Bronze Age logboat remains found at Faversham boatyard

In a Cambridgeshire quarry in the suburbs of Peterborough, a group of eight ancient vessels, including a float about nine meters long. The boats, all purposely sunk more than 3,000 years ago, are the largest group of vessels in the Bronze Age in the same UK, most of whom are remarkably well preserved.

One is covered inside and out with decorative carving described by conservator Ian Panter as looking “as if they’d been playing noughts and crosses all over it”.

Another has handles carved from the oak tree trunk for lifting it out of the water. One still floated after 3,000 years and one has traces of fires lit on the wide flat deck on which the catch was evidently cooked.

Many had ancient repairs, including clay patches and an additional section shaped and pinned in where a branch was cut away. They were preserved by the waterlogged silt in the bed of a long-dried-up creek, a tributary of the River Nene, which buried them deep below the ground.

“There was huge excitement over the first boat, and then they were phoning the office saying they’d found another, and another, and another, until finally, we were thinking, ‘Come on now, you’re just being greedy,'” Panter said.

The boats were deliberately sunk into the creek, as several still had slots for transoms – boards closing the stern of the boat – which had been removed.

Archaeologists are struggling to understand the significance of the find. Whatever the custom meant to the bronze age fishermen and hunters who lived in the nearby settlement, it continued for centuries. The team from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit is still waiting for the results of carbon 14 dating tests but believes the oldest boats date from around 1,600 BC and the most recent 600 years later.

They already knew the creek had great significance – probably as a rich source of fish and eels – as in previous seasons at the Much Farm site they had found ritual deposits of metalwork, including spears.

The boats themselves may have been ritual offerings or may have been sunk for more pragmatic reasons, to keep the timber waterlogged and prevent it from drying out and splitting when not in use – but in that case it seems strange that such precious objects were never retrieved.

Some of the boats were made from huge timbers, including one from an oak which must have had a meter-thick trunk and stood up to 20 meters tall. This would have been a rare specimen as sea levels rose and the terrain became more waterlogged, creating the Fenland landscape of marshes, creeks, and islands of gravel.

“Either this was the Bermuda Triangle for bronze age boats, or there is something going on here that we don’t yet understand,” Panter said.

Kerry Murrell, the site director, said: “Some show signs of long use and repair – but others are in such good condition they look as if you could just drop the transom board back in and paddle away.”

The boats were all nicknamed by the team, including Debbie – made of lime wood, and therefore deemed a blonde – and French Albert the Fifth Musketeer, the fifth boat found. Murrell’s favourite is Vivienne, a superb piece of craftsmanship where the solid oak was planed down with bronze tools to the thickness of a finger, still so light and buoyant that when their trench filled with rainwater, they floated it into its cradle for lifting and transportation.

Because the boats were in such striking condition, they have been lifted intact and transported two miles, in cradles of scaffolding poles and planks, for conservation work at the Flag Fen archaeology site – where a famous timber causeway contemporary with the boats was built up over centuries until it stretched for almost a mile across the fens.

“My first thought was to deal with them in the usual way, by chopping them into more manageably sized chunks, but when I actually saw them they just looked so nice, I thought we had to find another way,” Panter, an expert on waterlogged timber from York Archaeological Trust, said. “I think if I’d arrived on the site with a chainsaw, the team would have strung me up.”

Must Farm, now a quarry owned by Hanson UK, which has funded the excavation, has already yielded a wealth of evidence of prehistoric life, including a settlement built on a platform partly supported by stilts in the water, where artifacts including fabrics woven from wool, flax, and nettles were found. Instead of living as dry-land hunters and farmers, the people had become experts at fishing: one eel trap found near the boats is identical to those still used by Peter Carter, the last traditional eel fisherman in the region.

The boats will be on display at Flag Fen, viewed through windows in a container chilled to below 5c – funded with a £100,000 grant from English Heritage which regards their discovery as of outstanding importance – built within a barn at the site. At the moment conservation technician Emma Turvey, dressed in layers of winter clothes, is spending up to eight hours a day spraying the timbers to keep them waterlogged and remove any potentially decaying impurities. They will then be impregnated with a synthetic wax, polyethylene glycol, before being gradually dried out over the next two years for permanent display.

Murrell is convinced there is more to be found down in the silt.

“The creek continued outside the boundaries of the quarry, so it’s off our site – but the next person who gets a chance to investigate will find more boats, I can almost guarantee it.”

