̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Cambridge Archaeological Unit

Students from across the country get a taste of studying at Cambridge at the Cambridge Festival

zs332 — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 10:17:46 +0000

We were delighted to welcome pupils from Warrington’s Lymm High School, Ipswich High School, ̽��ֱ��Charter School in North Dulwich, Rickmansworth School, Sutton Valance School in Maidstone as well as schools closer to home such as St Peter’s Huntingdon, Fenstanton Primary School, Barton Primary School, Impington Village College and St Andrews School in Soham.

Running over two days (25/26 March 2025) and held in the Cambridge Sports Centre, students went on a great alien hunt with Dr Matt Bothwell from the Institute of Astronomy, stepped back in time to explore Must Farm with Department of Archaeology and the Cambridge Archaeological Unit as well as learning to disagree well with Dr Elizabeth Phillips from ̽��ֱ��Woolf Institute.

Schools had a choice of workshops from a range of departments including, how to think like an engineer and making sustainable food with biotechnology with researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, as well as the chance to get hands-on experience in the world of materials science and explore how properties of materials can be influenced by temperature at the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy.

̽��ֱ��Department of Veterinary Medicine offered students the opportunity to find out what a career in veterinary medicine may look like with workshops on animal x-rays, how different professionals work together to treat animals in a veterinary hospital as well as meeting the departments horses and cows and learn how veterinarians diagnose and treat these large animals.

Students also had the opportunity to learn about antibodies and our immune system with the MRC Toxicology Unit. ̽��ֱ��students learnt about the incredible job antibodies do defending our bodies against harmful invaders like bacteria and viruses.

Alongside this, a maths trail, developed by Cambridgeshire County Council, guided students around the West Cambridge site whilst testing their maths skills with a number of problems to solve.

Now in their third year, the Cambridge Festival schools days are offering students the opportunity to experience studying at Cambridge with a series of curriculum linked talks and hands on workshops.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Festival runs from 19 March – 4 April and is a mixture of online, on-demand and in-person events covering all aspects of the world-leading research happening at Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��public have the chance to meet some of the researchers and thought-leaders working in some of the pioneering fields that will impact us all.

Over 500 KS2 and KS3 students from as far away as Warrington got the chance to experience studying at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge with a selection of lectures and workshops held as part of the Cambridge Festival.

Students make antibody keychains during a workshop with the MRC Toxicology Unit

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Research reveals ‘cosy domesticity’ of prehistoric stilt-house dwellers in England’s ancient marshland

fpjl2 — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 08:57:27 +0000

Detailed reports on thousands of artefacts pulled from “Britain’s Pompeii” reveals the surprisingly sophisticated domestic lives of Bronze Age Fen folk, from home interiors to recipes, clothing, kitchenware and pets.

Face of Anglo-Saxon teen VIP revealed with new evidence about her life

ta385 — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 05:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��face of a 16-year-old woman buried near Cambridge in the 7th century with the ‘Trumpington Cross’ has been reconstructed following analysis of her skull. ̽��ֱ��striking image is going on display at MAA, with new scientific evidence showing that she moved to England from Central Europe as a young girl, leading to an intriguing change in her diet.

Ancient faeces reveal how ‘marsh diet’ left Bronze Age Fen folk infected with parasites

fpjl2 — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 23:53:31 +0000

New research published today in the journal Parasitology shows how the prehistoric inhabitants of a settlement in the freshwater marshes of eastern England were infected by intestinal worms caught from foraging for food in the lakes and waterways around their homes.

̽��ֱ��Bronze Age settlement at Must Farm, located near what is now the fenland city of Peterborough, consisted of wooden houses built on stilts above the water. Wooden causeways connected islands in the marsh, and dugout canoes were used to travel along water channels.

̽��ֱ��village burnt down in a catastrophic fire around 3,000 years ago, with artefacts from the houses preserved in mud below the waterline, including food, cloth, and jewellery. ̽��ֱ��site has been called “Britain’s Pompeii”.

