# "Best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain" at Must Farm quarry



## Brian G Turner (Jan 12, 2016)

The BBC has an article about a current archaeological dig at Must Farm quarry, in Cambridgeshire, which are being claimed to be the "best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain":

Bronze Age houses uncovered in Cambridgeshire 'best ever' - BBC News





More pics at the BBC website.

And here's the dedicated website on the dig:
http://www.mustfarm.com/


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## The Judge (Jan 12, 2016)

I was just coming to give a link to this, and thought I'd better check no one had beaten me to it!  Very interesting about all the finds they've got, including woven material and thread.


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## Parson (Jan 12, 2016)

Thanks. Cool site. You wonder how they could possibly hope to determine if a fire 3000 years ago was an accident or deliberate. Boggles the mind!


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## Brian G Turner (Feb 6, 2016)

A small update on this posted to the BBC website:
New finds at Bronze Age 'Pompeii' Must Farm quarry - BBC News


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## Brian G Turner (Feb 19, 2016)

And now - discovering the wheel:
Bronze Age wheel at 'British Pompeii' Must Farm an 'unprecedented find' - BBC News


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## Ray McCarthy (Feb 19, 2016)

Another link to the 3,000 year old Oak Plank wheel  (Bronze Age, so likely Proto - Celts )
Perfectly preserved bronze age wheel unearthed in Cambridgeshire



> He said the discovery was further evidence of how the people of this settlement lived on and in the water and were rich enough to all but ignore the abundant food a few feet away – the fish, eels and water fowl swimming around their foundations.
> Instead the bones and food traces reveal that they were eating quantities of lamb, along with pork, beef and venison, and various grains. They clearly had large numbers of domesticated animals pastured on the nearest dry land, and though the superbly preserved log boats found five years ago on another part of the site must have been the main form of transport, the wheel proves that they also had horse drawn carts.


Fits nicely with my fantasy history Bronze Age people.


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## svalbard (Feb 19, 2016)

All interesting stuff.


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 14, 2016)

The BBC provides a further update on the site: 'Britain's Pompeii' was 'Bronze Age new build' site - BBC News


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## Dave (Jul 14, 2016)

Sigh! I wish the BBC could talk about such finds using archaeologists rather than presenters who think Bronze Age men must have been very hairy, and that explains why tweezers have been found. For me, this sums up everything wrong with reporting news today.


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## svalbard (Jul 14, 2016)

Why? Would they have not being very hairy...a sort of 'hipster' Bronze Age counter culture to a modernising Iron Age encroachment.


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## mosaix (Jul 14, 2016)

For me, the spear tip and the uniformity of the woven cloth are both stunning.


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## Parson (Jul 14, 2016)

mosaix said:


> For me, the spear tip and the uniformity of the woven cloth are both stunning.



I agree! The cloth is the work of a master!


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## Allegra (Jul 24, 2016)

In case it hasn't been reported here: 

A 3,000-year-old world has been unearthed in England's Fenlands  - CNN.com


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## Allegra (Jul 24, 2016)

Oh, how could I, or should I say CNN just now discovered this treasure!


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## The Judge (Aug 2, 2016)

I'm not sure if those outside the UK will be able to view it, but for the rest of us the BBC has a programme on this tonight at 9 pm BBC - Britain’s Pompeii: A Village Lost In Time - Media Centre


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## Vertigo (Aug 3, 2016)

Did anyone watch this? I missed it and was wondering if it was worth iPlayering. I watch so little TV these days that it has to be good for me to give up the time... That said Alice Roberts is generally very good.


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## The Judge (Aug 3, 2016)

I did.  It wasn't bad, but to my mind could have been better.  But I am very pernickity.

The good news is it wasn't as dumbed-down as some of them can be, and since it was BBC, and therefore no ads**, we were spared those awful repetitions after every break to remind everyone what they'd reminded us of umpteen times before.  There was other repetition which could have been excised though, eg the same panning shots over the excavations, a CGI of palisades going up, and her expressions of delight, and she was so keen to stress how the inhabitants were probably European "immigrants" (her word) and that they were part of a wonderful pan-European trading group it would undoubtedly have been a bone of contention with Brexiteers if it had been shown pre-referendum!

She buzzed over to Lake Constance to see a replica lake-village, and to a German museum with a gorgeous metal depiction of the night sky which they think was a planting guide, both well worth seeing, though I'm not sure why the latter was relevant to the Must Farm site save in a general sense of what was happening in the Bronze Age, and in both cases I'd have liked to have been told a lot more eg about the construction of the village.  And they had a couple of re-enactment type things.  The first was building and then setting fire to a round house so a forensic archeologist could see how quickly it burned, which I thought rather a waste of time -- it burned quickly, but so what? -- while the interesting investigation happened off screen when he came to the conclusion the fire had started inside a house.  The second was a bronze-smith making a sword -- they've found lots there, and plenty of arrow heads, axe heads, and scythes, all of which looked like new! -- and that was very good, but again I'd have liked more detail.

As ever there were far too many mood shots -- Alice Roberts looking thoughtful, lovely scenes of reeds rippling over lakes and the like -- and for my taste not nearly enough concrete information: we were told the bowls still contained food, but not what kind of food it was (OK they need to do tests, but I'd expect some ideas); we saw animal bones, but no discussion of what creatures they came from; we saw a tool used for beating plants to get the fibres for cloth-making, but little detail of how it was used or what plants. 

Overall, to my mind the actual info given could easily have been condensed into a much shorter programme.  If they had to make it an hour's length, then they could have had more of the archeologists and experts talking of what they'd found.  So for me, it was only around 7½/10.


