History of The East Riding of Yorkshire - Archaeology

Archaeology

The East Riding has two quite distinctive and contrasting archaeological areas, the Yorkshire Wolds and the Humber Wetlands. The Yorkshire Wolds form an upland arc of chalk hills stretching from Flamborough head on the coast to the Humber Estuary at its southern end. The Humber Wetlands consist of all the land in the Humber basin that lies below 10 metres above sea level which encompasses a large part of Holderness and the valleys of the Rivers Hull and Derwent and the lower part of the River Ouse valley.

The Arctic conditions associated with the last Ice Age started to improve and the climate gradually became warmer about 10,000 BC. This warming-up process suffered several temporary setbacks as short, cool spells occurred which disrupted the overall momentum. By about 9,000 BC the vegetation had changed from tundra to a closed woodland, of pine and birch.

Evidence from Gransmoor, to the east of Driffield, in Holderness indicates that Late Palaeolithic people were present in East Yorkshire during the climatic transition. In 1992, a small barbed antler harpoon point was found lodged in a preserved log, thought to be either birch or rowan. This find has been dated to around 9,500 BC.

Between 8,300 and 4,000 BC, Mesolithic communities occupied the area. In the GreatWold Valley, at Willow Garth, to the west of Boynton, pollen samples of Mesolithic date, indicate that the forest cover in this area was being altered by man, and that open grasslands were being made in order to create grazing areas to which animals would be attracted thus making hunting easier.

In the Yorkshire Wolds there are thousands of Iron Age square barrows and hundreds of farmsteads and settlements, droveways, tracks and field systems. There is a profusion of Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Romano-British sites extending across the entire Wolds area. Some Mesolithic sites are known on the chalklands of the Yorkshire Wolds, at Craike Hill (Eastburn Warren), Garton Slack, Huggate Dykes, Huggate Wold, and Octon Wold. The Yorkshire Wolds has a wide range of favourable natural resources and so became a major focus for human settlement during the Neolithic period. Two of the most recently excavated earthen long barrows in the region are to be found at Fordon, on Willerby Wold, and at Kilham, both of which have provided radiocarbon dates of around 3,700 BC. An extensive Neolithic ritual complex, the principal elements of which are four large cursus monuments and a henge, is situated near the eastern end of the Great Wold Valley. More than 1,400 Bronze Age round barrows, are known to exist on the Yorkshire Wolds, occurring either in isolation or, more usually, grouped together to form cemeteries. In the Iron Age the distinctive local tradition known as the Arras Culture emerged and was named after the type-site, found near Market Weighton, and excavated in 1815–17. Romano British villa sites are known on the Wolds at Rudston, Harpham, Brantingham, Welton, and Wharram-le-Street. Anglo-Saxon cemeteries are known from East Yorkshire.

The Humber Wetlands Project which took place between 1992 and 2001 identified numerous prehistoric wetland sites in Holderness, the Hull Valley, the Humberhead Levels and the Vale of York. A boat found at North Ferriby, near Kingston upon Hull, has been dated as 2030 BC, which makes it the oldest of its kind in western Europe. New scientific research carried out on the remains shows it is at least 4,000 years old. The boat was one of three discovered by amateur archaeologist Ted Wright on the banks of the Humber. Historians knew that the boats were old, but only now do they know how old. New scientific techniques suggest the boat Mr Wright found in 1963 is 500 years older than everyone thought. That means it date backs more than 4,000 years to the early Bronze Age. The Ferriby site was an ideal point of departure for east/west travel along the Humber or as a crossing-point to the south bank. The Ferriby Boats were a means by which ideas, such as the decorative design of pottery, and goods such as Baltic amber and metals could arrive on the Humber shore. It has also been suggested that it may have been used to carry stones to Stonehenge.