Situated knowledge and Early Bronze Age occupation at Must Farm, Cambridgeshire

McFadyen, Lesley (2021) Situated knowledge and Early Bronze Age occupation at Must Farm, Cambridgeshire. In: Soares Lopes, S. and Gomes, S. (eds.) Between the 3rd and 2nd Millennia BC: Exploring Cultural Diversity and Change in Late Prehistoric Communities. Oxford, UK: Archaeopress. ISBN 9781789699227. (In Press)

Abstract

I could describe in broad brushstrokes a difference between Late Neolithic (3000-2500 cal BC) and Early Bronze Age (2500-1500 cal BC) worlds in Britain: the Late Neolithic would include the insular pottery type, Grooved Ware, and its association with complex feasting events at henges and timber/stone circle monument complexes such as Avebury and Stonehenge; the Early Bronze Age would be defined by the appearance of Beaker pottery from the Continent, as well as the inclusion of these pots in single graves, so announcing a marked change in funerary practice. However, if I choose a finer brush, there is a chance to construct a different and much more intricate canvas. On a low lying gravel terrace overlooking a floodplain on the western edge of the English fens, a Middle Bronze Age peat horizon obscures an old land surface dotted with small pits of Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age date. This tenure to occupation requires situated knowledge; dramatic change, new arrivals, are not a part of this picture. To understand this, I take a landscape-approach to the archaeological evidence and remark on continuity, rather than making chronological division. I explore how landscapes are configured through time depth as well as spatial surface, how they are known, arguing that periodisation cannot be the basis for our question making processes in archaeology. Otherwise, we will never escape from the narrative device of event and change.

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