The Bronze Age in the Severn Estuary
Creators: name: Bell, Martin
Publisher: name: Archaeology Data Service
Year: 2020

description: Council for British Archaeology Research Reports, 172
description: It is often proposed that a degree of seasonal settlement mobility continued until the end of the early Bronze Age, while it is assumed that from the middle Bronze Age communities generally settled into single, year-round agricultural settlements. Evidence presented here challenges these assumptions. In coastal areas communities made extensive use of saltmarsh for seasonal animal husbandry throughout the Bronze Age. Several categories of evidence are brought together in the context of the Severn Estuary study area: wetland and dry ground, environmental and cultural, Welsh and English. The study area is compared to Bronze Age sites in coastal wetlands and adjoining areas elsewhere in Britain and continental Europe. Detailed evidence is presented for two main intertidal study sites at Redwick and Peterstone in the Gwent Levels, south Wales. Smaller-scale investigations of other south Welsh sites are outlined and evidence from the Severn Estuary coastal wetlands as a whole is synthesised. In the intertidal zone discoveries have been made as a result of progressive erosion over eighteen years. Redwick is a settlement of four rectangular buildings of middle Bronze Age (1600-940 cal BC) date, situated on a raised bog at a point where it was subject to transgression by saltmarsh, as sedimentary, pollen, plant macrofossil, and beetle evidence demonstrates. Small artefact assemblages indicate some domestic activity, and possible subdivisions within the buildings may represent animal stalls. Buildings are surrounded by footprint-tracks of cattle and sheep, and a few humans, including children. Footprint-tracks and animal bones show the presence of young and neonatal animals, indicating activity in spring and early summer, while tree rings hint at activity at other times of the year. Other sites between Redwick and Cold Harbour Pill have revealed artefact scatters, perhaps campsites, and short tracks crossing wet depressions. At Cold Harbour Pill, wood structures are interpreted as fish traps. At Peterstone a complex of eight palaeochannels shows two main phases of activity associated with successive marine transgressive phases. The earliest features are alignments of carefully worked timbers along palaeochannels, dated 2580-2200 cal BC (late Neolithic or Beaker); these are thought to represent fishing structures. A marine regressive phase led to peat formation over the channels which was then cut by later channels. The latter contain contrasting forms of wood structures, roundwood posts, and hurdle fragments interpreted as fish traps. During this phase, which dates between 1500 and 1040 cal BC, the deposition of ritually broken objects took place in the channels. Wider issues of saltmarsh grazing and vegetation history are then reviewed. The hypothesis of saltmarsh grazing is investigated by stable isotope analysis of sheep and cattle teeth and bone from the wetland edge site of Brean Down, Somerset, and from Redwick and Peterstone. The results are consistent with saltmarsh grazing for at least part of the year, with possible differences in husbandry practices for cattle and sheep. Bronze Age vegetation history is examined through a pollen sequence from Llandevenny, at the wetland edge 4km north of Redwick, and a wider review of Bronze Age pollen data from the Severn Estuary region as a whole. Archaeological evidence from throughout the study area is then synthesised. Each of the wetland areas of the Severn Estuary is considered, together with evidence from neighbouring dry ground. Bronze Age activity is particularly concentrated on the Wentlooge and Caldicot Levels, both on peat, and on the Avonmouth Levels, within silts. In each case the artefact assemblages are similar and consistent with seasonal activity.