Also preserved in the surrounding mud were waterlogged coprolites – pieces of human and animal faeces – that have now been collected and analysed by archaeologists at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. They used microscopy techniques to detect ancient parasite eggs within the faeces and surrounding sediment.

Very little is known about the intestinal diseases of Bronze Age Britain. ̽��ֱ��one previous study, of a farming village in Somerset, found evidence of roundworm and whipworm: parasites spread through contamination of food by human faeces.

̽��ֱ��ancient excrement of the Anglian marshes tells a different story. “We have found the earliest evidence for fish tapeworm, Echinostoma worm, and giant kidney worm in Britain,” said study lead author Dr Piers Mitchell of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology.

“These parasites are spread by eating raw aquatic animals such as fish, amphibians and molluscs. Living over slow-moving water may have protected the inhabitants from some parasites, but put them at risk of others if they ate fish or frogs.”

Disposal of human and animal waste into the water around the settlement likely prevented direct faecal pollution of the fenlanders’ food, and so prevented infection from roundworm – the eggs of which have been found at Bronze Age sites across Europe.

However, water in the fens would have been quite stagnant, due in part to thick reed beds, leaving waste accumulating in the surrounding channels. Researchers say this likely provided fertile ground for other parasites to infect local wildlife, which – if eaten raw or poorly cooked – then spread to village residents.

“ ̽��ֱ��dumping of excrement into the freshwater channel in which the settlement was built, and consumption of aquatic organisms from the surrounding area, created an ideal nexus for infection with various species of intestinal parasite,” said study first author Marissa Ledger, also from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology.

Fish tapeworms can reach 10m in length, and live coiled up in the intestines. Heavy infection can lead to anaemia. Giant kidney worms can reach up to a metre in length. They gradually destroy the organ as they become larger, leading to kidney failure. Echinostoma worms are much smaller, up to 1cm in length. Heavy infection can lead to inflammation of the intestinal lining.

“As writing was only introduced to Britain centuries later with the Romans, these people were unable to record what happened to them during their lives. This research enables us for the first time to clearly understand the infectious diseases experienced by prehistoric people living in the Fens,” said Ledger.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge team worked with colleagues at the ̽��ֱ�� of Bristol’s Organic Chemistry Unit to determine whether coprolites excavated from around the houses were human or animal. While some were human, others were from dogs.

“Both humans and dogs were infected by similar parasitic worms, which suggests the humans were sharing their food or leftovers with their dogs,” said Ledger.

Other parasites that infect animals were also found at the site, including pig whipworm and Capillaria worm. It is thought that they originated from the butchery and consumption of the intestines of farmed or hunted animals, but probably did not cause humans any harm.

̽��ֱ��researchers compared their latest data with previous studies on ancient parasites from both the Bronze Age and Neolithic. Must Farm tallies with the trend of fewer parasite species found at Bronze Age compared with Neolithic sites.

“Our study fits with the broader pattern of a shrinking of the parasite ecosystem through time,” said Mitchell. “Changes in diet, sanitation and human-animal relationships over millennia have affected rates of parasitic infection.” Although he points out that infections from the fish tapeworm found at Must Farm have seen a recent resurgence due to the popularity of sushi, smoked salmon and ceviche.

“We now need to study other sites in prehistoric Britain where people lived different lifestyles, to help us understand how our ancestors’ way of life affected their risk of developing infectious diseases,” added Mitchell.

̽��ֱ��Must Farm site is an exceptionally well-preserved settlement dating to 900-800 BC (the Late Bronze Age). ̽��ֱ��site was first discovered in 1999. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge Archaeological Unit carried out a major excavation between 2015 and 2016, funded by Historic England and Forterra Building Products Ltd.

Coprolites from the Must Farm archaeological excavation in East Anglia shows the prehistoric inhabitants were infected by parasitic worms that can be spread by eating raw fish, frogs and shellfish.

