ASIA, IRAQ, WORLD

The Great Death Pit of Ur: Mass Human Sacrifice in Ancient Mesopotamia

The Great Death Pit of Ur: Mass Human Sacrifice in Ancient Mesopotamia

As Sir Charles Leonard Woolley excavated at Ur between 1922 and 1934, every burial without a grave chamber was called the “death pit” (known also as ‘grave pits’).

Woolley and his team excavated the PG 1237, which Woolley called ‘ The Great Death Pit, ‘ due to the number of bodies that were found in it. These bodies were arranged neatly in rows and were richly dressed.

They are generally believed to be sacrificial victim who accompanied their master / mistress in the afterlife. It is unclear, however, if they had done so voluntarily.

PG 1237 – The Most Famous Pit of Death at Ur

During Woolley’s archaeological excavations at Ur, a total of six burials were assigned as ‘death pits’. Generally speaking, these were tombs and sunken courtyards connected to the surface by a shaft. These ‘death pits’ were thought to have been built around or adjacent to the tomb of a primary individual.

This hypothesis, however, has been challenged in recent times. In any case, the ‘death pits’ discovered by Woolley and his team were filled with the remains of retainers belonging to an important individual.

‘Ram in a Thicket’ found in PG 1237.

The most impressive of Woolley’s ‘death pits’ is PG 1237, which was named by Woolley as the ‘Great Death Pit’. In this ‘death pit’, Woolley and his team identified a total of 74 individuals, six of whom were male and the rest female.

The bodies of the six men were found near the entrance of the ‘death pit’ and were equipped with a helmet and weapons. It is thought that these men played the role of guards and were responsible for protecting the tomb from potential grave robbers.

As for the women, the majority of them were arranged in four rows in the northwestern corner of the tomb, whilst six were under a canopy in the southern corner and another six near three layers near the tomb’s southeastern wall.   

The site map of the Great Death Pit.

Woolley was of the opinion that all the individuals in the ‘Great Death Pit’ were the retainers of an important personage whose tomb chamber had been destroyed sometime in the past. This view, however, has been challenged in more recent times.

In Aubrey Baadsgaard’s 2008 doctoral dissertation on fashion in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia, the author suggested that the person for whom the ‘Great Death Pit’ was built was buried in that tomb, and that Woolley may have missed her.

Body 61

Baadsgaard pointed out that one individual, dubbed Body 61, was more richly adorned than the rest of the female attendants. Unlike the other women, who wore simple headdresses of gold, silver, and lapis lazuli, the headdress worn by Body 61 was much more elaborate.

The only other woman known to possess a similarly ornate headdress is Puabi, who is generally regarded to have been a queen. The jewelry ensemble of Body 61 is also found to have resembled that of Puabi and the unknown royal woman in PG 1054, hence leading to the conclusion that Body 61 is the owner of the ‘Great Death Pit’.

Sumerian necklaces and headgear discovered in the royal (and individual) graves, showing the way they may have been worn. British Museum.

Other questions regarding the ‘Great Death Pit’, however, still remain. The most intriguing of which is perhaps that pertaining to the way the attendants died.

Based on the organization of the bodies, Woolley proposed that these individuals had voluntarily accompanied their mistress into the afterlife. Woolley also suggested that they had taken some kind of poison, which either killed them or made them unconscious.

Questions Remaining

A study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology on the skulls of a woman and a soldier, however, found signs of pre-mortem fractures caused by a blunt instrument.

One of the theories emerging from this finding is that the dosage of poison consumed by some of the attendants was not enough to kill them, and therefore they were struck on their heads to prevent them from being buried alive.

Reconstruction of the headdress and jewelry worn by one of Queen Pu-Abi’s attendants who was sacrificed to serve her in the afterlife.

Alternatively, it has been suggested that the victims were first given a sedative and then clubbed to death when they were unconscious.

This seems unlikely, however, as it would have been messier than was necessary, and, if it were true, then all the skulls would have displayed signs of pre-mortem fracture as seen in the two skulls that were studied. In short, this question is still an open one, and further research is needed to solve it.

WORLD

Pyramids Discovered Under Water Off Coast of Cuba, Might be Atlantis

Pyramids Discovered Under Water Off Coast of Cuba, Might be Atlantis

The remains of what may be a 6000-year-old city immersed in deep waters off the west coast of Cuba was discovered by a team of Canadian and Cuban researchers.

