The Must Farm Bronze Age Site

As I wrote back in December, amazing finds are being made at a Bronze Age site in the British Fens called Must Farm. Work continues, and more comes out all the time. The Fens are a big marsh on the northeast coast of England, and mining clay has long been an important local industry. Back in 2006, clay miners working at the Must Farm found what seemed to be ancient wood in one of their pits.

This turned out to be a wooden platform, sort of a bridge that once connected two island along a small river. In the pictures above you can see the ancient river channel after excavation, and a plan showing some of the key finds along the river: fish traps and weirs, dugout boats (eight so far), and a large, artificial platform called the roddon. The platform may have been an adaptation to rising water levels; back in the Neolithic this was dry land, and it got increasingly wet over the centuries until serious drainage efforts got under way in the Middle Age.

The artifacts from the platform show evidence of intense burning. It looks like the platform caught fire (or was set on fire by attackers) and burned to the water line, dropping its contents into the murky water, where deposits of clay preserved them in fabulous condition.

A sample of Bronze Age pottery.

Many metal artifacts have also been found. Bronze was so rare and expensive in the Bronze Age that you hardly ever find bronze objects that were just thrown away or lost. So these may have been ritual offerings to the river, part of the ancient European habit of sacrificing by casting valuable objects into the water. Some people think the swords mark an intense battle fought mainly on these bridges, but I have to think that after a battle survivors would have come back looking for lost weapons. Maybe there weren't many survivors. Above, bronze swords.

A sickle. I suspect this was a ritual object, since a wooden sickle lined with sharp bits of stone would work better and stay sharp longer. Bronze Age people actually used stone tools for many purposes, something you don't often hear about because archaeologists who like stone tools study the stone age, and those who study the Bronze Age are bored by stone tools.

A spear point.

A dugout boat, with carved decoration. What an amazing view into the past this site gives.

Update on the 2015 discoveries here.