears to have been derelict and overgrown waste ground, cut through by a drainage ditch. In the Antonine period, a substantial and architecturally impressive building, which must have stood somewhere close by, was demolished to make way for a major redevelopment of the area. Materials from the building were incorporated in the new construction, which seems to have been a large public building with at least two wings arranged around a central courtyard. It was bounded by roads to the south and west and may have been associated with a baths complex known to the south. The development may have been built to create a major religious-leisure complex centred on the Hot Bath spring. Evidence for votive offerings at the Hot Spring was recovered in the form of numbers of Roman coins, which ranged in date from the 1st to 4th centuries. Nineteenth century truncation had destroyed the upper levels of the large building, together with much of the stratigraphy of later periods, resulting in an absence of evidence for buildings until the Georgian period. There is evidence for robbing of the Roman building in the late or sub-Roman periods, followed by its decay and the accumulation of a thick dark earth, possibly indicative of cultivation. Renewed occupation occurred in the 11th century with evidence for the digging of pits, an activity which gradually decreasing in successive centuries. Little trace of earlier post-medieval activity survived, the deposits having been almost entirely destroyed by the late Georgian spa facilities built in 1829–30, which were subjected to various alterations and rebuilds during the 20th century. At Bellott’s Hospital, observation of engineers’ test pits had shown that well-preserved stratified deposits of Roman date and a probable post-Roman dark earth were present over the entire site. In 1998 all post-Roman deposits, including the dark earth, were removed by machine with only minimal recording possible. The new construction level largely coincided with the top of the Roman structural layers, in which were also visible the remains of medieval pits following the lines of earlier walls and interpreted as robbing pits. The upper surface of the Roman deposits was planned and limited investigations were undertaken. Nearly a metre of Roman structural deposits representing three phases of Roman masonry buildings fronting a street were revealed together with the underlying buried soil. Hints of timber buildings preceding the masonry phase were also recorded. The latest building contained extremely well-preserved evidence of a Romano-British blacksmith’s workshop, with slag deposits and an anvil base.

The cemeteries around Roman Gloucester remain as windows through which the past populations of the town and preceding fortresses may be studied. Excavations by Oxford Archaeology in London Road between 2004 and 2006 revealed substantial parts of one of these cemeteries, at Wotton, lying by one of the main Roman roads east of the town. In addition to the nine cremation and 64 inhumation burials, a rare mass grave was found of at least 91 individuals, possibly victims of the Antonine Plague which swept the Roman Empire during the later 2nd century AD. This report analyses the burials for what they can tell us of the origins, health, status and funerary practices of the people living in Gloucester from the 1st to 4th century AD. The development of the Wotton cemetery itself is also studied, using evidence from excavations undertaken from the 19th century onwards.The current investigations also unearthed vertebrate deposits in the gravel cap dating to the Pleistocene, including hippopotamus and possibly bison and elephant. The significance of this assemblage in terms of the local geology is discussed.

Between November 2000 and August 2008 Oxford Archaeology carried out a programme of underground monitoring and detailed recording of a section of the underground stone quarries at Combe Down, Bath. The works were carried out prior to and during the stabilisation of the quarries, a process that was carried out by concrete infilling. The quarries (legally mines during the Stabilisation Scheme), were situated below the central Conservation Area of Combe Down, which lies between 1.5 and 2 km south of the historic centre of Bath. A large proportion of the parish was subject to either quarrying underground or at surface over a long period, but mainly between 1730 and 1860, when the area provided the main building material for the ‘golden age’ of Bath. Quarrying in the outer areas of the parish continued, but the main supply of Bath Stone thereafter came from the much larger, rail-served Wiltshire quarries. The recording works were carried out as a long-running Watching Brief, during the construction of a network of supported engineering roadways designed to initially provide safe access to all areas of the mine and latterly to facilitate the filling of the mines with foam concrete. The recording was primarily by drawn and photographic methods, although a range of other techniques such as laser scanning and video photography were employed to augment the traditional techniques. The survey, augmented by programmes of documentary and archival research, has enabled a detailed chronology and technological analysis of the development of the underground workings to be established. These have demonstrated that although stone quarrying was certainly being carried out in the early 18th century and may have been undertaken as far back as the Roman period, the first large-scale exploitation of the quarries occurred during the middle years of the 18th century (c. 1730-1764) under the ownership of the entrepreneur Ralph Allen, who introduced innovative techniques and industrial organisation to the process. Extensive quarrying continued after Allen’s death in 1764 although the central organising influence was ended and the work was conducted by a number of independent quarrymasters or freemasons. Underground quarrying continued in the central Combe Down area until the 1860s and both underground and surface quarrying continued on the fringes of the area until the 1930s. The Combe Down Stone Mines Project is the first time in the UK that the full resources of a professional archaeological body, Oxford Archaeology, have been used to carry out a large-scale archaeological examination of underground quarries. The project successfully demonstrated that such works are compatible with ongoing mining operations where old workings are to be disturbed by development. The strategy integrated thorough archaeological investigation with an extensive examination of documentary and published resources, and the results are presented in this volume.

