Location | Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, England |
---|---|
Coordinates | 52°33′18.85″N0°10′38.35″W / 52.5552361°N 0.1773194°W |
History | |
Material | Wood |
Periods | Bronze Age |
Site notes | |
Archaeologists | Cambridge Archaeological Unit |
Public access | No |
Website | www |
Must Farm is a Bronze Age archaeological site consisting of five houses raised on stilts above a river and built around 950 BC in Cambridgeshire, England. [1] The settlement is exceptionally well preserved because of its sudden destruction by catastrophic fire and subsequent collapse onto oxygen-depleted river silts. [2] [3]
The site is on the bed of a now-defunct river in Flag Fen basin, [4] around 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) south of Flag Fen itself.
The site has been described as "Britain's Pompeii" because of its condition [1] [5] and was named Best Archaeological Project and Best Archaeological Discovery at the 2012 British Archaeological Awards, and Best Discovery at the 2016 Awards. [6] [7] An article describing the settlement won the Antiquity Prize 2020. [2] [8]
Wooden posts were first recognised at the site in 1999, leading to preliminary excavations in 2004 and 2006. [9] Early finds at the site include a rapier and a sword in 1969. Between 2011 and 2012, eight Bronze Age log boats were discovered. [4] The boats were found in a small freshwater palaeochannel and were preserved because of waterlogging. [10]
Radiocarbon dating has indicated that the ages of these boats spanned a period of about 1,000 years, with the earliest examples dating to around 1750–1650 BCE. [11] Some of the boats may have been deliberately sunk. [12] They are now preserved at Flag Fen and are available to view on guided tours. [13]
Bronze Age woven wooden fish traps and wattle-hurdle fish weirs were found in the same channel, together with metalwork including swords and spears. [10]
In September 2015, the University of Cambridge's Cambridge Archaeological Unit began a dig, eventually covering 1,100 square metres (1,300 sq yd), the details of which were publicly disclosed in January 2016. [4] [10]
Historic England funded a £1.1 million project to excavate the site to gain as much knowledge of Bronze Age life in Britain as possible. [5] Archaeologists found two roundhouses, from about 1000–800 BCE, and concluded that they were damaged by fire and that the platform on which they sat then slid into the river, where the fire was extinguished and the buildings and objects within them were preserved in the silt. [5] [4] [16] About half of the settlement is thought to have been lost to modern-day quarrying. [9]
Objects recovered include pots still containing food, textiles woven from lime tree bark and other plant fibres, sections of wattle walls, and glass beads. [5]
In 2016 a large wooden wheel of about 1 m (3.3 ft) in diameter was uncovered at the site. The specimen, dating from 1,100 to 800 years BCE, represents the most complete and earliest of its type found in Britain. The wheel's hub is also present. A horse's spine found nearby suggests the wheel may have been part of a horse-drawn cart. The find "expands our understanding of late Bronze Age technology", said Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England, which was co-funding the project. [17] As of August 2016 [update] , the archaeology had been removed and the site reburied to be left sealed. [18]
In 2019 researchers at Cambridge and Bristol universities revealed the results of a study of human and dog coprolites found at the site. They discovered the presence of fish tapeworms, echinostoma worms, capillaria worms and giant kidney worms. The research shows the earliest evidence of human infection by these parasites in Britain. [19] [20]
The dig was the subject of a BBC Television documentary, Britain's Pompeii: A Village Lost in Time, first broadcast on BBC Four on 2 August 2016. [21] The excavation became known for its extensive digital outreach. [22]
These artefacts from Must Farm were photographed at Peterborough Museum in July 2017:
Cambridgeshire is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, Northamptonshire to the west and Bedfordshire to the south-west. The largest settlement is the city of Peterborough, and the city of Cambridge is the county town.
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Seahenge, also known as Holme I, was a prehistoric monument located in the village of Holme-next-the-Sea, near Old Hunstanton in the English county of Norfolk. A timber circle with an upturned tree root in the centre, Seahenge, along with the nearby timber circle Holme II, was built in the spring-summer of 2049 BC, during the early Bronze Age in Britain. Contemporary theory is that they were used for ritual purposes; in particular Holme II has been interpreted as a mortuary monument that may originally have formed the boundary of a burial mound.
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The Dover Bronze Age boat is one of fewer than 20 Bronze Age boats so far found in Britain. It dates to 1575–1520 BC, which may make it one of the oldest substantially intact boat in the world – though much older ships exist, such as the Khufu ship from 2500 BC. The boat was made using oak planks sewn together with yew lashings. This technique has a long tradition of use in British prehistory; the oldest known examples are the narrower Ferriby boats from east Yorkshire. A 9.5m long section of the boat is on display at Dover Museum.
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This page lists major events of 2021 in archaeology.
The superbly preserved remains of a Bronze Age settlement offer a glimpse of a "colorful, rich, varied" domestic life circa 850 B.C.