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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.
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