Battling the tides: the Severn Estuary wetlands during the prehistoric, Roman and medieval periods

Abstract

This paper will review how human communities changed from simply exploiting the rich natural resources of the Severn Estuary’s wetlands during the prehistoric period, through to modification and then transformation as the coastal marshes were reclaimed over the course of the Roman and medieval periods. This intensification of wetland utilisation can in part be accounted for by a ‘push in the margins’ driven by expanding population and the need for more agricultural land, but it was also affected by other social and economic factors that sometimes prevented reclamation such as the rich natural resources of intertidal marshes occasionally being more highly valued than agricultural land. Indeed, the model of wetland exploitation, modification, and transformation is itself in need of revision as we become increasingly aware that the history of human endeavour in wetland landscapes has not been one of unilinear success. Instead, periods extensification (the reclamation of new land) intensification (such as increased arable cultivation) have been interspersed with episodes of retreat when reclaimed land was abandoned and the estuarine tides recovered some of what they had lost.