The excavations led by Margaret and Tom Jones on the Thames gravel terraces at Mucking, Essex, undertaken between 1965 and 1978 are legendary. The largest area excavation ever undertaken in the British Isles, involving around 5000 participants, recorded around 44,000 archaeological features dating from the Beaker to Anglo-Saxon periods and recovered something in the region of 1.7 million finds of Mesolithic to post-medieval date. While various publications have emerged over the intervening years, the death of both directors, insufficient funding, many organisational complications and the sheer volume of material evidence have severely delayed full publication of this extraordinary palimpsest landscape.

Lives in Land is the first of two major volumes which bring together all the evidence from Mucking, presenting both the detail of many important structures and assemblages and a comprehensive synthesis of landscape development through the ages: settlement histories, changing land-use, death and burial, industry and craft activities. The long time-gap since completion of the excavations has allowed the authors the unprecedented opportunity to stand back from the density of site data and place the vast sum of Mucking evidence in the wider context of the archaeology of southern England throughout the major periods of occupation and activity.

Lives in Land begins with a thorough evaluation of the methods, philosophy and archival status of the Mucking project against the organisational and funding background of its time, and discusses its fascinating and complex history through a period of fundamental change in archaeological practice, legislation, finance, research priorities and theoretical paradigms in British Archaeology. Subsequent chapters deal with the prehistoric landscape, each focusing on the major themes that emerge by major period from analysis and synthesis of the data. The authors draw on archival material including site notebooks and personal accounts from key participants to provide a detailed but lively account of this iconic landscape investigation.

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Project Context – Acknowledgements
• Summary
• Résumé
• Zusammenfassung
• Chapter One: Introduction – Landscape and Archival Palimpsests
  • Total Archaeology
  • Framing Context
  • Notebook Archaeology
  • Project Framing (I) – Thinking Graphically (Mucking’s ‘Phase-wall’)
  • Archive as Palimpsest
• Chapter Two: Scattered Usage and First Allotment – Mesolithic to Middle Bronze Age
  • Mucking and the Palaeogeography of the Thames Estuary Peter Murphy
  • Tracings – Mesolithic to Early Bronze Age Activity
    • The Worked Flint Elizabeth Healey
  • Mesolithic/Earlier Neolithic
    • Pottery Ian Kinnes and Mark Birley
  • Grooved Ware
    • Pottery Mark Birley
    • Mucking’s Grooved Ware Revisited Mark Knight
    • Worked Flint Elizabeth Healey
  • Beaker
    • Graves
    • Other Features
    • Pottery Alex Gibson
    • Worked Flint Elizabeth Healey
  • Earlier/Middle Bronze Age
    • Barrows
    • The Fieldsystem
    • Settlement and Other Features
    • Pottery Nigel Brown
  • Recollections (I) – Fieldwork
  • Discussion
• Chapter Three: The Rings – Late Bronze Age
  • Late Bronze Age Pottery Groups Matt Brudenell
  • The North Field Settlement
    • Clay Pits
    • Pink Pits
  • THE SOUTH RINGS (with John Etté)
    • Distributions
  • Material Culture
    • Flint Elizabeth Healey
    • Late Bronze Age Pottery Matt Brudenell
    • Metalwork and Metalworking
      • Metalwork (Ben Roberts)
        • Metallurgical Analysis of the Copper Ingot (J.P. Northover)
        • Bronze Casting at Mucking: The Refractory Evidence (Margaret Jones and Hilary Howard)
    • Miscellaneous Small Finds
  • Fired Clay Paul Barford
  • Quernstones David Buckley and Hilary Major
  • Economic and Other Data
    • Animal Bone Geraldene Done
    • Fired Clay Sources Paul Barford, with Ailsa Mainman
  • Appreciation: Margaret Jones – A Legacy of Formidable Field Women Anwen Cooper and Julia Roberts
  • Discussion
    • Baseline Matters – Dating and Economy
    • Layout, Deposition and Status
    • Ringwork Communities and ‘Monumental Resonance’
• Chapter Four: Compounding Spaces and Connected Communities – Iron Age (I)
  • Early Iron Age
    • Pottery Matthew Brudenell
  • The Structures
    • Roundhouses
    • Rectangular Posthole Structures
      • Rectangular Post-Hole Settings (Margaret Jones, with a contribution by Paul Barford)
      • ‘Posters’ and Others
  • Enclosures
    • The ABC Enclosures
    • RBI and Adjacent Settlement
    • The North Enclosure and Northern Boundary System
    • The 1100 Enclosure (Prehistoric Cemetery II and other Western-margin Interments)
    • The Belgic Banjo Complex (and Prehistoric Cemetery III)
  • Recollections (II) – Post-Excavation and Aftermath
  • The Plaza, Other Parts and Landscape Development
    • The Plaza (and Prehistoric Cemetery IV)
    • Other Components
    • Cemetery V
    • The Conquest Period and Early Roman Landscape
• Chapter Five: Specialist Studies and Summation of Parts – Iron Age (II)
  • Material Culture
    • Middle Iron Age Pottery Matt Brudenell
    • Late Iron Age Pottery – An Overview Isobel Thompson
    • Iron Age Coins Colin Haselgrove
    • Brooches Colin Haselgrove
    • Other Metalwork
      • Copper Alloy (Grahame Appleby)
      • Ironwork (Quita Mould)
    • Metalworking Evidence
      • Crucibles, Moulds and Tuyères (David Dungworth and Justine Bayley)
      • Bronze Casting: Refractory Evidence (Hilary Howard)
    • Quernstones
    • Loomweights and Spindlewhorls Paul Barford
    • Other Fired Clay
      • Tournettes (Paul Barford)
  • Economic and Environmental Data
    • Fauna Remains Vida Rajkovaca
    • Pollen James Greig
  • Project Framing (II) – Charting Influence (and Difference)
  • ‘Style in Landscape’ – Distributional Case-studies
    • ‘Type’ Metalwork – Coins and Brooches
    • La Tène Wares and Marked Bases
    • Late Iron Age Assemblages – ‘Belgic’ and Conquest Period Wares
  • Discussion – Connected Communities
    • Enclosure Models and ‘Logics’
    • Landscape Divides and the Lie of Land
    • Settlement Resourcing and Status
    • Later Iron Age Ceremonial/Household Architectures and Funerary Practices
• Chapter Six: Patterned Ground/Interim Knowledges – Sequence Revisited and Retrospect
  • The Recommendation of Land
  • Sequence Revisited and Settlement ‘Scaling’
    • Mucking and the Prehistory of the Lower Thames Timothy Champion
    • Romano-British
    • Anglo-Saxon
    • Medieval and Post-Medieval
      • The South Essex Marshes in the Medieval and post-Medieval Periods (Stephen Rippon)
  • Gauging Settlement – Comparative Context
  • Different Lives – Continuities, Territories and Power
  • Project Framing (III) – Thinking Archives
  • Hindsights – Marking Time
• Bibliography