Timber and Water
Building into a fen means accepting that the ground will not hold. The answer was wood — and the water that made the ground unbuildable is why the wood is still there.
4 entries · Causeways, platforms and worked ends.
Entries in this section
Listed in reading order
Causeways
Timber alignments driven into wetland, sometimes for a kilometre. Enormous labour for a route across ground nobody had to cross.
Platforms and piling
Posts driven into peat, and what the spacing says about what stood on them.
Reading a worked end
Tool facets on a waterlogged post identify the axe and sometimes the hand.
Felling and season
Tree rings can date a timber to a season, not just a year.
Record and interpretation are kept apart
Every entry states what was found and what it is taken to mean as two separate things. Where the dating or the reading is contested, the entry says so rather than choosing for you.
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