The site contains remains dating from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages—a period of some 3,000 years—and the Bronze Age and Anglo-Saxon features are particularly notable.

[3] Excavation continued year-round to stay ahead of gravel extraction that was rapidly destroying the site, accumulating an "astonishing" volume of material.

[7] An earlier small-scale investigation had been carried out by members of the Thurrock Local History Society, under Ken Barton, on the western side of Buckingham Hill Road, as a result of field walking finds rather than aerial photographs.

In late 1965, Margaret Jones was asked to carry out a brief exploratory excavation at a site, then known as Linford, which was slowly being destroyed as a result of gravel digging by Hoveringham Gravels Ltd.[5] As a result of this exploratory dig, and of the earlier investigations, Jones' contract was extended and she was appointed director of the full scale excavations.

She was joined by her husband Tom and in 1965 (after the crops had been harvested)[8] they began the mammoth task that was to last for the next 14 years on the Mucking hill top.

[9] The need to stay ahead of the gravel extraction sometimes meant softening the frozen ground with a blow torch to enable a find to be lifted in time.

The organisation of the camp, the feeding, the pay and the volunteers' welfare involved many individuals guided by terse memos signed by the initials "muj".

[12] In the final stages of the dig, volunteers were supplemented by local unemployed people, funded by the government Manpower Services Commission job creation scheme.

The Independent of 31 March 2001 carried an obituary which said that "for a generation of respectable middle-aged archaeologists ... to have dug with Margaret Jones at Mucking remains a badge of honour".

Instead, it was required that an excavation archive should provide the data to enable a future complete reinterpretation of the finds and alternative conclusions.

[1][5][18] The Cambridge Archaeological Unit agreed to complete the publication of the excavation reports on the Roman and pre-Roman periods, the first of which was published in December 2015.

However, "the site’s Late Roman pottery evidence suggests that the Saxons got there very early – possibly even in the later decades of the fourth century".

Unlike Sutton Hoo or the Royal Saxon tomb in Prittlewell, the dig provided significant information about living and working conditions for people below the status of kings or princes.

Christopher Arnold and P. Wardle[29] used evidence from Mucking to support the idea that there was a major shift in the location of Anglo-Saxon settlements in the 8th century, from lighter to heavier, but more productive soils.

For example, Della Hooke[31] and others[32] have used the quality of soil at Mucking to suggest that incoming Anglo-Saxons were forced by the local inhabitants to settle on the poorest agricultural land.

On the other hand, Myres puts forward the view that the site was chosen by the London authorities "to provide early warning of strange vessels sailing up the river with hostile intent".