Has the Thames always looked like it does today, confined to the same course, muddy, brackish and tidal? Through analysis of the archaeology investigated along the Crossrail south-east line, which diverts from the main west-east route across the Thames floodplain from Stepney Green to Abbey Wood, this book tells the story of the lower Thames throughout the Holocene (from c. 10,000 years ago to the present). At six sites along the route, geoarchaeologists were called in to assist with understanding the deep floodplain sediments, the environments they reflect and how, if at all, the Thames has affected (and been affected by) the people who lived along its banks through the ages. Introducing the techniques and theories used in geoarchaeology, this book uses the platform of the Crossrail sites to understand the wider, lower Thames area from Erith to Greenwich, Canning Town to Hornchurch. The Thames has suffered the fate of many other river systems across southern Britain, but the story of its transformation is remarkable and relevant today.

Archaeological evidence is enriched when it is viewed against the backdrop of its natural landscape setting. This setting is not readily apparent in the lower Lea valley, where evidence for the natural topography has been cut away by quarrying and reservoir construction or buried by metres of alluvium and modern made ground. The Lea Valley Mapping Project, funded by the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund, has taken a geoarchaeological approach to reconstructing the past landscape and its relationship to archaeological distributions by using existing borehole information to model the buried topography and past environment of the lower Lea valley from the M25 to the confluence of the Lea and the Thames. The results place the known archaeology within its past landscape context and also predict the archaeological potential of the study area, which readers can investigate by referring both to the maps in the monograph and to the accompanying gazetteer. They can also download the interpreted geo-referenced datasets produced for the project from the ADS website. This book will be an indispensable guide not only for those wishing to know the archaeological potential and past landscape characteristics of the lower Lea valley but to anyone proposing to investigate the buried landscape in other river valleys or wanting an introduction to Quaternary deposits, environments and landscape processes in Greater London.