Southampton was one of England’s leading medieval ports. During the 13th century and again in the 15th century, its trade in major commodities such as wine, wool and cloth made it one of the most prosperous and cosmopolitan towns in the country. From the later 16th century, however, much of the international trade was lost to other ports (principally London) and Southampton suffered a long decline, until its fortunes revived with the growth of passenger trade to America in the mid 19th century. During the Second World War the city suffered devastating bombing, and here, as elsewhere, post-war reconstruction paid little regard to the historic character of the old town. Medieval property plots were widened or ignored, building heights increased, and the construction of the Castle Way inner ring-road during the 1950s sliced through the medieval gridded street pattern. In 2006 Oxford Archaeology were appointed by CgMs Consulting, acting on behalf of Linden Homes Southern, to carry out an excavation in advance of the construction of apartment blocks in the town’s medieval ‘French Quarter’. The site covered approximately 0.5 ha, bounded to the west and east by the historic frontages of French Street and the High Street (formerly English Street), where an impressive sequence of medieval vaulted cellars still survived. These were accompanied by numerous pits, cess pits and wells yielding significant finds and environmental assemblages, including rare and exotic items. The most significant property – Polymond’s Hall –had a distinguished history and was home to notable residents such as the Venetian Consul in the 15th century, and poet and hymn writer Isaac Watts in the 18th century. This book uses new evidence from the excavations to revisit many ongoing debates on the origins and development of Southampton. It also seeks to provide an evocation of the depth and richness of the town’s history and an insight into the lives of the occupants of the excavation area, in the heart of the late Saxon and medieval town. From the 13th century onwards, this included 22 tenements that survived for 650 years.

Oxford Archaeology carried out excavations for Skanska Construction (UK) Limited on behalf of the Highways Agency along a new road south of the then existing A2 between the Pepperhill and Marling Cross junctions. The road varied from 50m to 80m wide, and nearly 3km of the route (some 15ha) was stripped to archaeological levels prior to excavation. The route lay immediately north of the line of the previously excavated High Speed 1 (HS1). Additional areas (totalling 0.85ha) were excavated c 1km further east, where new ponds were being created north and south of the A2 alongside the Cobham services. Features of every period from Neolithic to post-medieval were found, together with residual Mesolithic flintwork. Early Neolithic activity included one very large posthole associated with a flint scatter east of Tollgate. Later Neolithic/early Bronze Age activity was slight, except for a Beaker pit containing a large assemblage of finds just west of Tollgate, not far from a double Beaker burial on the adjacent HS1.In the later middle Bronze Age two partial enclosures associated with probable metalled trackways were found, one containing a house, pits/hollows and fences, the other without internal features, but becoming a focus for later cremation burials. Scattered pits and cremations were also found further west. Late Bronze Age and earliest Iron Age activity was very sparse, but early Iron Age groups of pits were found at intervals along the route, often with fourpost structures and occasionally ditched boundaries. Some of the pits contained very rich assemblages of finds indicative of ritual deposition, and also included the largest collection of briquetage of this period from Kent. In the middle Iron Age activity became nucleated west of Tollgate, where another metalled trackway had enclosures, pits and four-post structures either side. This settlement continued in the late Iron Age, during which two high status burials took place, one in a bronze-bound bucket, the other accompanied by six brooches. Also in the middle Iron Age a major ditched boundary was dug overlooking the Downs Road dry valley, and burials were made within it and at its end. A ditched settlement was established at Cobham in the late Iron Age, but did not continue into the Roman period. In the early Roman period the focus of occupation shifted to a new, larger rectilinear enclosure overlooking the Tollgate dry valley. Only the northern edge was examined, but this contained one very large rich burial pit and an attached cemetery with two more high status burials, all dated AD 50–70. Other burials continued until the later 3rd century AD, when settlement activity also ceased. Fields were laid out alongside the major Iron Age boundary, and middle and late Roman burials continued in and alongside it, one of whom isotope analysis has shown to be a foreigner.Only a single isolated sunken-featured building could be dated to the Saxon period, but three low status medieval settlements of the 11th/12th centuries were found, two west of Tollgate and the third east of Cobham services. All three were characterised by sunken-featured buildings. Only one settlement continued and grew, but was abandoned in the mid 14th century.

