Mucking excavation

Mucking is an archaeological site east of London in southern Essex. It sits on a gravel terrace thirty metres above the Thames, where gravel digging threatened to destroy the remains. The site spans eighteen hectares and contains traces from the Neolithic through the Middle Ages. Bronze Age and Anglo-Saxon features are especially clear. Aerial photographs taken by the Luftwaffe in 1943 first showed the outlines, though archaeologists did not see them until later. The excavation ran from 1965 to 1978 under Margaret Ursula Jones. It became Europe’s largest dig at the time and continued through winter to stay ahead of the gravel work. More than three thousand students and volunteers from many countries joined the Joneses in the camp. The post-excavation work took decades and cost far more than the dig itself. The first full report only appeared in 2015, long after Jones’s death in 2001. Visitors find a quiet field where archaeologists once worked. Over forty-four thousand features were recorded, including round houses, a hill fort, and an early Anglo-Saxon settlement. The Anglo-Saxon buildings include sunken huts and large timber halls up to fifteen metres long. Romano-British pottery shows Saxons may have arrived in the late fourth century. The site’s layers tell a continuous story across three thousand years.