On the Banks of the Humber

The replacement of the Number 9 Feeder Gas Transmission Pipeline has provided an important opportunity to investigate early landscapes and settlement either side of the Humber Estuary. A combination of techniques has been employed over an eight-year period by Oxford Archaeology in order to explore the geoarchaeology and archaeology within two landscape areas, at Paull, East Yorkshire, and Goxhill, North Lincolnshire. Geoarchaeological investigations at both Paull and Goxhill included borehole coring, lithological, pollen, and diatom analyses, deposit modelling, and radiocarbon dating, the results of which provide details of the evolving early prehistoric coastal landscape that was present in the Mesolithic and earlier Neolithic periods. All of the archaeological remains investigated by the project were confined to Goxhill, and evaluation trenching, open-area excavation, and archaeological monitoring, together with detailed post-excavation analysis, have greatly enhanced understanding of prehistoric and historic settlement in this area. Within this landscape, limited evidence for Bronze Age and post-medieval activity was recovered, with the vast majority of the excavated remains dating to the Iron Age, Roman, and medieval periods, relating to progressive phases of open and enclosed settlement. This synthetic volume arises from a multi-disciplinary approach to geoarchaeology and archaeology, with an emphasis on interpreting the evidence in terms of landscape development. It includes the work of a range authors drawn from Oxford Archaeology and several external specialists.