The Mucking excavation was a major archeological dig that covered an area of 18 hectares (44.5 acre) near Mucking

Mucking

Mucking is a hamlet and former Church of England parish adjoining the Thames estuary in southern Essex, England. It is located approximately 2 miles south of the town of Stanford le Hope in what is now Thurrock unitary authority.-Early history:...

, in southern Essex

Essex

Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. The excavations took place between 1965 and 1978, prior to (and during) gravel extraction. At the time it was the largest excavation in Europe and it was the first opportunity to excavate a Saxon settlement site and the associated cemetery simultaneously. It uncovered features from the Neolithic to Medieval, a period of some 3,000 years, although the finds were predominately from the Bronze Age to the Saxon. To date, excavation reports have been published covering the Anglo-Saxon period. Reports covering the Roman and pre-Roman periods are in preparation.

The Site

The site was on the 100 feet (30.5 m) gravel terrace, close to the north bank of the Thames, and was owned by Surridge Disposals Ltd. There were a number of other Saxon settlements in the vicinity - see list of archaeological sites in Thurrock. The site was discovered as a result of aerial photographs showing cropmarks and soil mark

Soil mark

Soil marks are differences in soil colour as a result of archaeological features. They can be seen when a ploughed out earthwork has left hard dry material of a former bank and damper wetter material from a former ditch. They can also occur when a feature has cut through the top soil to reveal...

s. The earliest photographs to reveal the site were taken by the Luftwaffe

Luftwaffe

Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....

 in 1943. However, these were not readily available to archaeologists. The importance of the site was recognised following photographs taken by Dr JK St. Joseph

Kenneth St Joseph

John Kenneth Sinclair St Joseph, CBE was a British archaeologist, geologist and Royal Air Force veteran who pioneered the use of aerial photography as a method of archaeological research in Britain and Ireland.-Early life:...

 of Cambridge University on 16 June 1959, although these photos were not published until 1964. The tenant farmer (T Lindsey) remarked that crop marks for archaeologists were his best crop.

An earlier small-scale investigation had been carried out by members of the Thurrock Local History Society, under Ken Barton, on the western side of Buckingham Hill Road, as a result of field walking finds rather than aerial photographs. In late 1965 Margaret Jones was asked to carry out a brief exploratory excavation at a site, then known as Linford, which was slowly being destroyed as a result of gravel digging by Hoveringham Gravels Ltd.

The main excavations

As a result of this exploratory dig, and of the earlier investigations, Dr Jones' contract was extended and she was appointed director of the full scale excavations. She was joined by her husband Tom and in 1965 (after the crops had been harvested) they began the mammoth task that was to last for the next 14 years on the Mucking hill top. The excavation was unusual in that it continued through the winter, unlike most excavations which only took place in the summer. The Joneses were assisted by many younger archaeologists and 'volunteers' from Britain and abroad including more than 3,000 students from many countries. The volunteers lived mainly in tents during the warmer months, but in the winter, occupied old caravans and sheds. The organisation of the camp, the feeding, the pay and the volunteers' welfare involved many individuals guided by terse memos signed by the initials 'muj'. Margaret Jones sometimes commented that it was more like a holiday camp than an archaeological dig. In the final stages of the dig, volunteers were supplemented by local unemployed people, funded by a government job creation scheme. Without this extra assistance, the excavation might not have been completed.

Margaret Jones died in 2001. The Independent of 31 March 2001 carried an obituary which said 'for a generation of respectable middle-aged archaeologists ... to have dug with Margaret Jones at Mucking remains a badge of honour'. In her will, she left money to fund fieldwork or research related to the Mucking excavations or for landscape archaeology covering the same periods as Mucking.

Organisation

The dig was financed by the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments in the Department of the Environment (a precursor to English Heritage

English Heritage

English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...

). The dig was criticised in some quarters as "excavation without publication", but Margaret Jones defended the need to excavate everything ahead of the gravel extraction and refused to spend valuable time preparing results for publication. Hamerow

Helena Hamerow

Helena Francisca Hamerow is Professor of Early Medieval Archaeology and Head of the School of Archaeology at Oxford University. She is the author of numerous books and academic articles on archaeology and early medieval history.-Education and appointments:...

 acknowledges that small-scale sample excavations would not have revealed important features of the site – for example that it was a single settlement, the location of which moved over time rather than separate early and later settlements. Three volumes of excavation results have so far been published. The Cambridge Archaeological Unit has agreed to complete the publication of the excavation reports on the Roman and pre-Roman periods. Initial finance has been allocated for this by English Heritage via the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF).