A 1,800-year-old Roman signet ring engraved with the goddess of Victory Found in a field in Somerset.

An amateur treasure hunter has made a ‘stunning’ find from the Roman era in the south-west of England.  With the help of a metal detector, the man discovered a golden ring at a site being investigated by local archaeologists.

The find is being hailed as very important and one of the most significant finds from the Roman-era in the area in recent years. This discovery has kindled a new excitement regarding the importance of the location where it was discovered and illustrates once again the significant role amateur archaeologists play in unearthing the past.

The Roman gold signet ring with an engraving of ancient victory goddess Victoria / Nike has been found by Jason Massey in a field near Crewkerne, BBC News reports.

Massey, who is part of the Detecting for Veterans group, found the Roman gold ring last Sunday after he unearthed some 60 Roman coins.

At first, he thought he had found his first gold coin but the find turned out to be a gold ring weighing 48 grams (1.7 oz).

The Roman ring is described as one of the most substantial archaeological finds in the recent history of England’s Somerset County and is thought to date back to the period between 200 and 300 AD.

The 3rd century AD Ancient Roman gold ring has been discovered in the same spot. Massey and other amateur detectorists stumbled upon a large number of coins and a Roman grave containing coffin lined with lead.

According to Massey, the site in question near Crewkerne, Somerset County, may have once housed a “very high-status Roman villa”.

“There’s a load of figures floating about [for the value of the ring] but we’re interested in the villa, who’s lived there and where they’ve come from and who the person was that wore this ring,” he says.

“There are a couple of gold rings of that sort of date from Somerset but they’re not common. Gold is… an indication that the owner is fairly wealthy,” comments Ciorstaidh Hayward-Trevarthen, finds liaison officer for South West Heritage Trust.

The Ancient Roman grave containing a lead coffin and over 250 coins that Massey and other amateur detectorists found in last year that was dated to ca. 400 AD

A total of six out of some 200 similar Roman lead coffins found in all of the UK have been discovered in the southwestern Somerset County.

In 2016, there were a total of 37 reported cases of treasure found in Somerset in 2016, the largest for five years.

Somerset County is in England’s top 10 local authority areas for treasure, according to official figures from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Norfolk County topped the list with 130 discoveries in 2016.

Pompeii of the North: London’s most important excavation ever unearths a Roman treasure

Just yards from the River Thames – in what is now the capital’s financial district – archaeologists have found coins, pottery, shoes, lucky charms, and an amber Gladiator amulet which date back almost 2,000 years.

Situated on the largest swathe of the lost Walbrook River still remaining in the City, the wet conditions have created perfect conditions for the survival of archaeological material, giving an extraordinary glimpse into life in bustling Roman Londinium. Even objects and structures made of wood and leather – which normally rarely stand the test of time – have been discovered, leading archaeologists to dub the site “the Pompeii of the north.”

Experts excavating the site, which lies alongside a huge building project for new offices on Queen Victoria Street, have uncovered wooden structures from the 40s AD around 40ft (12 meters) beneath the ground.

The discoveries have been so well preserved in the muddy waters of the lost Walbrook River that archaeologists have nicknamed the site ‘the Pompeii of the North’.

Sadie Watson, the site director  from the Museum of London Archaeology, said: ‘Certainly the archaeology on this project so far is probably the most important excavation ever held within London, certainly within Roman London

‘The depth, the preservation, the extent of the archaeology – the entire Roman period is represented by fantastic buildings as well as artifacts.’

The three-acre site, which was once on the banks of the River Walbrook, is also home to the Temple of Mithras, discovered in the 1950s.

It has offered experts an unprecedented glimpse into life in the bustling center of Roman Londinium. Archaeologists from the museum were able to excavate the area when work to build the vast Bloomberg Place development began.

Since then around 10,000 accessioned finds have been discovered by 60 archaeologists – the largest haul of small finds to have ever been recovered on a single excavation in the capital.

Approximately 3,500 tonnes of soil have been excavated by hand, which is around 21,000 barrows full.

More than 100 fragments of Roman writing tablets have been unearthed, while 700 boxes of pottery fragments will be analyzed by specialists.

This site has provided the largest quantity of Roman leather to have ever been unearthed in the capital, including hundreds of shoes.

Sophie Jackson, from the museum, said: ‘The site is a wonderful slice through the first four centuries of London’s existence.

