Food
The extraordinary preservation of material at Must Farm provides a unique opportunity to examine food that was being stored, processed, and possibly eaten shortly before the fire. The food and drink mixtures from Must Farm are exceptional in prehistoric Britain. They represent the remains of porridges, stews, brewing mashes, doughs, and sugary or oily liquids, all of which were being stored or potentially even eaten or drunk at the time the settlement burnt down.
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| Residue of food in one of the Must Farm bowels Photo: (c) Must Farm Website |
A coarseware bowel found beneath Structure
5 was half full of a thick porridge-like mix of roughly ground wheatmeal. The
wooden spatula used to stir this porridge was still leaning against the inner
edge of the bowl.
Meat was very evidently an
important dietary component. Animal remains included large and small mammals,
fish, birds, reptiles and amphibia. Pig/wild boar, followed by sheep/goat, red deer,
and fish (pike and perch) were the main animal foodstuffs.
The considerable evidence for
fish consumption at Must Farm is unparalleled in British later prehistory, partly
because of the exceptional preservation and the recovery methods employed. Evidence
for Late Bronze Age fishing practices is provided by fragments of knotted net
– possibly fishing net – that were associated with a possible ceramic net
weight, in Structure 4.
Fish were often eaten either raw
or only partially cooked and the fish bones were commonly consumed along with
the flesh: fish bones, scales, and teeth (including fish heads) were a regular
feature of human excrement.
Two other noteworthy foodstuffs
from the settlement are milk and honey/beeswax. Organic pot residues of these
were widespread suggesting that their use was relatively common.
Cattle are barely represented at Must Farm representing less than 4% of the animal remains in total. Although pigs were clearly an important dietary component, there is little evidence to suggest that they were being raised and slaughtered at the settlement.
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| Items of pottery from Must Farm Photo: (c) Must Farm Website |
The occupants of Must Farm
processed emmer wheat into meal and flour and used these ingredients for making
stews, dumplings, and bread. They used ceramic bowels to eat their porridge,
mixed their dough in wooden ‘dough’ troughs and carried their drinking water
in buckets.
Overall, the evidence from Must
Farm makes clear that later prehistoric food practices in Britain are more
complex and more varied than has previously been recognized. As the Must Farm
researchers point out, the food-related evidence is outstanding and allows us
to imagine not only the food tastes of Must Farm’s occupants’ but also the
‘recipes’ they used. We learn about the food harvested, made, stored, and
consumed.
Fabric Production
Must Farm has produced extraordinary evidence of fibre processing and fabric production. All the fabrics from the Must Farm pile-dwelling were made from plant fibres, predominantly flax, although lime bast was also used.
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| Illustration of one of the Must Farm textiles showing the weave and thread direction Photo: (c) Must Farm Website |
Processed flax fibre was in turn
spun and spliced into thread, which was then wound onto wooden dowels or into
balls. The site produced at least 8 spindle whorls, 36 dowels or bobbins wound
with thread, a number of balls of thread, as well as a cone of thicker cord.
One of the finest examples of
textiles was found in Structure 1. This large, fine piece of folded cloth was
woven from threads of around 0.3 mm in diameter and must have been made by a
highly experienced weaver.
Artefact distributions, suggest
that different stages of textile production were performed across buildings.
For example, flax was probably processed in Structure 1, with the spinning of
fibres into yarn carried out across Structures 2, 4 and 5 (if not all
buildings). This was then finally woven into textile on the warp-weighted loom
located back in Structure 1.
Wider Connections
The beads, appear to have travelled distances, possibly from Iran, Egypt, Switzerland, and Ireland. The site’s location on a waterway networked into the North Sea made it easier for its inhabitants to acquire objects from further afield.
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| Socketed bronze axe Photo: (c) Must Farm Website |
Nine logboats, ranging in date
from the late Early Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, were found in the Must
Farm channel, upstream of the pile-dwelling. Wooden trackways or causeways may
have provided a connection between the river and fen-edge.
Comparison with other settlements
The Iron Age Glastonbury ‘Lake
Village’ in Somerset is comparable to Must Farm, in terms of size, location and
economy. Unlike Must Farm, Glastonbury Lake Village could only be reached by
canoe. This limited means of access would have provided an enhanced level of
protection.
Glastonbury and Must Farm both
represent villages rather than just one or two family groups. A minimum of five
structures were in use at the same time at Must Farm. Glastonbury Lake Village
was more extensive and accommodated forty roundhouses. At its peak it has been
estimated that there were thirteen houses in use.
The Must Farm roundhouses were raised up above the water on tall piles while the lake village settlement was raised above the water by adding large amounts of brushwood and logs, and clay directly to the wet peat. This material was partially retained by lines of upright posts, both within the settlement and forming a palisade around the exterior.
