Largest group of Early Neolithic pottery ever found in London dated

April 13, 2020

A new radiocarbon dating technique, reported today in Nature, has been used to confirm the age of the most noteworthy group of Early Neolithic pottery ever found in London.

Our archaeologists found the extraordinary trove, comprising 436 fragments from at least 24 separate vessels and weighing nearly 6.5 kilos, while excavating at Principal Place in Shoreditch – the location of the new Amazon UK HQ – for Brookfield Properties.

It is extremely rare to find archaeology from this time in central London – let alone still in situ – and only a few individual fragments of pottery and stone axes have been uncovered to date, so the find fills a key gap in London’s prehistory.

Using their brand new radiocarbon dating technique on traces of milk fats extracted from within the fabric of the pottery fragments, researchers from the University of Bristol were able to narrow the timeframe for the pottery collection to a window of just 138 years, to around 3,600BC.

This is the strongest evidence yet that people in the area later occupied by the city and its immediate hinterland were living a less mobile, farming-based lifestyle during the Early Neolithic period. Early Neolithic houses, though very rare in southeast England, have been found at Horton in Berkshire, Cranford in Hounslow, and Gorhambury in the Colne Valley. The discovery of such a large group of pottery at Principal Place suggests that a similarly significant settlement may have existed nearby.

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