MessageToEagle.com – Archaeologists have found the largest and best-preserved Bronze Age wheel at Must Farm, a Bronze Age site near Peterborough, England.
The find – an amazing time capsule of Bronze Age Britain – will extend our understanding of early technologies and transport systems and reveal the design expertise of Bronze Age Britons, according to archaeologists.
A 3,000-year-old wooden wheel is one meter in diameter and has its hub intact at the site of a set of roundhouses destroyed by fire 3,000 years ago.
The wheel – described as “remarkable but fragile’ – is thought to date from between 1100 and 800 BC. An incomplete Bronze Age wheel was already found nearby at Flag Fen, Cambridgeshire in the 1990s.
The large wooden round houses were built on stilts, but plunged into a river after the fire.
The large wheel was unearthed just a few meters away from the biggest round house on the site. Other exciting finds include a wooden platter, small wooden box and rare small bowls and jars with food remains inside, as well as exceptional textiles and Bronze Age tools.
After a catastrophic fire, the houses collapsed into a slow-moving and silty river, which preserved their contents in amazing detail.
“The discovery of the wheel demonstrates that the inhabitants of this watery landscape had links to the dry land beyond the river,” David Gibson, Archaeological Manager at the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, Division of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, said.
The remains cannot be preserved indefinitely in situ and need to be recorded and analysed so that the unique site of Must Farm can expand our knowledge of the Bronze Age.
Once the excavation is finished, the team will take the finds for further analysis and conservation. Eventually, the objects will be displayed at Peterborough Museum, Flag Fen and at other local venues. The end of the four-year project will see a major publication about Must Farm and an online resource detailing the finds.
The oldest Bronze Age wheel in Britain is the Flag Fen wheel which dates to c1300 BC but is incomplete and is smaller at 0.8m in diameter.
Part of a Late Bronze Age wooden wheel is also known from Lingwood Fen near Cottenham in Cambridgeshire. In Europe, the earliest wheels date to at least 2,500 BC, in the Copper Age.
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source: Culture24