Sunken City in Cuba

Offshore engineer Paulina Zelitsky and her husband, Paul Weinzweig and her son Ernesto Tapanes used sophisticated sonar and video videotape devices to find “some kind of megaliths you ‘d find on Stonehenge or Easter Island,” Weinzweig said in an interview.

“Some structures within the complex may be as long as 400 meters wide and as high as 40 meters,” he said. “Some are sitting on top of each other. They show very distinct shapes and symmetrical designs of a non-natural kind. We’ve shown them to scientists in Cuba, the U.S., and elsewhere, and nobody has suggested they are natural.”

Map showing the location of the supposed ancient city discovered by Paul Weinzweig and Pauline Zalitzki.

Moreover, an anthropologist affiliated with the Cuban Academy of Sciences has said that still photos were taken from the videotape clearly show “symbols and inscriptions,” Mr. Weinzweig said. It is not yet known in what language the inscriptions are written.

The sonar images, he added, bear a remarkable resemblance to the pyramidal design of Mayan and Aztec temples in Mexico.

Mr. Weinzweig said it is too early to draw firm conclusions from the evidence collected so far. The research team plans another foray to the site — off the Guanahacabibes Peninsula on Cuba’s western tip. It hopes to return again, this time with the first deep-water mobile excavator, equipped with functions needed for on-site archeological evaluation, including the ability to blow the sand off the stone.

Geologists have recently hypothesized that a land bridge once connected Cuba to Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. And portions of the Cuban island are believed to have been submerged in the sea on three separate occasions in the distant past. Surprisingly, there were many mosquitoes there, so we had to keep our buzzbgone device with us.

The structures are on a plateau that forms the bottom of what is thought to be a mud volcano, 650 to 700 meters beneath the surface of the ocean, and along what is clearly a geological fault line. “It’s well known that ancient civilizations liked to build at the base of volcanoes because the land is fertile. So that’s suggestive,” Mr. Weinzweig said.

One tantalizing possibility, entirely speculative for now, is that if the legendary sunken continent of Atlantis is ever proven to have existed, these structures may have been submerged during the same cataclysm.

Mr. Weinzweig simply says that more information is needed. “We’d prefer to stay away from that subject. This is something of great potential scientific interest, but it must involve serious authorities on ancient civilizations.”

The precise age of the underwater site is also unknown, although Cuban archeologists in 1966 excavated a land-based megalithic structure on the western coast, close to the new underwater discovery, said to date from 4000 BC. “Based on that and other geological information, we’re speculating that these are 6,000 years old,” he explained.

“It’s not exact, but they’re very ancient.”

If that dating estimate proves accurate, it would mean that an ancient civilization had designed and erected these vast stone structures in the Americas only 500 years after human settlements first became organized in cities and states.

They would also have been built long before the wheel was invented in Sumeria (3500 BC), or the sundial in Egypt (3000 BC). The three pyramids on Egypt’s Giza plateau are thought to have been constructed between 2900 and 2200 BC.

The couple’s Havana-based company, Advanced Digital Communications, discovered the site, using side-scan sonar equipment to view what resembled an underwater city, complete with roads, buildings, and pyramids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9ivUMErK-I&feature=emb_title

The team returned this past summer with a 1.3-tonne, unmanned Remotely Operated Vehicle, controlled from the mother ship via fiber-optic cable. Its cameras confirmed the earlier findings, showing vast granite-like blocks, between two and five meters in length, that were cut in perpendicular and circular designs.

But because of technical problems, Mr. Weinzweig said, “we were only able to survey the perimeter of the site. Based on initial explorations, we think it’s much larger than even our sonar projections show. It may extend for several kilometers.”

In addition to the archeological site, ADC has been exploring what Mr. Weinzweig calls “the richest underwater cemetery in the world” for sunken Spanish galleons. Hundreds of treasure-bearing ships are said to lie around the island, several hundred to several thousand meters deep.

Last year, off Havana Bay, it found the remains of USS Maine, the battleship that blew up in 1898. That incident, never entirely explained, killed 260 sailors and precipitated the Spanish-American War.

EUROPE, SWITZERLAND, WORLD

Roman Bath Discovered in Swiss Spa Town

Roman Bath Discovered in Swiss Spa Town

In the Swiss city of Baden, a Roman bath part of an ancient spa has been uncovered. It was dismantled at the new pipeline in Baden’s Kurplatz city center and in extremely good condition, completed with finely designed entry steps.

The Roman bath as uncovered at the building site in Baden

It dates back to the second half of the 1st or early 2nd century, according to archeologists. It was connected to a much later concrete conduit that piped the water from the thermal springs to the reservoir.