Results

The excavation found isolated graves and pits from the Neolithic and a hill fort from the Bronze Age. There were more than 100 Iron Age round houses and a Romano-British cemetery. There were substantial indications of a high status Romano-British building (that Margaret Jones had "no doubt" was a villa

Roman villa

A Roman villa is a villa that was built or lived in during the Roman republic and the Roman Empire. A villa was originally a Roman country house built for the upper class...

), located either within the excavation or nearby.

The Saxon settlement

The site had been abandoned by the Romano-British during the 4th century and there was a gap before the Saxon occupation of the site began in the early 5th century. This was among the earliest Saxon settlements in England. The Saxon settlement gradually moved north over the course of two hundred years after its establishment. During or after the 8th century, the settlement was either abandoned, or drifted beyond the area that was excavated. The area previously occupied by the Saxon settlement became part of a Saxo-Norman field system

Field system

The study of field systems in landscape history is concerned with the size, shape and orientation of a number of fields. These are often adjacent, but may be separated by a later feature.-Types of field system:...

.

More than 200 Saxon sunken featured buildings (Grubenhaus

Grubenhaus

A Grubenhaus is a type of sunken floored building built in many parts of northern Europe between the 5th and 12th centuries AD...

) were excavated, together with nearly a dozen large timber buildings. These more substantial halls were up to 50 feet (15.2 m) long and 25 feet (7.6 m) wide with entrances in the middle of both longer sides.

The Saxon cemeteries

There were more than 800 burials in the Saxon cemeteries ranging in date from the early 5th to the 7th century. Two cemeteries were excavated, although one of them had already been partially destroyed by gravel working. Cemetery II contained cremation and inhumation graves, while cemetery I contained only inhumations. Cemetery II (the undamaged cemetery) contained graves from which 125 brooches were recovered, allowing the reconstruction of Saxon dress styles. The cemeteries were not used after the middle 7th century although the settlement continued in to the 8th century. Later burials may have been at a Christian cemetery associated with Cedd

Cedd

Cedd was an Anglo-Saxon monk and bishop from Northumbria. He was an evangelist of the Middle Angles and East Saxons in England and a significant participant in the Synod of Whitby, a meeting which resolved important differences within the Church in England...

's minster church at Tilbury.

Finds

In addition to the brooches, other finds from the settlement and cemeteries included 5th century domestic Saxon pottery and late Roman military belt fittings. More than 5,000 items were donated to the British Museum by the landowners. Some of the originals finds from the excavation are displayed in the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

, and others are in storage. Some replica finds are in the Thurrock Museum.

Significance

While the finds from other periods are of some interest, it is as an Anglo-Saxon site that Mucking is most significant. Unlike Sutton Hoo

Sutton Hoo

Sutton Hoo, near to Woodbridge, in the English county of Suffolk, is the site of two 6th and early 7th century cemeteries. One contained an undisturbed ship burial including a wealth of Anglo-Saxon artefacts of outstanding art-historical and archaeological significance, now held in the British...

 or the Royal Saxon tomb in Prittlewell

Royal saxon tomb in Prittlewell

The Royal Saxon tomb in Prittlewell is a high-status Anglo-Saxon tomb excavated at Prittlewell, north of Southend-on-Sea, in the English county of Essex....

, the dig provided significant information about living and working conditions for people below the status of kings or princes. It was the first time an excavation had covered both a Saxon settlement and its associated cemetery.

Archaeological literature

Results from the Mucking excavation have been extensively used in illustrating and debating archaeological issues. For example, before the dig was completed, hand made pottery was illustrated almost entirely by sherds from Mucking in The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England by DM Wilson. Many other authors have used the results. Arnold and Wardle used evidence from Mucking to support the idea that there was a major shift in the location of Anglo-Saxon settlements in the 8th century, from lighter to heavier, but more productive soils. However, Rippon argued that the later phases of occupation at Mucking had not been excavated. Similarly, results from Mucking have been used in the debate on the numbers of incoming Anglo-Saxons at the end of the Roman period. For example Hooke and others have used the quality of soil at Mucking to suggest that incoming Saxons were forced by the local inhabitants to settle on the poorest agricultural land. On the other hand, Myres puts forward the view that the site was chosen by the London authorities "to provide early warning of strange vessels sailing up the river with hostile intent". The discovery of a "Roman style" military buckle in a Saxon grave at Mucking has been used to argue for continuity between the Roman and Saxon settlement.

External links

• Mucking - Prehistoric and Roman, Cambridge Archaeological Unit ALSF Project Archive