Consumption of aquatic organisms from the surrounding area created an ideal nexus for infection

Marissa Ledger

Left: Marissa Ledger. Right: D. Webb

Left: Microscopic egg of a fish tapeworm. Right: Must Farm excavation.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Six Cambridge academics elected to prestigious British Academy fellowship

sjr81 — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 23:57:17 +0000

They are among 76 distinguished scholars to be elected to the fellowship in recognition of their work in the fields of archaeology, history, law, politics and prison reform.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge academics made Fellows of the Academy this year are:

Christopher Evans (Department of Archaeology) is to be elected to the fellowship in recognition of his work on some of the most important archaeological field projects undertaken in this country since the growth of development-led archaeology
Professor Martin Jones (Department of Archaeology) is to be elected to the fellowship in recognition of his work in the field of in the field of archaeobotany
Professor Joya Chatterji (Faculty of History) is to be elected to the fellowship in recognition of her work on South Asian history, specifically the history of the India/Pakistan Partition of 1947
Professor Brian Cheffins (Faculty of Law) is to be elected to the fellowship in recognition of his work on the application of economic analysis to the area of company law
Professor David Runciman (Department of Politics and International Studies) is to be elected to the fellowship in recognition of his work on the history of political thought (from Hobbes through to late nineteenth and twentieth century political thought); theories of the state and political representation; and contemporary politics and political theory
Professor Alison Liebling (Director of the Prisons Research Centre) is to be elected to the fellowship in recognition of her work on studying prisons, specifically the internal social order of prisons.

They join the British Academy, a community of over 1400 of the leading minds that make up the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. Current Fellows include the classicist Dame Mary Beard, the historian Sir Simon Schama and philosopher Baroness Onora O’Neill, while previous Fellows include Sir Winston Churchill, C.S Lewis, Seamus Heaney and Beatrice Webb.

Christopher Evans said: “As having something of a renegade academic status, I am only delighted and honoured to be elected to the Academy.”

Professor Martin Jones said: “It is a real privilege to join the Academy at a time when the humanities and social sciences have more to offer society than ever before."

This year marks the largest ever cohort of new Fellows elected to the British Academy for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences.

As well as a fellowship, the British Academy is a funding body for research, nationally and internationally, and a forum for debate and engagement.

Professor Sir David Cannadine, President of the British Academy, said: “I am delighted to welcome this year’s exceptionally talented new Fellows to the Academy. Including historians and economists, neuroscientists and legal theorists, they bring a vast range of expertise, insights and experience to our most distinguished fellowship.

“ ̽��ֱ��election of the largest cohort of Fellows in our history means the British Academy is better placed than ever to help tackle the challenges we all face today. Whether it’s social integration or the ageing society, the future of democracy or climate change, Brexit or the rise of artificial intelligence, the insights of the humanities and social sciences are essential as we navigate our way through an uncertain present into what we hope will be an exciting future.

“I extend to all of our new Fellows my heartiest congratulations and I look forward to working closely with them to build on the Academy’s reputation and achievements.”

Six academics from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have been made Fellows of the prestigious British Academy for the humanities and social sciences.

As having something of a renegade academic status, I am only delighted and honoured to be elected to the Academy.

Christopher Evans

Yes

Latest archaeological finds at Must Farm provide a vivid picture of everyday life in the Bronze Age

amb206 — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 09:10:34 +0000

Archaeologists have made remarkable discoveries about everyday life in the Bronze Age during their ten-month excavation of 3,000-year-old circular wooden houses at Must Farm in Cambridgeshire, a site that has been described as the 'Pompeii of the fens'.

Believed to be the best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain, the houses were destroyed by a fire that caused the settlement, which was built on stilts, to collapse into the shallow river beneath. ̽��ֱ��soft river silt encapsulated the remains of the charred dwellings and their contents, which survive in extraordinary detail.

̽��ֱ��range and quality of the many finds have astonished members of Cambridge Archaeological Unit and colleagues at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Division of Archaeology. ̽��ֱ��fire is thought to have happened soon after the construction of the roundhouses.

“ ̽��ֱ��excellent preservation of the site is due to deposition in a water-logged environment, the exclusion of air and the lack of disturbance to the site. ̽��ֱ��timber and artefacts fell into a partly infilled river channel where they were later buried by more than two metres of peat and silt,” said Professor Charles French from the Division of Archaeology. “Surface charring of the wood and other materials also helped to preserve them.”