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| The remains of a wooden bucket that contained scrap bronze associated with Structure 4 Photo: (c) Must Farm Website |
At Glastonbury, the village was
located on a significant water transport route, as was Must Farm. Glastonbury
relied on the neighbouring dryland for the basis of its food economy, despite
the exploitation of wetland resources. The same was true at Must Farm.
Late Bronze Age sites in Ireland
such as Ballinderry crannog No. 2, Co. Offaly and Rathtinaun, Co. Sligo, are
still amongst the richest settlement sites from the period, in terms of
artefacts despite the discovery, in the last decade, of significantly more
‘dryland’ settlements in Ireland.
Late Bronze Age crannogs or
lake-dwellings have produced evidence for livestock (animal bones) and food
production (saddle querns), as well as domestic pottery, wooden finds, and
basketry. Some sites have produced evidence of high-status goods, such as
socketed axes, bronze rings, swords, and spearheads, and amber and lignite.
For example, Late Bronze Age
wetland settlements, like Rathtinaun, Co. Sligo, have produced evidence for
industrial or metalworking activities, such as layers of burnt stone, clay
mould fragments, saddle querns in large numbers, and evidence for large hearths
and fires.
Abandonment of Settlement
The summer/early autumn end date
for the settlement is indicated by the 3–6 month old lambs killed in the fire.
The rarity of fruit stones and seeds (sloes, cherries, hazel nutshell) suggests
much of the settlement’s occupation was during the spring/early summer months
when such fruit was absent.
There seems to have been little
effort by the occupants of Must Farm to return and recover precious fragments
of their lives, despite the obvious material wealth that had been lost.
Retrieving precious items in the aftermath of the fire may therefore have been
taboo.
The abandonment of wetland
settlements is likely to have been a complex social process. The death of a
person strongly associated with the dwelling such as a tribal leader or shaman,
can result in abandonment and the dwelling may even be burnt down.
Conclusion
In the mid-9th century BC, a
disaster happened to a small community when fire swept through their
palisade-enclosed pile-dwelling settlement, built only a year earlier across a
narrow sluggish river channel in a wetland landscape.
The fire caused the collapse of the structures, and as the floors burnt through, the contents of the buildings and walkways came crashing down into the shallow muddy waters below and were buried by river borne silts. The occupants escaped with their lives and in a matter of hours, they lost their homes and possessions, as well as their means of subsistence: tools, food stores, livestock.
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| A wooden artefact from Must Farm - exact use unknown Photo: (c) Must Farm Website |
The Must Farm settlement
gives us a rare glimpse of life in the Bronze Age. There were live lambs inside
the buildings at the time of the fire, beside rushes and flax harvested in late
summer and willow withies cut when the leaves had fallen in the winter.
The Bronze Age settlement at Must
Farm, with its remarkable survival of a wide range of evidence, provides a
unique opportunity to think about how people understood their worlds. The
anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, considered that the important questions we
should ask of any society are: who do people think they are; what did they
think they were doing, and to what end did they think they were doing it?
In the words of Volume 1 contributor Aidan O’Sullivan:
“… the objects found at Must
Farm – beads from Iran, Switzerland, Ireland; amber long circulating from the
Baltic regions; a bucket and other bronze fragments from Ireland – all hint at
far-flung water-borne connections. But for all that, most of the objects
recovered, including pottery, wooden bowls, platters, buckets and troughs,
balls of thread and woven, twined and knotted fabrics of flax and lime bast
indicate that they were doing ordinary, routine things; living in houses,
chatting, sleeping, cooking and eating, raising children, storing stuff, making
clothes, managing resources, presumably all the time, feeling that they were
‘at home’.”
The people who inhabited Must
Farm possessed a deep-rooted familiarity with erecting structures in the wet:
knowledge of piling and of which timbers to cut at what lengths; knowledge of
how to support heavy roofs, elevated floors, and hearths above an active
waterway.
The skill displayed by the
architecture suggest that this was not the first or only pile-dwelling to be
founded in the wetland. As construction could have required labour input from
beyond the resident group, this building knowledge may have been widely
available in the local community, suggesting wetland living was commonplace.
“Must Farm
pile-dwelling settlement: Vol. 1. Landscape, architecture and occupation.”
(2024). Edited by Mark Knight, Rachel Ballantyne, Matthew Brudenell, Anwen
Cooper, David Gibson & Iona Robinson Zeki
“Must Farm
pile-dwelling settlement: Volume 2. Specialist reports.” (2024). Edited by Rachel
Ballantyne, A. Cooper, D. Gibson, Mark Knight & I Robinson Zeki
Both volumes are
freely accessible via the Must Farm website
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