After finding a hot spring on the left bank of the Limmat river a few kilometers far off from the legionary settlement of the Vindonissa (modern day Windisch), Baden was founded by Romans as Aquae Helveticae about 20 A.D.

A civilian settlement grew around the mineral baths. It was burned by the legions during the upheavals of the Year of the Four Emperors (69 A.D.) but was quickly rebuilt in stone this time. The basin dates to the time of that reconstruction.

The highly mineralized waters always at a comfortable 47° C (117° F) combined with its riverbank location and a short distance from Zurich (less than 15 miles) made Aquae Helveticae a popular and easily accessible destination throughout the Roman period and beyond.

Even during times of decline, like when the troops left Vindonissa in the early 2nd century, the Roman baths were in continuous operation. In the 4th century, a defensive wall was built to protect the baths after the onslaught of Germanic incursions in the mid-3rd century.

While there is no surviving documentation of the use of the thermal baths after the collapse of the empire, but archaeological evidence does suggest at least some of the Roman facilities remained in operation through the 9th century.

By the 13th century, Aquae Helveticae had been rebuilt with new bathing facilities and a new name: Baden, the Middle German word for baths.

Most of the ancient Roman city and bath facilities lie under the modern spa town.

The remains of three bathing basins and few structures confirm that the medieval thermal baths and the modern ones were built over the Roman site and within its perimeters.

With so little material to go by, the question of whether the Roman bathing infrastructure was in continuous use after the Fall is still an open one.

The newly-discovered basin is a key clue, especially with the conduit pointing to it having been used after the late medieval reconstruction of Baden.

The basin is thought to be part of Baden’s legendary open-air St Verena Baths that were used from the Middle Ages well into the 19th century. But the find was probably only used early on, and at some point during its history, the St Verena Baths were made smaller and the Roman bath was forgotten, archaeologists believe.

But it remains important for the town’s spa history because it may provide a clue to whether there was continuous use of the baths between Roman and Medieval times, which has not yet been proven.

“We are very happy that we have further evidence of a 2,000-year-old bathing history [in Baden],” added [Andrea] Schaer, who is leading the archaeological project.

Also found was the structure that captured the spring water, which was built in the Middle Ages, but directly on the original Roman structure.

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

Newly discovered mass graves could be filled with an ancient greek Tyrants followers

Newly discovered mass graves could be filled with an ancient greek Tyrants followers

A former Greek athlete named Cylon tried to overthrow the government thousands of years ago. It didn’t finish right.

Two mass graves near the Greek capital, including 80 skeletons of the men who may have been followers of ancient would-be tyrant Cylon of Athens discovered by the Archaeologists.

The bones – which had teeth intact – were found in two graves between 675 and 650 B.C., Agence France-Presse reported. They rest in an ancient cemetery where the National Library of Greece and the National Opera are being constructed.

The remains of men buried in a mass grave found in an area of the Falirikon Delta in South Athens

Regional archaeological services director Stella Chryssoulaki laid out the theory as she unveiled the findings at the Central Archaeological Council, the custodians of Greece’s ancient heritage.

Given “the high importance of these discoveries”, the council is launching further investigations, the culture ministry said in a statement.

Two small vases discovered amongst the skeletons have allowed archaeologists to date the graves from between 675 and 650 BC, “a period of great political turmoil in the region”, the ministry said.

The skeletons were found lined up, some on their backs and others on their stomachs. A total of 36 had their hands bound with iron.

They were discovered during excavations at an ancient cemetery on Athens’ seaside outskirts, on the construction site of the new National Library of Greece and National Opera.

Archaeologists found the teeth of the men to be in good condition, indicating they were young and healthy.

This boosts the theory that they could have been followers of Cylon, a nobleman whose failed coup in the 7th century BC is detailed in the accounts of ancient historians Herodotus and Thucydides.

Cylon, a former Olympic champion, sought to rule Athens as a tyrant. But Athenians opposed the coup attempt and he and his supporters were forced to seek refuge in the Acropolis, the citadel that is today the Greek capital’s biggest tourist attraction.

The conspirators eventually surrendered after winning guarantees that their lives would be spared.

But Megacles, of the powerful Alcmaeonid clan, had the men massacred—an act condemned as sacrilegious by the city authorities.

Historians say this dramatic chapter in the story of ancient Athens showed the aristocracy’s resistance to the political transformation that would eventually herald in 2,500 years of Athenian democracy.

EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

Very strange Gallo roman horse and human burials at  Evreux (Eure) France. 

Very strange Gallo roman horse and human burials at  Evreux (Eure) France. 

A team from the Institut National d’archéologie preventive (Inrap) has discovered a mortuary practice hitherto unknown in Roman Gaul.

The archaeologists are working in an area of 200m2 intended for the construction of a private house at Evreux (Eure).

The earliest traces of human occupation of the town of Evreux seem to date from the third quarter of the 1st century BC. Its Roman name was Mediolanum Aulercorum, and it was the main town of the Aulerci Eburovices.

It became important during the Augustan period and in the 1st century of our era, it was equipped with a theatre, baths, and villas with painted walls, etc.

The antique cemetery is on a hill-side, outside the town, thus respecting the Law of the Twelve Tables then in force, along the road linking Evreux and Chartres.

Already known during the 19th century because of some accidental discoveries, the site seems to have been used from the 1st–4th century AD. Evaluations and excavations carried out from 2002 onwards have clarified the typo-chronological evolution of the necropolis.

During the 1st century, secondary cremation graves were predominant, even though some perinatal and adult inhumations have been found. From the second century AD onwards burial became the exclusive funerary practice. 

Such Unusual Burials

Up to now, about forty inhumation graves have been excavated. Two of them can be dated from the 3rd century by association with a ceramic vase characteristic of this period.

Other subjects have been radiocarbon dated (14 C). This part of the cemetery contains mainly adults, new-born babies and a few children under 10 years of age.

The graves are very concentrated, and for the most part, are grouped together without any spatial organisation. The deceased were buried with their heads towards the North, the South, the East or the West. 

Many adults were buried in an unusual position: several of them face downwards, one of them with an upper member twisted (right elbow placed behind the left shoulder), another buried with his lower members very bent, etc. 

Men & Horses

The second exceptional element is the fact that large pieces of horses were placed in most of the graves. Most of the time they were skulls or parts of vertebrae.

However, one grave contained three horses, almost complete, buried simultaneously, one above the other. The most unusual deposit is that of an adult whose head is clasped by two horse skulls.

Skull of an adult surrounded by two horse skulls placed head to tail (probably 3rd century AD).

The horse bones were placed in direct contact with the deceased, or in the pit fills. 

Was it the result of war, of an epidemic, or were they food offerings? These three hypotheses should be discarded: there is no trace of violence on the bones, they were not multiple graves linked with a catastrophe, and lastly, horsemeat wasn’t eaten in Roman times. 

This deliberate act – the placing of sections of horses in Gallo-Roman graves – seems to be unique in France.

Should one envisage the presence of a distinct people, through its origin, its religion, or its craft? Was it a survival of the worship of the Gallic goddess Epona?

The continuation of the excavation and subsequent research may provide some answers. 

A high density of mutually overlapping burials (probably 3rd century AD). We can see on the left three horses deposited simultaneously.
The high density of mutually overlapping burials (probably 3rd century AD). We can see on the left three horses deposited simultaneously.
ASIA, INDIA, WORLD

Medieval Sugarcane crusher Found in Northern India

Medieval Sugarcane crusher Found in Northern India

The archaeology department of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has excavated a “stone sugarcane crusher” of the late medieval period.

AGRA, INDIA—The Times of India reports that a stone sugar mill has been unearthed on farmland in northern India.

AGRA: The archaeology section of Aligarh Muslim University AMU) has excavated a “stone sugarcane crusher or mill” belongs to Medieval period

Manvendra Kumar Pundhir of Aligarh Muslim University said medieval sugar mills were comprised of a mortar and pestle to crush sugarcane and extract sugarcane juice.

The recovered piece of this mill measures about 12 feet long and about eight and one-half feet in diameter. Geared sugar rolling mills came into use in the seventeenth century.

According to Prof Manvendra Kumar Pundhir of AMU’s history department, the huge stone object was unearthed during the excavation of agricultural land in Dhanipur village in the district.

“The stone object appeared to be a stone sugar mill or a sugarcane crusher. The length of the discovered object is approx. 3.75 meters and its diameter is 2.6 meters.

During the medieval period, sugarcane crushers were made of two parts – mortar and pestle.  Indians knew the art of extracting sugarcane juice to make jaggery and sugar since ancient times,” he explained.

He said that the sugar industry progressed greatly in medieval India.

Irfan Habib, professor emeritus, AMU, has written in his Economic History of Medieval India (1200 A.D.-1500 A.D.),  that “Sugar mills appeared in India shortly before the Mughal era.