Now the excavation is coming to an end, archaeologists are able to build a near complete picture of domestic life in a Bronze Age house: where activities happened, what the roof was made of, what people were wearing, and how their clothes were produced. ̽��ֱ��materials found provide evidence of farming, crafts and building technologies.

̽��ֱ��site has revealed the largest collections in Britain of Bronze Age textiles, beads, domestic wooden artefacts (including buckets, platters, troughs, shafts and handles) and domestic metalwork (axes, sickles, hammers, spears, gouges, razors, knives and awls). It has also yielded a wide range of household items; among them are several complete ‘sets’ of storage jars, cups and bowls, some with grain and food residues still inside. Most of the pots are unbroken and are made in the same style; this too is unprecedented.

“Perhaps uniquely, we are seeing the whole repertoire of living at Must Farm – from food procurement to cooking, eating and waste and the construction and shaping of building materials,” said Professor French. “We see the full tool and weapons kits – not just items that had been lost, thrown away or deposited in an act of veneration – all in one place.”

Finds of textiles and fibres illuminate the stages of textile production, and include hanks of prepared fibre, thread wound on wooden sticks or into balls, and finished fabrics of various qualities. “ ̽��ֱ��outstanding level of preservation means that we can use methods, such as scanning electron microscopy which magnifies more than 10,000 times, to look in detail at the fibre content and structure,” said Dr Margarita Gleba, an archaeologist specialising in textiles.

“All the textiles appear to have been made from plant fibres. ̽��ֱ��people at Must Farm used cultivated species, such as flax, as well as wild plants, such as nettle and perhaps trees, to obtain raw materials. Flax provided the finest fibres and was used to weave fine linen fabrics on a loom. ̽��ֱ��linen textiles found at Must Farm are among the finest from Bronze Age Europe. Wild fibres appear to have been used for coarser fabrics made in a different technique, known as twining.”

Two rare well-preserved Bronze Age tripartite wheels have been found on site. These attest to a world beyond the river and to the ongoing relationship between the wetland settlement and the adjacent managed and cultivated dry land. Despite the site’s situation in a wetland, the majority of the surviving material speaks of an economy based on dry land.

Several undergraduates on Cambridge’s archaeology course have had the chance to assist with the dig, working alongside Cambridge Archaeological Unit to gain first-hand experience of a water-logged site. Professor French said: “Four of our students were able to experience the challenge of digging organic remains in a matrix of organic silt – and dealing with the three-dimensional structures of the collapsed dwellings which require a particular way of thinking.”

Visits to the site by more than 2,000 members of the public have been led by Selina Davenport of Cambridge Archaeological Unit. “One of the things that people find most fascinating is the way in which the site questions the long-held view about life in the fens during the Bronze Age that communities used the resources of the watery environment but lived on dry land,” she said.

“ ̽��ֱ��finds at Must Farm reveal that some communities were living right in the heart of the fen – and that these people were connected to others by an active thoroughfare which linked them to the rest of Britain and to the North Sea.”

̽��ֱ��excavation is funded by Historic England and building products supplier Forterra. ̽��ֱ��work on the site has been carried out by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit. Further work on the finds is taking place at the McDonald Institute, Division of Archaeology, and other centres.

More images (courtesy of Historic England) of some of the finds.

Excavation of a site in the Cambridgeshire fens reveals a Bronze Age settlement with connections far beyond its watery location. Over the past ten months, Must Farm has yielded Britain’s largest collections of Bronze Age textiles, beads and domestic artefacts. Together with timbers of several roundhouses, the finds provide a stunning snapshot of a community thriving 3,000 years ago.

Perhaps uniquely, we are seeing the whole repertoire of living at Must Farm – from food procurement to cooking, eating and waste and the construction and shaping of building materials.

Charles French

Must Farm

Stuffocation in the Bronze Age

David Gibson, Archaeological Manager at the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, Division of Archaeology, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said that the exceptional site of Must Farm gives a picture, in exquisite detail, of everyday life in the Bronze Age.

