Waterlands: Prehistoric Life at Bar Pasture, Pode Hole Quarry, Peterborough recounts a decade-long archaeological investigation at Bar Pasture Farm, Pode Hole Quarry, Peterborough, and represents one of the most significant landscape excavations carried out in recent years. The 55-hectare archaeological dig was the scene of human activity on the fenland edge from the Mesolithic through to the Late Iron Age, although the majority of the evidence covered the period from the Early Neolithic through to the Middle Bronze Age. Throughout prehistory, the fen edge has represented a landscape at the margins of human habitation and exploitation. During the Early Neolithic, a substantial waterhole complex with signs of later visitation was established on the fen edge. Traces of several Beaker buildings provided elusive evidence of slightly later activity further inland, whilst during the Early Bronze Age proper, a number of impressive burial mounds were constructed within a dedicated ‘Barrow Field’. One barrow contained the nationally significant remains of an infant burial on a birch bark mat with associated grave goods. The Middle Bronze Age saw the entire re-organisation of the surrounding landscape by the creation of an extensive, rectilinear field system, served by multiple droveways and associated with a classic enclosed farmstead. The placement of later Middle Bronze Age cremation burials within the remains of earlier burial monuments bears witness to the intimate connection of this small community to their ancestors’ sacred landscape. By the 4th century BC, settlement was all but abandoned due to marine inundations, although one slightly elevated part of the landscape formed an area of refuge for an Iron Age smith and his family, who created an isolated and significant smithy.

Archaeological investigations in response to the expansion of Pode Hole sand and gravel quarry (Cambridgeshire, east England), exposed a well-preserved prehistoric Fen-edge landscape covering an area of approximately 24 hectares. Pottery dates and a series of radiocarbon determinations reveal that the site was occupied throughout the second millennium BC, with activity apparently intensifying later in that period. A substantial assemblage of locally made Bronze Age pottery and other artefacts was gathered during the excavations.

Archaeological excavation of about 11ha of land at Towers Fen, Thorney, Peterborough (England), investigated part of an extensive pattern of ditched enclosures and fields associated with several waterholes and two ponds. One large pit, which may have been a waterhole, yielded Early Bronze Age pottery and is radiocarbon dated to the terminal 3rd millennium BC. Two other dates from the ponds came out at around 1500-1300 BC. The other features were probably also Middle to Late Bronze Age although the limited quantity of pottery was not datable precisely. Waterlogged material recovered from the deeper features included most of an unusual wooden tub or bucket, as well as other pieces of worked wood. The palaeo-environmental evidence from pollen, plant macro-fossils, insects and charred plant remains indicated that the land supported a mosaic of woodland, scrub, arable fields, meadow and short grazed grassland. A wide variety of trees was present, particularly wet-loving species such as willow and alder, and there was abundant evidence for coppicing. Nearby excavations at Pode Hole, and the wider picture provided by plotted cropmarks, indicate that the site formed part of an extensive prehistoric landscape. It is suggested that the Bronze Age agricultural landscape developed piecemeal and was based upon a mixed arable and pastoral economy. This contrasts with Fengate and other landscapes of this period where large-scale land divisions have been related to intensive livestock management. The sparse evidence for contemporaneous settlement is typical of many sites of this period.