Identification of locally sourced wetland foods, however, is challenging, as the palaeochannel silts include naturally derived assemblages of fish bone and frequent, uncharred seeds of edible plant parts such as blackberries and elderberries. Evans The thin stratigraphy, architectural clarity and highly structured artefactual and biological assemblages all suggest a brief occupation. Earlier channel activity—weirs, fish trap and timber causewayExcavation of the Must Farm pile-dwelling settlement, showing the main body of the collapsed settlement (looking east) in its river-silt matrix (photograph by D. Webb).Site location in the Flag Fen Basin (lidar data), with key sites marked (lidar data from Environment Agency LIDAR Composite DTM 1m, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0; figure arrangement by D. Horne & V. Herring).Plan of worked wood (vertical piles and horizontal structural timbers) (figure arrangement by D. Horne & V. Herring).Key structural elements: palisade, raised walkway and five structures (1–5) (figure by V. Herring).Excavation methodology—scaffold platform above structure 1 (photograph by D. Webb).Material culture ‘footprint’ beneath structures 2 & 4 (scale = 1m) (photograph by D. Webb).Formative midden deposit inside the eastern perimeter of the enclosing palisade (orthographic image and digitised drawing by D. Horne & V. Herring).Plan of structure 1 showing the distribution of key material sets (structural uprights in black; figure arrangement by D. Horne & V. Herring).Top) thread/yarn wound around sticks/round dowels; bottom) a complete two-piece axe haft with Ewart Park-type socketed axe (photographs by D. Webb).Reference Barrett, Jones, Pollard, Allen and GardinerReference Küster, Haselgrove, Rebay-Salisbury and WellsFood, gender and metal: questions of social reproductionFrom bronze to iron: the Bronze Age–Iron Age transition in Europe(British Archaeological Reports International series 483):Are models of prestige goods economies and conspicuous consumption applicable to the archaeology of the bronze to iron transition in Britain?Image, memory and monumentality: archaeological engagements with the material worldLate Bronze Age ritual and habitation on a Thames eyot at Whitecross Farm, Wallingford: the archaeology of the Wallingford Bypass 1986–92Perishables and worldly goods—artifact decoration and classification in the light of wetlands researchFengate revisited, further Fen-Edge excavations, Bronze Age fieldsystems and settlement and the Wyman Abbott/Leeds ArchivesGeoarchaeology in action: studies in soil micromorphology and landscape evolutionThe Must Farm timber alignments: an archaeological and environmental evaluation. After describing the discovery, setting and character of the remains, we present lines of evidence that suggest this settlement existed for months, rather than decades. The project was monitored by the Historic Environment Team of Cambridgeshire County Council. While the two categories are not mutually exclusive, the majority of uncharred small biota appear to be organisms from within the palaeochannel catchment. Prior to the catastrophic fire at Arbon Bleiche 3 in Switzerland, for example, there were multiple phases of construction and the formation of approximately 15 years of occupation deposits (Jacomet At the Must Farm site, the superstructure's untimely and catastrophic demise means that we are able to investigate the undisturbed remnants of an active, functioning pile-dwelling settlement ( The stratigraphical simplicity of the settlement contrasts with the mass of structural and material remains identified, and so, the complexity of the site resides in its material intensity: roofing materials, superstructural components, wooden artefacts, pottery sets, bronze tools and weapons, fabrics and fibres, querns, loom weights, spindle whorls, articulated and butchered animal remains, charred plants and seeds, coprolites and an abundance of ecological evidence ( Remains related to the construction of the settlement consist primarily of woodworking debris, but also include a complete hafted axe ( Overall, the inventory of material culture associated with the pile-dwellings consists of hundreds of Late Bronze Age items, including over 180 fibre/textile items (categorised as fibre, textile, twinning and knotted net), 160 wooden artefacts (including bobbins, containers, withies, furniture or fittings, hafts and vehicle parts), 120 pottery vessels, 90 pieces of metalwork and at least 80 glass beads ( The charred plant and animal assemblages are diverse and sometimes remarkable, including items rarely found in later prehistoric Britain, such as calcined pike bone, charred sheep/goat dung pellets and, currently unidentified, entire charred tubers. The previously identified alignment of piles was revealed to form part of an enclosing palisade of a pile-dwelling settlement constructed over a freshwater channel.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Within this shelter, careful single-context hand excavation of the channel silts was undertaken using a 1m A vast quantity of charred and uncharred structural wood was exposed ( Although the focus of the archaeological investigations was the pile-dwelling settlement, earlier, deeper episodes of channel activity were also exposed. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. (Pat Christman/The Free Press via AP)New Ulm Diocese Bishop John LeVoir answers questions after testifying in bankruptcy court Tuesday at the diocese headquarters in New Ulm, Minn. U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Kressel on Tuesday, March 10, 2020, approved a plan that provides for a payment of over $34 million for sexual abuse survivors and the implementation of future child protection protocols in the diocese. The diverse biota identified include diatoms, pollen and spores, plant seeds and fruits, insect exoskeletons, ostracod valves, mollusc shells and vertebrate bones (Gibson In 2015–2016, a single phase of full excavation, recording and removal of the pile-dwelling was commissioned by Historic England and the landowner, Forterra Building Products Ltd. Ongoing dendrochronological analysis of the structural timbers reveals that the settlement was built in a single construction phase, using wood of a similar felling year. The preservation of processing tools (featuring microwear), seed caches, meat joints, charred foodcrusts within pots and platters, pot lipid signatures, waterlogged faeces and formative middens offer high potential for addressing diet at the settlement.