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Excavations at Honeygar Farm, a nature reserve that forms part of the Somerset Wildlife Trust, have uncovered the remains of a 6,000-year-old wooden trackway that would have been used during the early Neolithic period to allow people to cross the marshes.
The Somerset Levels, where this newly discovered trackway is located, is home to over half of all the prehistoric trackways currently known in Britain, but their remains are threatened by climate change as frequent droughts are causing these fragile environments, and the archaeology contained within them, to dry out. At Honeygar, the Somerset Wildlife Trust is trying to manage water levels sustainably in an attempt to stop peat from disappearing, something that will help to protect and preserve any more trackways or other water-logged archaeology yet to be discovered.
As part of these efforts, Wessex Archaeology was called out to the site in order to examine the current conditions of previously known prehistoric trackways in the area. They sited their first trench, measuring 15m by 2m (49ft by 6.5ft), along the projected route of the early Neolithic Honeycat Track, but while the team discovered un-disturbed peat deposits, there was no sign of the trackway itself. Undeterred, Wessex Archaeology then opened a second trench 40m (131ft) to the west, along the known location of the Abbot’s Way Track. This had been excavated in 1974, revealing that the trackway consisted of substantial birch and alder planks that were subsequently radiocarbon dated to the late Neolithic, c.2630-2280 BC. This time the team did find a Neolithic track – just not the one they were expecting.
Found at a depth of 1.5m (4.9ft), the newly discovered trackway was a less substantial structure than the Abbot’s Way Track, comprising parallel birchwood poles with brushwood arranged above and below. Radiocarbon dating of one of the poles places its construction in c.3770-3640 BC, around 1,000 years before the Abbot’s Way Track, and potentially older even than the Honeycat Track. While only a small section – measuring 1.4m by 1.7m (4.5ft by 5.5ft) – was uncovered during the excavation, it has the same orientation as the Abbot’s Way Track and could be a potential antecedent to this route.
Soil samples from the newly discovered trackway are now being analysed to help shed light on how this landscape evolved over the past six millennia, as well as to identify the best ways to preserve this environment well into the future.
Text: Kathryn Krakowka / Image: Wessex Archaeology
