Needingworth - A Delta Landscape

It was in the course of the fenland drainage in late Medieval and early modern times that the River Great Ouse - a great watershed of south-central Eastern England - was tamed. Forced into the Bedford Level, prior to this its huge 'S'-shaped bends snaked their way across the fen basin going out to The Wash north of Chatteris. Perhaps the single most important discovery of English Heritage's Fenland Survey Project of the early 1980s was the recognition that prehistoric barrow cemeteries lay upon the buried terraces that flanked the sides of the Ouse's ancient fenward palaeo-channel. These also extend up along the river's lower reaches. In fact, the most dramatic of the region's barrow groups falls along the eastern side of the river at Over. These divide into two clusters; that in the north at Crane's Fen (four barrows) and the six-barrow grouping (plus three in a line immediately to the north) south by Over proper.

Attention was further drawn to the archaeology of this area during the course of the University of Cambridge's Haddenham Project. Occurring between 1981-87, it focused on the low fen lands of that parish, particularly the Upper Delphs terrace immediate north of Over and also the terraces flanking the Ouse's palaeo-channel. On the latter, the fieldwork included the excavation of an Early Neolithic long barrow (in which the timbers of its mortuary structure survived).

Similarly dating to this period, the great causewayed enclosure on the Upper Delphs was also investigated. At some 8ha it is one of the largest enclosures of its kind in the country and would have hosted large group/inter-community gatherings.

This then was the background to the Needingworth Quarry Project - a landscape abounding in prehistoric monuments - and from the outset we wanted to find contemporary settlements to 'balance' its record. The combined area of the quarry will be vast and extends over c. 800ha, of which c. 400ha has thus far been investigated. Uniquely, it spans both sides of the river: Barleycroft Farm in the west and Over on the eastern side. As outlined in the main introduction, amongst the key research themes which this project addresses is the status of the river in prehistory and how it was conceptualised - was it a 'corridor' through the landscape and/or a territorial divide, or indeed something else altogether different?

Accordingly, palaeo-environmental study and reconstruction of the buried topography of the floodplain is a major component of the fieldwork programme. What the results to date have shown is a succession of braided palaeo-channels and oxbow bends of the river that in later prehistory carved up its valley into a series of small islands. It effect it would have been a delta-like landscape and there would not have been one river, but many - a richly diverse environment of sluggish channels and wet marshlands. One important facet of this study is that it has demonstrated that all the main barrow groups within this area were actually located upon mid-stream islands. From this it could be inferred that, rather than being any kind of territorial divide, the river was then actually a unifying factor for communities on both sides - drawing them to place their dead almost as if within its course.

From the outset the fieldwork has had a major experimental component - how were we to come to terms with such a deeply buried topography, and not just define 'obvious' sites but also distinguish more ubiquitous finds spreads and short-lived camp sites? In response an array of techniques have been employed, including, for example, ground-penetrating radar and GIS modelling. Yet, in order to seriously address the issue of the status of 'the river' in prehistory, it is crucial that some degree of consistency is maintained in the sampling strategies on both of its sides. To this end the main plank of the programme has been test pitting of the buried soil strata. Variously undertaken on a 100m and 50m grid throughout (many hundreds have now been dug), this entails the processing of a standard volume of soil (90 litres) from each. Not only does this allow mapping of the palaeo-topography but it also establishes a measure of the intensity of prehistoric land-use (and tests for settlements) through the density of artefacts present.

As is the case for the other two sites, the Needingworth investigations have already amassed a vast literature and here only a few key themes can be summarily addressed. Starting with the Bronze Age fieldsystem and then its associated houses, at this point we step back and consider the nature of Neolithic settlement and land-use (Early Pit Settlements - Life in Woods). Thereafter we then return to the Bronze Age, first outlining local burial rites and then a series of extraordinary post alignments (the Barleycroft 'Screens') and how these may have contributed to a large ceremonial complex. The latter would now also include a very large sub-circular enclosure that was only discovered beside the main southern Over barrow cluster in 2001 (and whose circuit was reinstated as an earthwork in the winter of 2004 as part of the Over Monuments Group restoration).

What the recent discovery of this great 'circle' attests to is that the Needingworth landscape continues to throw up surprises. From the outset we directed our sampling to the study of the river as somehow being typical of the role of rivers in prehistory in general, the area has proven to be anything but 'typical'. With its extensive fieldsystem and monument groups it was clearly a special place during the Bronze Age (in some respects arguably comparable to the greater Flag Fen complex at Peterborough) and in this manner may have succeeded the role of 'mass-group' Neolithic monuments situated further out in the fens in Haddenham Level. Yet all such grand overviews are ultimately caricatures and only convenient ways of trying to 'capture the past'. It is therefore fitting that, like all serious archaeology, for now these interpretations are only provisional and - like the river itself - are subject to change.