The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

Middle Ages: towns
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Such reclaimed areas, though usually without
churches, can be identified at British ports such as
King’s Lynn, London, Newcastle, Norwich and Hull,
and in many continental ports (Good et al. 1991).
The remarkable survival of archaeological strata and
especially finds in a waterfront zone gives the area a
general importance for greater understanding of a
town’s history in a number of significant ways.
Firstly, the wealth of finds, especially of organic
materials such as wood, leather and bone, is often
accurately dated by a combination of
dendrochronology (Figure 12.2) and coins. The finds
often include trade waste (unfinished products) or
industrial scrap. We know from documents that in
many towns, rubbish heaps were not allowed to stand
for more than a few days, and domestic and trade
refuse was carted away. In the twelfth to fourteenth
centuries, especially, it was used to infill behind the
reclamation units (e.g. Milne and Milne 1982). The
waterfront revetments (Figure 12.3) contain datable
groups of medieval finds representative of life in
the wider city, since backfilling the revetments acted
as private and civic rubbish-tips. The series of
catalogues of medieval finds from excavations in
London, nearly all from waterfront sites, illustrates
this most clearly (for example Crowfoot et al. 1992;
Egan and Pritchard 1991). The waterfront sites also
provide the basis for the construction of pottery
chronologies on which so much other archaeological
dating and inference depends.
Secondly, in many ports, the strip of land along
the river has often been raised several times against
the rising river, and this action buried many medieval
buildings, the fairly complete plans of which may be
recovered by excavation. At other ports, previous
buildings are buried by attempts to reach the water
as the port silted up. In towns such as London and
Hull, the buildings and the finds in and around them
may be further illuminated by documentary study of
their owners and occupiers, including people of
different social standing and of different trades.
Thirdly, overall, it is reasonable to suggest that
the rate of reclamation in cubic metres is indicative
of activity and growth in the city at large; so that as
our information increases from a programme of
Figure 12.2 An oak board from a twelfth-century
waterfront excavated at Seal House, Thames Street, London,
in 1974. The tree from which it came was cut down around
1160.
Source: Museum of London Archaeology Service
excavations, we may be able to relate the volume of reclamation (measured by archaeological
contexts) with periods of growth in the city itself. This is one of the reasons for suggesting, from