Aspects of late iron age and Romano-British settlement in the lower Hull valley

Abstract

The lower Hull valley is an extensive tract of estuarine alluvium between Kingston upon Hull and Beverley, North Humberside. The thesis examines the evidence for later Iron Age and Romano-British settlement in a landscape block of c. 330 km(^2), incorporating the valley proper and the higher glacial deposits at its margins. The discussion utilises a comprehensive and critical gazetteer of some two hundred and twenty sites and findspots, and seven detailed site-studies present the results of the author’s fieldwork or analysis of previously unpublished material assemblages. The sites are located on both alluvial and glacial deposits, and are presented in the context of their environmental settings. Activity on the valley margins before the end of the Arras burial tradition is evidenced by aerial photography and by the beginning of the first millennium A.D. there were settlements on the clay/alluvium interface at sites such as Salthouse High School, Hull, and Chapel Farm, Weel. Acculturation from south of the Humber is suggested by the use of wheelthrown cordoned pottery at Risby, a site which may have developed into a villa and which remained in occupation until the late fourth century. Settlement on the alluvium deposit itself, hitherto held to have been a tidal inlet of the Humber until the early Middle Ages, can now be demonstrated at riparian sites such as Greylees Avenue, Hull, throughout the Roman period. A substantial body of Roman finds from the alluvium has been revealed by recent fieldwork and database research, and is analysed in the light of the valley’s geomorphology and the lower Mean Sea Level which then obtained and for which a value is postulated.