Entitled A Book of Sites (see ‘Further reading’ below), this new CAU volume adds to some 20 previous monographs and more than 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals reporting on large-scale fieldwork in the Cambridgeshire Fens, which began in the 1990s. Excavating such a large area brings its own rewards in understanding the impact of human activity on an entire landscape over several millennia.
Straightening and embankment work that began in the 17th century means that the River Great Ouse today looks like a single watercourse. In prehistory, however, this was a braided river with numerous islands and ridges that were bounded and sculpted by the river’s multiple palaeochannels. The middle and lower reaches of many other rivers in Britain and Europe probably had a similar character, so the fieldwork undertaken by the CAU has significance that stretches beyond the local area. It helps us understand how prehistoric people exploited river and marshland resources at a time when farming communities were first being established and the landscape was being transformed by human intervention.
As the title suggests, this latest volume contains a comprehensive account of investigations across 21 sites along both banks of the River Great Ouse south-west of Earith, representing 16 years of fieldwork. This is the fourth volume in the CAU’s ‘Archaeology of the Lower Ouse Valley’ series, most of which are available as free downloads from the CAU website. The first two are concerned with the archaeology of Colne Fen, north of Earith, while the third, Twice-crossed River, reports on the extraordinary Godwin Ridge sequence at Barleycroft/Over (CA 325). The latter also describes a small artificial platform, 7-10m (23-33ft) wide, located at the western end of the ridge, which had been used during the Bronze and Iron Ages as a ritual site for the deposition of metalwork and weaving combs, as well as the remains of humans, wild birds, and domestic animals.
Excavating the CA archive