Secrets of the Dorset marsh: Excavating Bronze Age remains and one of Britain’s oldest wooden tools

After the end of the last Ice Age, the landscape around what today is Poole Harbour in Dorset underwent a series of gradual but dramatic transformations. Birch woodland was slowly replaced first by pine and then broadleaf trees, within which areas of peat- and reed- marsh began to grow. The low sandy islands and ridges of glacial gravels in this watery environment offered oases of dry land that soon attracted the attention of prehistoric communities living nearby. During the Bronze Age, the wetland was visited and revisited over many generations, with groups travelling from nearby settlements to harvest reeds and rushes, dig peat, and turn out cattle to pasture during dryer months. These com