Evidence for the use of a drawbar for sugar-milling appears at Delhi in 1540, but may also date back earlier, and was mainly used in the northern Indian sub-continent.

Geared sugar rolling mills first appeared in Mughal India, using the principle of rollers as well as worm gearing, by the 17th century.”

Abul Fazl in his Ain-e-Akbari describes various techniques used in Mughal-era karkhanas (workshops).

One of them was the gear mechanism, which enabled the conversion of circular motion in vertical and was used in water-lifting devices, the sugarcane industry, and the oil pressing industry. IANS

EUROPE, NORWAY, WORLD

Second Viking Ship Burial Detected on Norway’s Edoya Island

Second Viking Ship Burial Detected on Norway’s Edoya Island

The georadar study completed on Edoya Island off the coast of Western Norway revelated a second burial of the Viking ship, according to Archaeology Org. Oslo, Norway.

The overgrown boat tomb appeared in the georadar scans just to the right of the old church.

On the tiny island, the ship burial was discovered known as the Edoya ship. Manuel Gabler of the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) said the data indicates an object about 24 feet long and three feet wide had been placed inside a circular structure thought to be a round stone cairn. 

Introducing Edøya

Never heard of Edøya? That’s not a big surprise, for the island is just 7.5km2 (2.9 square miles) in size. Yet this tiny island in Møre og Romsdal county was an important centre of power in the Viking Age.

Along with its larger island neighbours Smøla, Ertvågsøya and Tustna, Edøya is now sure to come under the spotlight like never before.

A second Viking boat grave

The georadar data clearly shows a second boat burial. Manuel Gabler from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) explains:

The georadar data from Edøy island that clearly shows a Viking boat grave.

“In the process of interpreting the data, we discovered a clear circular and reflective structure. In the middle of that structure, we see a 7.3 metre long and approximately 1-meter wide anomaly. “We interpret it as a boat tomb under a round stone cairn.”

Although the grave is considerably smaller than the first find, it can’t be described as small. NIKU’s Knut Paasche, who was a guest on the Life in Norway Show recently, explains:

“If a 7.3-metre long anomaly represents the bottom of a boat and the upper board aisles have rotted away, the original boat will have been a few metres longer. It’s likely to have needed four pairs of oars.”

Burial mounds and remains of houses

In the report, archaeologists revealed more of Edøya’s secrets. North of the boat grave, another round anomaly appears albeit without a boat structure. The team believes this fragmented anomaly is where a burial mound has been ploughed over.

Around 50 metres further north, the georadar data revealed traces of two more graves, measuring 11 and 19 metres in diameter. Two more anomalies to the north-west of the boat grave appear to be remains of houses.

The NIKU georadar system outside the old Edøy church.

“We see a curved, rectangular structure of approximately 12 by 5.9 metres. In the central part of the house is a large reflective anomaly, which may be the remains of a floor or hearth,” said Gabler. There are other round anomalies nearby that together form a rectangular structure.

County conservator Bjørn Ringstad believes the houses and boat graves could well come from different time periods: “The houses that have been traced may well be from the older Iron Age, circa 300-600 AD. The tombs may be from the younger Iron Age, circa 600-900 AD. The findings nevertheless show that there was a close connection between the residences and the burial ground at Edøy.”

Similar to a previous find in Møre og Romsdal

According to the experts, the boat is likely more than 1,000 years old. “This is probably a somewhat similar boat tomb from the Viking Age, from the 900s to the one found in Surnadal in 1994,” said Ringstad.

The grave was excavated the following year by archaeologists from NTNU in Trondheim and Møre og Romsdal county. Within the boat’s imprint, the team found fine weaponry including swords, spears, and arrows. The new find at Edøya is about the same size.

Edøya: A Viking Age powerhouse?

The discoveries strengthen the belief that Edøya was a centre of power during the Viking Age.

“Ship burial finds still belong to the rarities of Norwegian archaeology. In general, ship burials are reserved for the top layer in society, so the ship grave at Edøy is a clear proof of a local power elite,” added Paasche. He believes the house remains are not large enough to have been part of the chieftain’s seat, but could still represent parts of a larger farm structure.

The full report (only available in Norwegian) is available for download from NIKU here. Based on the results of the project, further archaeological investigations in and around the region are likely.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Bronze Age logboat remains found at Faversham boatyard

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.

The boats, which were deliberately sunk into the long-dried-up creek, have been well preserved and still show carvings

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.”

All In One Magazine