Mucking is an archaeological site near the village of Mucking in southern Essex. 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.

Major excavations took place at the site between 1965 and 1978, directed by Margaret Ursula Jones. Covering an area of 18 hectares (44 acres), at the time it was the largest archaeological excavation in Europe, and is the largest excavation ever undertaken in the British Isles. Excavation continued year-round to stay ahead of gravel extraction that was rapidly destroying the site, accumulating an "astonishing" volume of material. Only a fraction of this was analysed or published in Jones' lifetime, and ultimately the bulk of the post-excavation work was left to others. The first volume of a "full publication" was not published until 2015, by which point the post-excavation phase had cost significantly more than the initial excavation. This led some to criticise Mucking as an irresponsible, "excavation without publication".

The site was on the 100 feet (30 m) gravel terrace, close to the north bank of the Thames, and was owned by Surridge Disposals Ltd. There were a number of other Saxon settlements in the vicinity - see list of archaeological sites in Thurrock. The site was discovered as a result of aerial photographs showing cropmarks and soil marks. The earliest photographs to reveal the site were taken by the Luftwaffe in 1943. However, these were not readily available to archaeologists. The importance of the site was recognised following photographs taken by J. K. St Joseph of Cambridge University on 16 June 1959, although these photos were not published until 1964. The tenant farmer (T. Lindsey) remarked that crop marks for archaeologists were his best crop. Following publication of the crop mark photos, D. G. Macleod of Prittlewell Museum and D. A. Whickham, Chief Librarian for Thurrock realised that the site was threatened by gravel extraction and instigated the scheduling of the site under the Ancient Monuments Act.

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.

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) they began the mammoth task that was to last for the next 14 years on the Mucking hill top. The excavation was unusual in that it continued through the winter, unlike most excavations which only took place in the summer. 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 Joneses were assisted by many younger archaeologists and volunteers from Britain and abroad including more than 3,000 students from many countries. The volunteers lived mainly in tents during the warmer months, but in the winter, occupied old caravans and sheds. 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". Jones sometimes commented that it was more like a holiday camp than an archaeological dig – although journalist Tina Brown, who visited in 1976, observed that Jones had "devised a stunningly repulsive application form to weed out the loafers". In the final stages of the dig, volunteers were supplemented by local unemployed people, funded by the government Manpower Services Commission job creation scheme. Without this extra assistance, the excavation might not have been completed.

Jones died in 2001. 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". In her will, she left money to fund fieldwork or research related to the Mucking excavations or for landscape archaeology covering the same periods as Mucking.

Initial post-excavation analysis took place at the Thurrock Museum and Library from 1978 to 1985. This phase consumed funding of approximately £250,000, compared with £85,000 for the excavations themselves. Post-excavation analysis was hampered by the scale of the excavation and its finds and by the changing expectation of what constituted an excavation archive. The primary archive consisted of 363 notebooks. By the time publication was complete, it was no longer appropriate to provide a narrative and conclusions by the excavator. Instead, it was required that an excavation archive should provide the data to enable a future complete reinterpretation of the finds and alternative conclusions.