He said: "Domestic activity within structures is demonstrated from clothing to household objects, to furniture and diet. These dwellings have it all, the complete set, it’s a 'full house'. 'Stuffocation', very much in vogue in today’s 21st century, may, given the sheer quantity of finds from the houses at Must Farm, have been a much earlier problem then we’d ever imagined.”

What did people wear 3,000 years ago?

̽��ֱ��community living in these roundhouses were making their own high quality textiles, like linen. Some of the woven linen fabrics are made with threads as thin as the diameter of a course human hair and are among the finest Bronze Age examples found in Europe.

Other fabrics and fibres found include balls of thread, twining, bundles of plant fibres and loom weights which were used to weave threads together. Textiles were common in the Bronze Age but it is very rare for them to survive today.

What did they eat?

Wild animal remains found in rubbish dumps outside the houses, show they were eating wild boar, red deer and freshwater fish such as pike. Inside the houses, the remains of young lambs and calves have been found, revealing a mixed diet. While it is common for Late Bronze Age settlements to include farm domestic animals, it is rare to find wild animals being an equally important part of their diet. Plants and cereals were also an important part of the Bronze Age diet and the charred remains of porridge type foods, emmer wheat and barley grains have been found preserved in amazing detail, sometimes still inside the bowls they were served in.

What household goods did they have?

Each of the houses was fully equipped with pots of different sizes, wooden buckets and platters, metal tools, saddle querns (stone tools for grinding grains), weapons, textiles, loom weights and glass beads. These finds suggest a materialism and sophistication never before seen in a British Bronze Age settlement. Even 3,000 years ago people seemed to have a lot of stuff.

Many of these objects are relatively pristine suggesting that they had only been used for a very short time before the settlement was engulfed by fire.

What did Bronze Age houses look like?

At least five houses have been found at the Must Farm settlement, each one built very closely together for a small community of people. Every house seems to have been planned in the same way, with an area for storing meat and another area for cooking or preparing food.

̽��ֱ��roundhouses were built on stilts above a small river. ̽��ֱ��conical roofs were built of long wooden rafters covered in turf, clay and thatch. ̽��ֱ��floors and walls were made of wickerwork, held firmly in place by the wooden frame.

What were they trading in?

Some 18 pale green and turquoise glass beads have been found which analysis has shown were probably made in the Mediterranean basin or the Middle East.

̽��ֱ��Q&A above is taken from a Historic England press release.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Most complete Bronze Age wheel to date found at Must Farm near Peterborough

amb206 — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 08:39:12 +0000

Archaeologists working at Must Farm, a Bronze Age site near Peterborough, have uncovered a 3,000-year-old wheel, the first and largest complete example ever to be discovered in Britain.

̽��ֱ��find, which will broaden our understanding of Late Bronze Age life, is the latest from a settlement described as Peterborough’s Pompeii. ̽��ֱ��large wooden round houses, built on stilts, plunged into a river after a dramatic fire 3,000 years ago.

Thought to date from 1100-800 BC, the ancient wooden wheel is one metre in diameter and has been so well preserved by the silt that it still contains its hub. An incomplete Bronze Age wheel was found nearby at Flag Fen in the 1990s but the Must Farm find is unprecedented in terms of size and completeness.

̽��ֱ��discovery poses challenges to what is known about the Late Bronze Age in terms of the technology available 3,000 years ago.

Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England, said: “This remarkable but fragile wooden wheel is the earliest complete example ever found in Britain. ̽��ֱ��existence of this wheel expands our understanding of Late Bronze Age technology and the level of sophistication of the lives of people living on the edge of the Fens 3,000 years ago.”

̽��ֱ��find is the latest in a series of discoveries at the Must Farm site which is providing an extraordinary insight into domestic life 3,000 years ago. Excavation has already revealed circular wooden houses believed to be the best–preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain.