This report presents the results of archaeological investigations carried out during improvements to five key junctions along a stretch of the A13 trunk road through the East London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Newham and Barking and Dagenham. The A13 at this location runs parallel to the River Thames, traversing the very edge of the Thames gravel terraces and alluvial floodplain. Previous archaeological work has shown the Thames gravel terraces to be one of the most intensively occupied regions of Southern England during the prehistoric period and locations on or adjacent to the terrace edge have high potential for preserving organic remains such as timber structures and palaeoenvironmental evidence in waterlogged conditions. The archaeology recorded covers a wide chronological range representing intermittent activity spanning the Mesolithic through to the post-Roman period. Regionally important evidence of Neolithic activity included artefact assemblages of pottery and worked flint. A rare cache of charred emmer wheat recovered during evaluation at the Woolwich Manor Way site provides definitive evidence of early Neolithic cereal cultivation in the vicinity, and a fragment of belt slider made from Whitby jet attests to long distance exchange networks. The greatest concentration of activity, however, dates to the 2nd millennium BC and includes several Bronze Age timber stake-built structures and brushwood trackways with associated wetland edge occupation. The A13 structures add to the corpus of regional evidence for trackway building and marshland exploitation during this period. The broadly northsouth orientation would suggest they were built to maintain access to the Thames floodplain during a period of increased wetness. This may have been to exploit a range of natural resources and to herd animals to seasonal pasture. To the west, at Freemasons Road, a double row of large oak piles may represent the remains of a wooden footbridge linking the drier ground of the terrace to an island on the Lea floodplain. The piles are among the most substantial known in the region and are of similar form to those from Runneymede Bridge and Vauxhall. The bridge structure seems to have been associated with a series of gullies and postholes representing some form of enclosure perhaps associated with the corralling of animals. At Movers Lane a burnt mound deposit and associated pits located at the edge of a palaeochannel appear to post-date trackway construction and date to the latter part of the 2nd millennium BC, as does a cremation deposit and series of linear features that may define boundaries or drainage systems. Evidence during the later periods was sparser and probably relates to a period of marine incursion, with the spread of saltmarsh environments and tidal creeks making the area unsuitable for activity. Extensive geoarchaeological and palaeoenvironmental sampling carried out during the lifetime of the project provides an important record of landscape evolution and periods of major change can be detected, both natural and anthropogenically induced. As well as providing a context for the archaeology along the A13, this raises a number of issues regarding the interaction of local communities with the natural environment, how they responded to change and to a certain extent exploited it. Ultimately this is of relevance not only to understanding the past but also to current concerns regarding environmental management along the Thames estuary.

The report presents the results of archaeological investigation along the route of the 17-km long Gloucester Security if Supply water pipeline in the vicinity of Tewkesbury. The archaeological mitigation works were commissioned by Severn Trent Water; following evaluation of the whole route, three sites were chosen for excavation, at Fiddington and Pamington in Gloucestershire and at Bredon's Norton in Worcestershire The site at Pamington revealed oval enclosures if mid-late Iron Age date, that at Fiddington elements of a rural settlement spanning all of the Roman period. At Bredon's Norton the pipeline cut through a series of Iron Age and Roman settlement enclosures and their internal features, and also included human burials of both periods. Unusually, one Iron Age burial was accompanied by a saw, and among the Roman burials was a cemetery of seven newborn infants. An unexpected discovery was the remains of a Roman bath-house with a plunge pool flagged with stones and decorated with painted wall-plaster. This was later drained and had a central cistern inserted, while the loft was used to store grain. The building was destroyed by fire at the very end of the Roman period resulting in the exceptional preservation of charred grain, together with the fragmentary timbers, on the floor.

Projects supported by £8.8 million of funding from the British Government under the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF) administered by English Heritage (now Historic England) have completely transformed our understanding of the Palaeolithic and contributed to our understanding of Pleistocene environments in Britain. This is a period of multiple Ice Ages interspersed with warmer periods, which forms the backdrop for human evolution. The benefits to archaeology and for the interpretation of these fragile remains from this ancient epoch have been incalculable.In an effort to make this work better known, English Heritage (now Historic England) initiated the Lost Landscapes of Palaeolithic Britain project when the ALSF was cut in 2011. The project was designed and managed for English Heritage by Oxford Archaeology. It brought together a team of academic specialists, recognised as leaders in various aspects of the British Palaeolithic, but also crucially with experience of ALSF projects and developer-funded archaeology. The academic team was led by Professor Mark White of Durham University. Outputs from the project include an update of The English Rivers Palaeolithic Survey (TERPS) artefact database and a report to inform future research activities undertaken as part of the National Heritage Protection Plan.A key and concluding part of the project was the production of a peer-reviewed monograph (White et al 2016) drawing together the key results of ALSF research in a series of thematic chapters and illustrated text boxes, focusing on cutting edge techniques, investigative strategies and case studies. Insights obtained from projects have helped to define future priorities and milestones for Palaeolithic research. This book has been specifically designed to provide an engaging and accessible commentary for the non-specialist, reaching out to curators, planning archaeologists and those working in industry and commercial units. The aim from the outset has been to bridge the gap between achievement and awareness of the huge contribution of the ALSF to this remote and often enigmatic period.The Lost Landscapes of Palaeolithic Britain Project was monitored for English Heritage by Helen Keeley and Jonathan Last. The project was managed for Oxford Archaeology by Elizabeth Stafford.

