Landscape and Prehistory of the East London Wetlands Investigations along the A13 DBFO Roadscheme, Tower Hamlets, Newham and Barking and Dagenham, 2000-2003

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.