̽��ֱ��large wheel was unearthed just a few metres away from the biggest round house on the site. Other exciting finds include a wooden platter, small wooden box and rare small bowls and jars with food remains inside, as well as exceptional textiles and Bronze Age tools. After a catastrophic fire, the houses collapsed into a slow-moving and silty river, which preserved their contents in amazing detail.

David Gibson, Archaeological Manager at the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, Division of Archaeology, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “ ̽��ֱ��discovery of the wheel demonstrates that the inhabitants of this watery landscape had links to the dry land beyond the river.”

̽��ֱ��Must Farm site is located at a quarry run by Forterra. Brian Chapman, Head of Land and Mineral Resources, said: “This is an incredible project which we are delighted to be part of. We understand that the discovery of the wheel is of national importance. We are committed to helping uncover the remaining secrets of this unique site at Must Farm and look forward to working with our partners over the coming months.”

Kasia Gdaniec, Senior Archaeologist for Cambridgeshire County Council, said: “Among the wealth of other fabulous artefacts and the new structural remains of round houses built over this river channel, this site continues to amaze and astonish us with its insight into prehistoric life, the latest being the discovery of this wooden wheel. Believed to be the most complete example yet found from this period, this wheel poses a challenge to our understanding of both Late Bronze Age technological skill and, together with the eight boats recovered from the same river in 2011, transportation.”

Historic England (formerly known as English Heritage) and building products supplier Forterra are funding a major £1.1 million project to excavate 1,100 square metres of the Must Farm quarry site in Cambridgeshire. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge Archaeological Unit, Division of Archaeology, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is over half way through the excavation which is taking place because of concerns about the location and future preservation of the site.

̽��ֱ��remains cannot be preserved indefinitely in situ and need to be recorded and analysed so that the unique site of Must Farm can expand our knowledge of the Bronze Age.

Once the excavation is finished, the team will take the finds for further analysis and conservation. Eventually, the objects will be displayed at Peterborough Museum, Flag Fen and at other local venues. ̽��ֱ��end of the four-year project will see a major publication about Must Farm and an online resource detailing the finds.

̽��ֱ��oldest Bronze Age wheel in Britain is the Flag Fen wheel which dates to c1300 BC but is incomplete and is smaller at 0.8m in diameter. Part of a Late Bronze Age wooden wheel is also known from Lingwood Fen near Cottenham in Cambridgeshire. In Europe, the earliest wheels date to at least 2,500 BC, in the Copper Age.

̽��ֱ��Must Farm site is close to modern-day Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, and sits astride a prehistoric watercourse inside the Flag Fen basin. ̽��ֱ��site has produced large quantities of Bronze Age metalwork, including a rapier and sword in 1969, and more recently the discovery of eight well-preserved log boats in 2011.

These finds place Must Farm alongside similar European Prehistoric Wetland sites: the ancient loch-side dwellings known as crannogs in Scotland and Ireland; stilt houses, also known as pile dwellings, around the Alpine Lakes; and the terps of Friesland, man-made hill dwellings in the Netherlands.

Adapted from a press release by Historic England.

Inset images: Excavation of Bronze Age Wheel at Must Farm one metre in diameter, with hub clearly visible (Copyright Cambridge Archaeological Unit, photo by Dave Webb).

̽��ֱ��largest and best-preserved Bronze Age wheel in Britain has been uncovered at Must Farm, a site described as Peterborough’s Pompeii. ̽��ֱ��wheel will extend our understanding of early technologies and transport systems.

̽��ֱ��discovery of the wheel demonstrates that the inhabitants of this watery landscapes had links to the dry land beyond the river.

David Gibson

Excavation of Bronze Age Wheel at Must Farm one metre in diameter, with hub clearly visible.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Bronze Age stilt houses unearthed in East Anglian Fens

fpjl2 — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 10:04:05 +0000

Archaeologists have revealed exceptionally well-preserved Bronze Age dwellings during an excavation at Must Farm quarry in the East Anglian fens that is providing an extraordinary insight into domestic life 3,000 years ago. ̽��ֱ��settlement, dating to the end of the Bronze Age (1200-800 BC), would have been home to several families who lived in a number of wooden houses on stilts above water.