Excavations by Oxford Archaeology in advance of a programme of improvements to the railway between Bicester and Oxford investigated part of the south-eastern extramural settlement associated with the Roman fortress and subsequent town at Alchester, Oxfordshire, as well as rural settlements in its rural hinterland. The investigations at Alchester extended across two successive routes south to Dorchester-on-Thames, the earlier of which by-passed the eastern side of Otmoor and was superseded by a more direct route across the moor at the end of the 1st century AD. Settlement beside the earlier road may have been a successor to a pre-Roman settlement and appears from artefactual evidence to have been of quite high status during the initial, military phase, although no contemporary structural evidence was found. Stone-founded buildings were constructed during the late 1st-early 2nd century, including two single-celled structures of uncertain function that may represent a gatehouse or a pair of shrines. The buildings were demolished by c AD 200, when the area was abandoned. An insight into the diverse lives of the inhabitants is provided by finds that included part of a priestly headdress, two pairs of slave shackles and a group of roof tiles bearing the footprints of a young child. The extramural settlement may have been partly rural in character, involved in farming the landscape around the town, which was intensively managed for agricultural production, probably as meadow and pasture. Ditched enclosures beside the later road may have been part of a second extramural area or a discrete farming establishment. No buildings were identified but two large pits contained domestic refuse and building material. Excavations at six other locations investigated farmsteads that dated from the middle Iron Age to the 3rd century AD and included a rare deposit of debris from copper and iron working from a middle Iron Age enclosure ditch.

This richly illustrated book presents the fascinating results from a major project to examine the heritage of Finzel’s Reach, the site of the former Courage and Bristol Breweries near the centre of one of England’s greatest port cities. Archaeological, geoarchaeological and historic building investigations have revealed a fascinating story of change and urban evolution at the site. Naturally a tidal marsh, the area played an important role in the late Saxon defensive system protecting the settlement of Brycg Stowe. From the twelfth century large scale land reclamation provided the conditions for speculative urban street and tenement development, promoted and administered under the ownership of the Knights Templar, and from the fourteenth century by new owners, the Knights Hospitaller. These medieval urban landlords oversaw the growth of an established and densely populated area full of life, trade and production on one of the town’s principal roads, Temple Street, and crossroads, Temple Cross. Later medieval and early post-medieval decline gave way to new enterprises in the age of Empire, leading to the site’s long-standing association with sugar production and brewing.

The Yarnton landscape, extending from the floodplain of the Thames up onto the higher Second Gravel Terrace, has witnessed a long history of topographic and vegetational change linked to human activity. Settlements on the edge of the Second Gravel Terrace were occupied throughout the Iron Age and Roman periods. Associated with the middle Iron Age settlement was a small cemetery of some 35 crouched inhumation burials. Further burials were made in the Roman period. The Roman settlement is marked by its ditched enclosures and small paddocks suggesting intensive stock management, although the presence of an extensive surrounding field system shows that arable agriculture was also intensive, at least in the early Roman period.

Extensive excavations near the village of Broughton, which lies on the outskirts of Milton Keynes, revealed the fluctuating fortunes of neighbouring settlements from the Iron Age to the medieval period. A middle Iron Age ‘hamlet’ was succeeded in the 1st century BC by various farmsteads which were at their height in the early Roman period. Associated with these were richly furnished cremation cemeteries of Aylesford(-Swarling) type, with burial continuing into the Romano-British period. The cemeteries provide the largest group of such burials yet found in Buckinghamshire and reflect the position of Broughton within the territory of the Catuvellauni. Cremation burial ceased in the mid 2nd century and two of the farmsteads were abandoned soon afterwards. The main settlement continued to develop during the late Roman period, while a new farmstead nearby survived into the early 5th century. Elsewhere, a cluster of sunken-featured buildings yielded early Saxon pottery in Roman form and possible feasting waste. These settlements were in turn abandoned, to be replaced after the Norman Conquest by a farmstead and surrounding ridge and furrow field system which formed an outlying part of the village that had, by the time of Domesday, taken the name of Broughton – ‘the farm or settlement by the brook’.