Three millennia ago, a small, prosperous farming community flourished on the marshes of eastern England. The inhabitants lived in thatched circular houses built on wooden stilts over a canal of the River Nene, which empties into the North Sea. They wore fine linen garments; they bartered for glass and amber beads imported from places as far away as present-day Iran; They drank from delicate earthen cups; They dined on wild boar leg and venison dipped in honey, and fed their dogs with table scraps.
Less than a year after its construction, this prehistoric idyll came to a dramatic end. A catastrophic fire devastated the complex; Buildings collapsed and villagers fled, abandoning their clothing, tools and weapons.
Everything, including the atole in the pots, passed through the burning wicker floor and fell to the thick, sticky reed beds below. Over time, the objects were buried in 2 meters of peat and silt.
The river gradually changed its course, but the objects remained intact for almost 3,000 years, preserving a record of daily life at the end of Britain's Bronze Age, from 2500 BC to 800 BC.
That moment frozen in time is the subject of two monographs recently published by the University of Cambridge. Based on a 10-month excavation of what is now known as Must Farm Quarry, a magnificently preserved submerged settlement in the shadow of a French fry factory 120 kilometers north of London, the studies are as detailed as a forensic crime scene report. A monograph, a synthesis of the site, is 323 pages; the other, for specialists, has almost a thousand more pages.
“This didn't feel like archaeology,” said Mark Knight, project director and one of the authors. “Excavating the site felt a little rude and intrusive, as if we had arrived after a tragedy, rummaged through someone's belongings and gotten a glimpse of what they did one day in 850 BC..”.
“The Must Farm report is transforming our understanding of British society in the millennium before the Roman conquest, 2,000 years ago. Far from being primitive, the communities of the Bronze Age “They lived in harmony with their neighbors, while enjoying life in warm, dry houses with excellent food,” said Francis Pryor, a British archaeologist best known for his 1982 discovery of Flag Fen, a nearby Bronze Age site.
Until a decade ago, the site was buried in a clay brick quarry. The original village is believed to have been twice as large—mining activity in the 20th century destroyed half of the archaeological site. What remained were four large round houses and a small square entrance structure erected on a wooden platform and surrounded by a six-foot-high palisade of sharpened ash posts, a barrier designed for defense.
Green wood, fresh wood chips, and a lack of repairs, reconstruction, or insect damage suggested the complex was relatively new at the time of the fire.
Archaeologists unearthed 180 items of textiles and fibers (yarn, cloth, knotted nets), 160 wooden artifacts (spools, benches, metal tool handles and wheels), 120 pottery vessels (bowls, jugs, pitchers) and 90 pieces of goldsmithing (sickles, axes, chisels, a dagger, a razor). Beads that had formed part of an elaborate necklace indicated a level of sophistication rarely associated with Bronze Age England. There was no evidence of human casualties.
Interest in Must Farm first arose in 1999 when a Cambridge University archaeologist spotted a series of oak posts protruding from clay beds in the quarry. Excitement grew as preliminary excavations unearthed fish traps, bronze swords and spearheads.
The monographs left a question unanswered: Was the fire the result of an accident or an attack?
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