̽��ֱ��settlement was destroyed by fire that caused the dwellings to collapse into the river, preserving the contents in situ. ̽��ֱ��result is an extraordinary time capsule containing exceptional textiles made from plant fibres such as lime tree bark, rare small cups, bowls and jars complete with past meals still inside. Also found are exotic glass beads forming part of an elaborate necklace, hinting at a sophistication not usually associated with the British Bronze Age.

̽��ֱ��exposed structures are believed to be the best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain and the finds, taken together, provide a fuller picture of prehistoric life than we have ever had before.

̽��ֱ��major excavation is happening because of concern about the long-term preservation of this unique Bronze Age site with its extraordinary remains. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge Archaeological Unit (CAU) is carrying out the excavation of 1,100 square metres of the Must Farm site in Cambridgeshire, and is now half way through the project.

̽��ֱ��excavation site is two metres below the modern ground surface, as levels have risen over thousands of years and archaeologists have now reached the river bed as it was in 1000-800BC. Clearly visible are the well-preserved charred roof timbers of one of the roundhouses, timbers with tool marks and a perimeter of wooden posts known as a palisade which once enclosed the site.

It is possible that those living in the settlement were forced to leave everything behind when it caught on fire. Such is the level of preservation due to the deep waterlogged sediments of the Fens, the footprints of those who once lived there were also found. ̽��ֱ��finds suggest there is much more to be discovered in the rest of the settlement as the excavation continues over the coming months.

CAU’s Mark Knight, Site Director of the excavation, said: “Must Farm is the first large-scale investigation of the deeply buried sediments of the fens and we uncover the perfectly preserved remains of prehistoric settlement. Everything suggests the site is not a one-off but in fact presents a template of an undiscovered community that thrived 3,000 years ago ‘beneath’ Britain’s largest wetland.”

̽��ֱ��£1.1 million four-year project has been funded by heritage organisation Historic England and the building firm Forterra. Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England, said: “A dramatic fire 3,000 years ago combined with subsequent waterlogged preservation has left to us a frozen moment in time, which gives us a graphic picture of life in the Bronze Age.”

After the excavation is complete, the team will take all the finds for further analysis and conservation. Eventually they will be displayed at Peterborough Museum and at other local venues. ̽��ֱ��end of the four year project will see a major publication about Must Farm and an online resource detailing the finds.

̽��ֱ��site, now a clay quarry owned by Forterra, is close to Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire and sits astride a prehistoric watercourse inside the Flag Fen basin. ̽��ֱ��site has produced large quantities of Bronze Age metalwork, including a rapier and sword in 1969, and more recently the discovery of nine pristinely preserved log boats in 2011.

Archaeologists say these discoveries place Must Farm alongside similar European Prehistoric Wetland sites; the ancient loch-side dwellings known as crannogs in Scotland and Ireland; stilt houses, also known as pile dwellings, around the Alpine Lakes; and the terps of Friesland, manmade hill dwellings in the Netherlands.

David Gibson, Archaeological Manager at CAU, added: “Usually at a Later Bronze Age period site you get pits, post-holes and maybe one or two really exciting metal finds. Convincing people that such places were once thriving settlements takes some imagination.

“But this time so much more has been preserved – we can actually see everyday life during the Bronze Age in the round. It’s prehistoric archaeology in 3D with an unsurpassed finds assemblage both in terms of range and quantity,” he said.

For a more detailed summary of the Must Farm discoveries, visit the project archive here: http://www.mustfarm.com/bronze-age-timber-platform/progress/archive/

Large circular wooden houses built on stilts collapsed in a dramatic fire 3,000 years ago and plunged into a river, preserving their contents in astonishing detail. Archaeologists say the excavations have revealed the best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain.

It’s prehistoric archaeology in 3D with an unsurpassed finds assemblage both in terms of range and quantity

David Gibson

Cambridge Archaeological Unit

Archaeologists at Must Farm have uncovered the charred wooden roof structure of a 3,000 year old round house.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes