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The Neolithic Period (4,000 - 2,000 BC).
During
the Neolithic major monuments of earth and timber began to be built for the
first time. One of the first such monuments to be investigated
in south Essex was a ring-ditch - a large circular ditch which probably originally
surrounded an earth mound or barrow, constructed from material dug out of
the ditch. It was recorded at Rainham prior to removal by gravel quarrying
in the 1960's.
On the aerial photograph the ditches of the causewayed enclosure show as three concentric curving lines of dark marks. The linear marks, small ring-ditches and rectangular enclosure which are also visible represent the remains of later constructions.
The black lines on this sketch show the archaeological features visible on the air photograph. The large areas delineated with dashed lines are natural geological features. Unlike the ditches the banks of causewayed enclosures often seem to have been continuous. Excavations show that at Orsett the enclosure had a palisade of substantial upright timbers.
It has been suggested that the interrupted ditches are the result of ‘gang’ working. Such a method of working might imply a society organised in fairly small groups, perhaps related families, coming together to create communal monuments. These types of site might represent a means by which individual groups were bound together into larger political units, providing a location in which communal bonds could be established, maintained and reworked.
An aerial view of one of the areas examined at Orsett. The excavation trench was located to allow investigation of what seemed to be the main entrance through the two outer ditch circuits..
The archaeological features show as dark marks, this photo shows one of the ditches partly excavated. The dark unexcavated part of the ditch fill can be clearly distinguished from the much paler natural sand and gravel.
This
painting shows how the Orsett enclosure might have looked when in use, around
3,000 BC.
Recently
part of a substantial causewayed ditch has been recorded in advance of gravel
extraction at Southall Farm, Rainham
which may indicate the presence of another causewayed enclosure rather like
that at Orsett.
Pottery
was first introduced during the Neolithic and flint tools and fragments of
pottery make up most of the finds from Neolithic sites..
This painting by Roger Massey-Ryan shows how the early Neolithic pottery may have looked when in use. The large stones in the background are querns used for grinding grain to make flour. Whilst wheat and barley were grown at this time, there seems to have been no sudden or complete switch away from hunting and gathering wild foods, the hazelnuts seen in the bowl at the front of this picture are amongst the most plentiful plant foods generally recovered from Neolithic sites.
Pollen evidence suggests that the landscape was still largely wooded during the Neolithic. Dramatic evidence of this is revealed whenever there are deep groundworks bordering the Thames estuary in north-east London and south-west Essex late Neolithic trees are found preserved in buried waterlogged peats.
Some of these trees and associated peat deposits exposed in the intertidal zone on the foreshore at Rainham Marsh are shown above.
Investigation of this ‘submerged forest’ at Rainham revealed these polished flint and ground stone tools.
Towards the end of the Neolithic a new type of pottery, thin walled highly decorated and often red in colour is introduced into Britain. The pots known, as Beakers seem designed for drinking and are often the size of a large mug or pint glass, although some are rather bigger. This type of pottery originated on the continent quickly became highly fashionable across a large part of Europe including Britain. Some of the Beakers found in Britain were imported and it seems that some people also immigrated from the mainland Europe.
Burial rites changed at this time and people were often buried in graves accompanied by Beakers and sometimes other grave goods. A particularly good example of such a grave was recorded during a major excavation at Mucking. The scale of gravel extraction at Mucking was vast and the archaeological excavations carried out in advance of the quarrying were amongst the largest ever undertaken in England, the work continued from 1965 to 1978. Consequently you will find the name Mucking regularly cropping up in these pages.
As is often the case in south Essex, the acidic gravels had destroyed all the bones, so that there was no skeleton in the Mucking grave. However the Beaker was particularly fine and decorated by pressing thin cord into the surface of the clay before the pot was fired.
Also in the grave were a number of delicately worked barbed and tanged flint arrowheads. These arrowheads are very typical of the period of several centuries either side of 2000 BC which mark the end of the Neolithic and beginning of the Bronze Age. Some of the earliest bronze tools were flat axe heads like this example from Shoebury.
The monuments created during the early Neolithic were still being used and altered at this time, many centuries after they were first built. The recovery of Beaker pottery and a barbed and tanged arrowhead from the Orsett causewayed enclosure are indications of this.
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