By Daniel Dipper aged 14
The Importance of
Must Farm
In a brick pit in the Fenlands , just outside of Whittlesey , near Peterborough , archaeologists are discovering amazing information about life in the Bronze Age . Young Reporter Daniel Dipper has been involved in the project at Must Farm where a Bronze Age Settlement dubbed “ Peterborough ’ s Pompeii ” by the media , is being uncovered .
Must Farm is an amazing and rare preserved Bronze Age site in the Fens . The site is about 3000 years old but is a freeze frame of a community all that time ago . I was lucky enough to be involved in the Must Farm project . This involved me visiting the site , which was quite a day . A white tent on the edge of a road marked the Bronze Age settlement . About two metres below , wooden posts lie . Considering that these posts survived a fire , they look like they were only put in the ground a few weeks ago but they may form part of a small cluster of roundhouses . The roundhouses would have looked similar to this Scottish crannog :
Due to the waterlogged conditions , the wood and the
settlement has been preserved including textiles . These discoveries were so rare that the archaeologists apparently thought it was from their own clothes !
I didn ’ t get to see the Bronze Age wheel which the newspapers publicised . What I did see though were pots that were deliberately
Image : Christine Westerback designed to stand on surfaces , leading archaeologists to believe that they may have had tables . A multipurpose tool like a bucket with cut marks on the bottom may have been used as a cutting board . They had a wide range of metal and stone tools , so maybe this area was violent .
I got the opportunity to visit Cambridge University to meet some of the archaeologists to find out what they did and how they are involved in the project . One unit is responsible for animal bones and working out what animals were at this site . Another unit is responsible for soil , looking at the nutrient levels and if there is anything else that can give us a clue about what it was like to live in the Bronze Age .
16 IGNIS