Human-environment interactions at the wetland edge in East London: trackways, platforms and Bronze Age responses to environmental change

An archaeological excavation at the Golfers’ Driving Range site at Beckton, on the margin of the former East London wetlands, revealed a timber platform and trackway within peat deposits, dating to the Early and Middle Bronze Age respectively. The site is located in a landscape where a large number of trackway structures of Late Bronze Age date have been encountered on adjoining land parcels at the Beckton Nursery, Beckton 3D and the A13 Woolwich Manor Way sites. The platform consisted of two layers, a substructure and a superstructure. The trackway was of simple brushwood construction, primarily consisting of three layers of small roundwood rods laid along the track. A cow’s deciduous tooth was recovered from near the base of the roundwood. The trackway and platform are likely to have played a role in the herding of livestock on the rich wetland pasture out in the marsh. The high-resolution palaeoenvironmental sequence demonstrates that the trackway and platform are associated with a period of increasing wetness of the marsh surface preceded by cereal cultivation in the vicinity on the adjoining dry land. During the period of use of the timber structures cereal cultivation is absent, but returns following the abandonment of the constructions, and further increases in wetness on the marshland surface. INTRODUCTION