Landscape Evolution in the Middle Thames Valley

This volume presents the results of excavations at Heathrow Airport, London Borough of Hillingdon, between 1996 and 2007, which were carried out in advance of the construction of an additional passenger terminal complex (‘Terminal 5’), together with associated facilities. The excavations were undertaken as three main phases of work. In 1996 the Museum of London Archaeology Service excavated c.4 ha of sludge stockpile areas, while in 1999–2000,Framework Archaeology excavated approximately 21 ha in the Perry Oaks sludge works (site code WPR98) and adjacent airport sites. The results of these phases of work have been described in Volume 1 of this series (Framework Archaeology 2006). In 2002–2007 further excavations were carried out by Framework Archaeology as part of the construction of Terminal 5. The results of these excavations have been integrated with those presented in Volume 1, and are the subject of this volume. The earliest evidence for human activity revealed in the Terminal 5 excavations comprised a number of pits excavated by hunter-gatherers in the 7th or 6th millennia BC at a location on the edge of the Colne floodplain, as well as a complex of stakeholes of similar date on the floodplain itself. During the first half of the 4th millennium BC a posthole complex and a possible settlement were located along the alignment of the subsequent C1 Stanwell Cursus, which we believe to have been constructed in the latter half of the 4th millennium BC. Remnants of at least three other cursus monuments were also excavated, that together with a possible fifth example and a small circular enclosure, clearly demonstrates the transformation of this particular location into a major ceremonial centre. In the space of a few centuries, people had transformed the landscape from one defined by memories of ancient locations to one defined by the architecture of earthen banks and ditches. However, by the latter half of the 3rd millennium, new monuments and practices of artefact deposition signal a change in the way people inhabited the landscape. By 1700 BC this change was to lead to the replacement of a system that apportioned land and resources through ceremony to one of physical demarcation: the first land tenure and field divisions. Settlements became archaeologically visible and developed within a landscape of small and large fields forming identifiable ‘farmsteads’, which were traversed by double-ditched trackways. A multitude of differing farming units developed within two distinct landscapes, with evidence for a mixed arable/pastoral agricultural economy, supplemented by resources from the innumerable hedgerows which divided the fields. Within these landscapes, people maintained links with the past through ceremonies resulting in particular artefacts being deposited in the base of waterholes. Identifying the abandonment of the Bronze Age agricultural system is very difficult, though there is little specific evidence for any Early Iron Age activity at Terminal 5, beyond a small number of isolated features. However, major elements of the Bronze Age agricultural landscape appear to have persisted in some form well into this period and beyond. In the Middle Iron Age we see the emergence of a nucleated settlement of roundhouses, four-post structures and livestock enclosures, practising an entirely subsistence-based agricultural regime that was apparently biased towards a pastoral economy. This settlement in turn became a focal point for continuing occupation through into the later Iron Age and early Roman period, although parts of the landscape were radically altered at this time, with new alignments of field systems largely overwriting the previous land divisions. While pastoralism remained a fundamental part of the agricultural economy, the evidence suggests an increasing emphasis on cereal crops from the Late Iron Age onwards. The settlement complex appears to have been continually modified on a somewhat ad hoc basis into the later R