LIFE & CULTURE
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This was village life in Britain 3,000 years ago

The superbly preserved remains of a Bronze Age settlement offer a glimpse of a ‘colourful, rich, varied’ domestic life circa 850 BC

    • Must Farm Quarry, a Bronze Age site on a river channel in eastern England, is the subject of two monographs published on Mar 19 by Cambridge University.
    • Must Farm Quarry, a Bronze Age site on a river channel in eastern England, is the subject of two monographs published on Mar 19 by Cambridge University. PHOTO: NYTIMES
    Published Fri, Mar 22, 2024 · 07:00 AM

    THREE millennia ago, a small, prosperous farming community briefly flourished in the freshwater marshes of eastern England.

    The inhabitants lived in a clutch of thatched roundhouses built on wooden stilts above a channel of the River Nene, which empties into the North Sea. They wore clothes of fine flax linen, with pleats and tasselled hems; bartered for glass and amber beads imported from places as far-flung as present-day Iran; drank from delicate clay poppy-head cups; dined on leg of boar and honey-glazed venison, and fed table scraps to their dogs.

    Within a year of its construction, this prehistoric idyll met a dramatic end. A catastrophic fire tore through the compound; the buildings collapsed, and the villagers fled, abandoning their garments, tools and weapons.

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