timber structures

Bronze Age watering hole found near Gloucester

Excavations south of Gloucester have uncovered a remarkably well preserved Bronze Age watering hole, with many of its wooden structures surviving in situ. The discovery was made last year during investigations by Cotswold Archaeology. When they first stripped back the…

Dover boat & Newport Ship: Excavating the CA archive

My ‘great’ site this month comprises two sites – actually, two ships – linked by common stories of survival against the odds. In September 1992, the remains of a boat dating to the Middle Bronze Age were discovered in central Dover by workers constructing part of the A20 link road leading to Folkestone.

Below An aerial view of Llangorse Lake from the north west, with the crannog close to the northern shore (centre foreground).

The palace in the lake: a royal residence on Llangorse Crannog

The Llangorse Crannog is the only example yet identified in Wales of a type of artificial island settlement more commonly found in Scotland and Ireland. Scepticism about the likelihood of the site being a crannog led to its being largely ignored in archaeological literature until the early 1980s. Then Alan Lane, who had recently been appointed to teach Post-Roman Archaeology at Cardiff University, rowed out to look and found substantial oak planks protruding from the water. Chris Catling describes what happened next.