Runnymede Research Excavations volume 3

Project leader: Stuart Needham (ex- British Museum staff)

Department: Prehistory and Europe

Project start: 2000
End date: est. 2009

Other British Museum staff: Duncan Hook, Rebecca Stacey

Other departments: Conservation, Documentation and Science

External partners: Several specialist contributors

Project funded by: The British Museum

Description:

One of five planned volumes on British Museum Research excavations on a Neolithic and Late Bronze Age/Earliest Iron Age settlement site at Runnymede Bridge on the bank of Thames west of London. The current phase of research leading to volume 3 is focussing on the Riverside zone of the site and proving to be highly instructive on the nature of ‘ritual’ practices in a ‘domestic’ setting around the eighth century BC.

Objectives:

To analyse thoroughly and present coherently the complex mass of data from the Riverside zone of the site. This includes a large number of structural features and large quantities of occupation refuse which together reflect on a range of activities including cooking, feasting, mortuary rites and other ritual observances.

Publications:

S.P. Needham (with specialist contributions),  Excavation and Salvage at Runnymede Bridge 1978: the Late Bronze Age Waterfront Site (London, British Museum Press (in association with English Heritage, 1991)

S.P. Needham and T. Spence (with specialist contributions), ‘Refuse and Disposal at Area 16 East, Runnymede’, Runnymede Bridge Research Excavations, vol. 2 (London, British Museum Press, 1996)

S.P. Needham (with specialist contributions), The Passage of the Thames: Holocene Environment and Settlement at Runnymede (London, British Museum Press, 2000)