The Somerset Levels and Moors has proved to be a productive area for archaeological research for a century and a half, famed for the prehistoric lake-villages and wooden trackways in the Brue valley. The peat cuttings, which had proved so fruitful for local archaeologist Arthur Bulleid, later attracted Harry Godwin, who undertook pioneering palaeoenvironmental work. The Cambridge University link with Godwin led John Coles to the area and to a burgeoning partnership with Bryony Orme from Exeter University. Over a 15 year period, between 1974 and 1989, their Somerset Levels Project developed a range of techniques that set new standards for wetland archaeology in the UK and beyond. Studies of the wider landscape, extensive fieldwalking, re-examination of key sites and palaeoenvironmental investigations supplemented a fieldwork programme driven by the necessity of rescue excavation in advance of peat extraction. New techniques of wood conservation were employed and a keen focus was kept on the prompt dissemination of results to both academic and public audience.
Since the end of this pioneering project, wetland archaeology has remained a priority in Somerset. Attempts to preserve wetland monuments have gone hand in hand with the discovery and investigation of new site types. Fieldwork has shifted away from the peat cuttings to the coastal claylands and the inter-tidal area and the formation of projects examining key research topics such as Mesolithic wetland-dryland boundaries and the archaeology of the ‘islands’ of hard geology in the floodplain. The early focus on prehistory has broadened to later periods and techniques such as GPR and LiDAR are opening up new avenues of research.
Communication of wetland archaeology to a wide public audience has been a continuing theme, through local talks, publications and reconstructions of prehistoric roundhouses, trackways and log boats. More recently, 3D reconstructions of past wetland sites and whole landscapes have been created.
Location
Norcroft Centre, University of Bradford
