Subscribe now for full access and no adverts
Nestled in a picturesque part of the South Downs in Hampshire, Butser Ancient Farm is an innovative experimental archaeology centre famed for its reconstructed buildings based on excavated evidence. Visitors to the site can explore an open-air museum of structures spanning the Mesolithic to the Anglo-Saxon period, and in early April the team unveiled their newest creation: a late Neolithic house based on remains that had been uncovered by Martin Green, at Wyke Down in Dorset, almost 30 years earlier.
Martin’s name will be familiar to readers of Current Archaeology. The farm that his family have been running for almost a century lies in a remarkably archaeologically rich landscape – indeed, the course of the six-mile-long Dorset Cursus runs through Martin’s fields, and over the years he has carried out numerous excavations on his land, with illuminating results. In the 1970s, his work at Down Farm revealed a Middle Bronze Age enclosure containing six roundhouses, as well as an unusual longhouse measuring more than 18m (59ft) in length (see CA 67), with associated burials emerging nearby in 1980 (CA 138). Meanwhile, in 2009, Martin’s investigation of an Early Bronze Age ring-ditch at Canada Farm revealed skeletons preserving enigmatic details that gave an insight into ancient funerary practices. Their bodies appeared to have been modified after death, with defleshing chop- and cut-marks visible on some of the remains, while a number of the long bones had been drilled through (CA 279).
The project that provided the inspiration for Butser Ancient Farm’s building, however, falls between these excavations. Martin’s interest in Wyke Down began when a friend at what was then the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (a forerunner of English Heritage/Historic England) showed him an aerial photograph of a barrow cemetery close to his farm. One of Martin’s fields was visible in the shot, and he was intrigued to see a cropmark hinting at the presence of another ring-ditch on his land. In 1983-1984, Martin excavated this circular feature with the help of the East Dorset Antiquarian Society – and their results were not what they expected. Instead of uncovering the remains of an additional barrow, they found that the outline instead belonged to a small late Neolithic henge (CA 138). The monument formed an almost-complete circle c.20m (65.6ft) in diameter, with an entrance to the south; interestingly, this ditch was not a complete line, but was instead made up of a series of adjacent pits.
Signs of structures
This was not the end of the secrets that Wyke Down would give up. In 1995, Martin photographed the site from a microlight, and when he examined the image he could see another circular feature close to the first. An excavation in 1996 confirmed that this was a second, smaller henge, again formed from a ring of pits – and there was more to come. Outside the monument, Martin found a number of pits and post-holes containing quantities of Grooved Ware – the distinctively decorated, flat-bottomed late Neolithic pottery that is thought to have originated in Orkney before spreading across Britain and Ireland in the 3rd millennium BC. Might these hint at the presence of a contemporary settlement? Sure enough, further digging revealed the footprints of two late Neolithic structures beside the smaller henge (CA 169).
One had four internal posts that would have supported its roof, together with a four smaller post-holes possibly representing its entrance. An arc of more post-holes might reflect the line of its outer wall; some of these had been lost to plough damage, but if you extrapolate a full circle, you might imagine a round structure c.8m (26.2ft) in diameter, with a square porch at the front. The other, located 7m (23ft) to the west, was smaller but had a strikingly similar layout. Might these represent the remains of domestic houses within a settlement that boasted its own, dedicated ceremonial monuments? Alternatively, could the structures themselves have had a ritual role, perhaps used to prepare for activities within the henges, or serving as shrines within a wider sacred site?
The buildings’ precise purpose remains obscure, but materials recovered from their post-holes have offered rare insights. As well as a large number of Grooved Ware fragments, and pieces of marine shell (an unexpected find, as the nearest coastline is 48km, or 30 miles, from the site), the post-holes produced quantities of daub and chalk-based plaster. Speaking at the launch event for Butser’s reconstruction, Martin Green described the plaster fragments as ‘very fine, some of them less than 1cm thick, with a lovely smooth finish.’ Such materials are rarely seen on sites of this date, where you would expect them to disintegrate completely, he added – but in this case, the plaster had been ‘cooked’ in a fire that had apparently destroyed the structure from which they came. The plaster was so well preserved that the indented impression of the wattle or reeds that it had been attached to could still be seen – and, even more significantly, the outer surface of some of the pieces bore incisions that look like deliberate decoration, possibly using the same linear motifs that were used to adorn Grooved Ware pots.
A material world
The fragments of daub, cob, and plaster played a key role in the archaeological experimentation that went into Butser’s reconstruction. Professor Charles French and Dr David Friesem at the University of Cambridge have used thin section micromorphology and FTIR analysis (also known as Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy) to identify the fabric compositions and organisation, and the molecular structures of amorphous, disordered, and organic components of the material, revealing that three different chalk-rich fabrics had been used to coat the structure’s interior. The Butser team took this as a starting point to try out various forms of plaster within their own reconstruction; different panels have been covered with chalk wash, chalk putty, chalk mixed with ash and water, and the same mix with the addition of finely chopped hay and/or soil fragments. Charles and David will return to the site in the future to analyse changes in these differing compositions, and to compare them to the archaeological data. ‘It is very rare to have structural materials like this directly associated with a British Neolithic context,’ Charles told CA at the launch. ‘Most of our micromorphological reference examples for different building material components comes from tell sites in the Middle East.’
The FTIR analysis also revealed potential but inconclusive evidence of burnt lime; it is not clear whether this discolouration, hinting at a brief exposure to heat, reflects a deliberate process or if it is another echo of the building’s fiery demise. In order to explore this further, the Butser team plan to carry out their own lime burning in the near future, when the weather is more reliable – they will then apply it to the remaining wall panel to see how this material behaves over time.
The Wyke Down reconstruction stands close to an early Neolithic longhouse that was completed in 2021 (CA 375 and 377), based on one of the structures excavated by Wessex Archaeology at Kingsmead Quarry, Horton, in 2012 (CA 292). The two buildings are very different in form, with the new addition reflecting a smaller, more rounded style of house construction that seems to have been particular to Britain and Ireland towards the end of the Neolithic, but both draw on archaeological evidence preserved in waterlogged contexts like the Sweet Track in Somerset, and prehistoric wells in Germany. Such sites have revealed invaluable clues to the timber-working techniques used by Neolithic carpenters, including wooden pegs and more complex mortise and tenon joints.
Butser’s newest building has a main framework made from split oak, which supports walls of woven split hazel covered in chalk daub, and a woven willow roof topped with reed thatch that is held in place using U-shaped hazel pegs. Some features, such as the small windows allowing sunlight into its cool interior, are conjectural, but its footprint – including a porch, four large, internal posts, and its interior decoration, all draw on the remains discovered by Martin Green. As they enter the structure, visitors can see a display of replica Grooved Ware pots, and, behind these, shadows play across a crisply white-plastered wall, which is decorated with patterns of lines and chevrons echoing those on the vessels. The cool, shady interior is a thought-provokingly atmospheric place – and as he wielded a late Neolithic flint flake to officially open the building, Martin described it approvingly as ‘a 5,000-year-old des res’.
Further information: Butser Ancient Farm is open 10am-4pm on weekends and bank holidays from April to October. As an independent, not-for-profit site, Butser’s archaeological work is directly funded by admission fees (£13.50 for adults, £12.50 concessions, £8.50 children under 16, under-3s free); see http://www.butserancientfarm.co.uk.