‘The waterlogged conditions left by the Walbrook stream have given us layer upon layer of Roman timber buildings, fences, and yards, all beautifully preserved and containing amazing personal items, clothes, and even documents – all of which will transform our understanding of the people of Roman London.’

Everyday Life In A Bronze Age Village Emerges In U.K. Excavation

Must Farm, an extraordinarily well-preserved Late Bronze Age settlement in Cambridgeshire, in the East of England, drew attention in national and international media as ‘Britain’s Pompeii’ or the ‘Pompeii of the Fens’.

The major excavation was funded by Historic England and Forterra Building Products Ltd, which owns the Must Farm quarry.

What did villagers in England eat for dinner 3,000 years ago? And what were they wearing?

These are the kinds of questions that archaeologists believe they can answer with a Bronze Age-era discovery at the Must Farm Quarry, some 80 miles north of London.

“What’s special about this is, it’s not the archaeology of the important people. It’s not burial mounds. This is the archaeology of the home,” David Gibson from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit says in an interview with All Things Considered.

The research team says say these circular Bronze Age homes were perched on stilts above a river.

Archaeologists believe that when a fire started, the residents fled, and their dwellings sunk into the river where they were preserved by the silt, creating a unique snapshot of everyday life thousands of years ago.

Among this treasure trove are whole pots with food inside, textiles made from plant fibers, a longboat, weapons, and colorful beads.

Gibson says they’re sending off pots for analysis. “It might even tell us exactly what their last meal was before the fire struck,” he says. And somewhat chillingly, “we know it was sudden because one of the pots with the food still had its wooden spoon stuck in it.”

He adds that they’ve found 29 complete food vessels and pots, ranging in size from 2 feet high to 2 inches. “It’s almost like someone has gone to the department store and ordered the full set for their house,” Gibson says.

It’s the “best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain,” preservation group Historic England says in a statement.

Historic England and the Forterra Quarry are funding this $1,588,000 project over four years.

“Normally, when we do archaeology, we see the decay of a settlement, we see it going out of use, and we see the slow back-fill overtime of the ditches and the pits.

We don’t see a snapshot. So this is almost like, you get the opportunity to peek through the curtains and see people actually in their daily moment,” archaeologist Selina Davenport told the BBC.

Archaeologists are still excavating the site. They say the findings will eventually be displayed at nearby museums.

Solid gold ring with the lord of rings inscription found in the field

A gold ring engraved with a romantic message has been unearthed centuries after it was last seen.

Amateur treasure hunter Morley Howard was metal detecting in a newly ploughed field in Highbridge, Somerset, when he made his discovery.

The ring, with a Lord of the Rings-style inscription reading ‘In thee my choys I do rejoys’ is thought to be a 300-year-old posy ring, traditionally given by lovers in Elizabethan times.

Mr Howard, from Burnham-on-Sea, is now waiting for the ring to be dated by the British Museum.

He said: ‘When previously metal detecting on this land I’d only unearthed pre-decimal and modern items, but when the farmer recently ploughed the land, I thought I’d give it a couple of hours again.’

‘My metal detector was quiet initially, but just as I was about to turn around, my machine gave a good strong signal and I dug a small plug and lifted the soil to reveal a small band of yellow.

‘It was a marvellous moment – I thought what a loss it must have been for the owner at the time, but it was also a joy for me to get a treasure find.’

He took the ring to the Somerset Heritage Centre before sending it on to the British Museum where it will be verified by jewellery experts.

But Mr Howard believes it is an Elizabethan posy ring, which were traditionally given by lovers with romantic messages engraved on the inside in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.

He said: ”Many posy rings were made for women and are smaller, but this one is a male ring and weighs 6.8 grams.  It’s hard to date as there are no maker’s initials or hallmarks.

‘These posy rings can have a value of between £1,500-£4,000, and if it’s proven to be more than 300 years old it will be offered to a local museum to acquire.

‘If a museum wants it, they’ll have to pay the land owner 50 per cent and myself 50 per cent once it’s been valued. 

‘If the ring is not acquired by a museum, then it’s returned to me and the land owner and we’ll decide what to do with it.’

The inscription is typical for a ring of the period. 

Burnham-on-Sea dates back to Roman times, making it a favourite with treasure hunters.  In 1607 the Bristol Channel flooded, swamping Burnham and leaving many treasures buried under the mud the water brought.