A very well preserved Bronze Age roundhouse is under excavation at Must Farm in Cambridgeshire. The house was built on top of a raised timber platform over a prehistoric river channel, and is of a type of settlement known as a crannog. Dating to 1000 - 800 BC, it seems the house collapsed into the river after the platform, and the piles holding it up, caught fire. The survival of this quantity of structural timber is very rare, and is due to the anaerobic conditions of the overlying river mud. Pottery vessels containing food remains have been found, as well as valuable items such as a bronze dagger and spearhead, suggesting that the occupants had to leave in haste and could not retrieve their belongings.
Images: Cambridgeshire Archaeological Trust
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