Holocene landscape change in the lower Great Ouse valley, Cambridgeshire, England

This paper examines the palaeoenvironmental and archaeological sequences of the early-mid Holocene in a 10 km stretch of the lower Ouse valley and adjacent fen-edge of Cambridgeshire. The emphasis is on archaeological, micromorphological, palynological and hydrological investigations of buried landscapes in a floodplain and fen-edge area. A model of land-use change is put forward which slightly differs in the earlier prehistoric periods from that witnessed in the lower Nene and Welland valleys in the north of the county. There is dense early Holocene woodland development but generally more poorly developed soils, then apparently rapid deforestation from the 5th millennium BC but much longer periods of landscape stability than hitherto envisaged, much later landscape demarcation in the 2nd millennium BC (or middle-late Bronze Age), and the lower lying parts of the landscape soon became subsumed by a rising groundwater table and the growth of peat fen from the earlier 1st millennium BC onwards. This suggests that landscape events in the lower Great Ouse valley were intimately associated with the fenland basin to the east. Large-scale alluviation did not begin until late in the 1st millennium BC, accelerating in the later/post-Roman-early medieval period, exacerbated by peat growth and poor river outfall in the adjacent fen basin.