** but there were regular pauses, and I can't help thinking it was designed to be shown elsewhere which would have ads, and they'd built ad-zones into it all ready for a voice-over!


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## Vertigo (Aug 3, 2016)

Hmmm, as I get older I'm getting steadily more pernickity too (great word that! ). I really miss the days when documentaries were about presenting facts in an easy to understand manner rather than some strange overriding desire to focus more on the visual and dramatic aspects.

On top of that I'm already familiar with that German metal depiction of the sky if it's the Nebra sky disk.

I guess it'll be a maybe... if I have a spare hour sometime.


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## The Judge (Aug 3, 2016)

Yep that's it, the Nebra sky disc.  I'd not seen it before, so it was enthralling, but bound to be a bit same-y for you if you know about it.

And I feel exactly the same about this emphasis on making everything dramatic (the only reason for setting the roundhouse on fire as far as I could see, as it made for great shots of burning thatch).  Trouble is, these programmes -- and a good bit of the heritage industry like the NT -- are all about entertainment nowadays, not education/information.  Bah, humbug.  The two of us shall have to set up a Pernickity Viewers Association to bring back good documentaries!


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## Vertigo (Aug 3, 2016)

Bah humbug indeed. I mean I do enjoy "docu-dramas" but they are a very different beast to a documentary. These days the documentaries don't seem to know which they want to be.


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## Parson (Aug 3, 2016)

@Vertigo and @The Judge  ---- pernickity people that you are, you are both the sort of people which are looking to learn something more than simply being entertained, which makes you part of a very small minority. Here in the states even the "news" programs are really more interested in being entertaining for the sake of ratings. And do you really think that television will ever set the bar so high as to need University to understand what's being said. Plus, visual arts loves atmospheric mood shots. If you can do it, they reason, why not?

..... I know, I'm being preachy, put it off to having a bad day. (Okay?) ....


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## The Judge (Aug 4, 2016)

You're right, Parson, I know.  But I feel the need every now and then to let off steam against the continual infantilisation of society, with everything reduced to the level of a not-very-intelligent child, and entertainment valued above information. I don't mind entertainment in its place.  I don't mind visuals, which can be wonderful.  I do mind dumbing-down.   *sigh*

Anyway, sorry to hear you're having a bad day.  Hope it gets better soon.  (And if you're not allowed to be preachy at times, who is?! )


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## mosaix (Aug 8, 2016)

Vertigo said:


> Did anyone watch this? I missed it and was wondering if it was worth iPlayering. I watch so little TV these days that it has to be good for me to give up the time... That said Alice Roberts is generally very good.



I saw it and I agree with much of what TJ has already said. 

One thing I didn't realise before (I've probably not being paying attention) is that there are several round houses.  I had the impression (or assumed) that there was just one. 

I was particularly impressed with the wheel. It somehow made the whole thing come to life.


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## The Judge (Aug 8, 2016)

I'd forgotten about the wheel -- that was interesting to see.  But again, I felt there was a great deal more we could have been told eg its size (if they did mention this, I certainly missed it), eg the likely form of cart, eg whether it would have been bound with metal.  Most importantly, what on earth a wheel which presupposes land transport was doing in a house which was built on stilts over water!  Especially when everyone kept saying how important the waterways were for travel and commerce.  So was it just for transporting the materials for building the settlement in the first place (though presumably the trees were local and the thatch was reed from the water margins) or for crops from their fields, or might in fact they have been trading with settlements further inland? They probably couldn't have given any answers, but they didn't even seem to be asking any questions.


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## mosaix (Aug 9, 2016)

Agreed TJ. I read a 'specialist' in one newspaper suggesting that they were manufacturing a cart in the round house. I suppose they may have been making parts of it for assembly elsewhere (can't see them getting a whole cart out through the door) or more likely just doing some kind of repair.


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## Brian G Turner (Aug 18, 2018)

You know, I stumbled across this article again just now - and the idea of having dwellings over water very much reminds me of Scottish Crannogs.

From the BBC article about the Cambridgeshire finds:







From the Wikipedia article on Crannogs:






That leaves me wondering if we're looking at a cultural link.

The Cambridgeshire site dates to around 1000-800BC, whereas Scottish Crannogs - according to Wikipedia - appear in the Neolithic period, then disappear, only to re-appear again _from _around 800BC.

A quick look suggests this may correspond to the invasion/migration of the Celts into Britain - which, interestingly enough, occurs around 1200BC across Europe - and is contemporary with the collapse of Bronze Age civilizations around the Eastern Mediterranean: Atlantic Bronze Age - Wikipedia

In which case, is this style of building over water a response to such an invasion/migration - or a new way of living introduced at the time?

Simply thinking aloud.


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## Brian G Turner (Apr 23, 2019)

And just to bump this, because I hadn't realized that Must Farm is part of the Flag Fen archaeological site: Flag Fen - Vivacity Peterborough


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## Brian G Turner (Jun 12, 2019)

A report this week suggests that a lot of the structures at Must Farm may have only been up a year before they burned down:
The short life of Must Farm

Frustratingly, the original report (found here) doesn't appear to date that.

Interestingly enough, the entire Flag Fen site - of which Must Farm is a part of - is mentioned in the above as being inhabited around 1200-800 BC. This is interesting because Cline has claimed major environmental changes around 1100 BC and causing the collapse of Bronze Age civilization in the Mediterranean: The collapse of Bronze Age civilisation

Curiously, though, major climate change in Britain doesn't appear in the geological record until 300 years later - around 800 BC. Luckily, the Flag Fen site has been overseen for decades by Francis Pryor - who not only appeared a lot on Time Team, but also happens to write a lot of books about prehistory, including one specifically about Flag Fen. I'm just going to have to read more by him to explore this mystery further.


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