Archaeologists have found a perfectly preserved 1,000-year-old wooden ladder in the UK.
The excavations at a site known as Field 44 near the village of Tempsford in Central Bedfordshire have continued, and scientists have made new exciting archaeological discoveries.
The MOLA archaeology team says some of the uncovered Iron Age wooden objects are incredibly rare.
Excavating an Iron Age roundhouse. Credit: MOLA
People in the past would have used a lot of wood, especially in buildings like roundhouses, the main type of structures people lived in during the Iron Age (800BC – 43AD). Usually, the only evidence we find of the roundhouse buildings are post holes, where the wooden posts have already rotted away. This is because wood breaks down very quickly when buried in the ground.
In fact, less than 5% of archaeological sites across England have any remaining wood!
If Wood Decomposes So Quickly, How Did Archaeologists Find Some?
Wood is broken down by fungi and micro-organisms such as bacteria. But, if the wood is in very wet ground, it can take in water and become waterlogged. When wood is full of water and buried in wet ground, it doesn’t dry out. This means that oxygen can’t get to the wood. The bacteria can’t survive without oxygen, so there is nothing to help the wood decompose.
“Part of our excavation area is a shallow valley where groundwater still gathers naturally. Basically, this means the ground is always wet and boggy. It would have been the same during the Iron Age, when the local community used this area for gathering water from shallow wells. Although this meant excavating was very muddy work for the archaeologists, it also led to some remarkable discoveries,” the MOLA said in a press statement.
Several incredible wooden objects were preserved in the boggy ground for 2000 years. One of them was an Iron Age ladder used by the local community to reach water from the shallow well.
This 1,000-year-old wooden ladder has been unearthed in the UK. Credit: MOLA
Scientists have also uncovered an object that may look like a basket but isn’t. It is actually wattle panels (woven twigs and branches) covered with daub, made from materials such as mud, crushed stone, and straw or animal hair. This panel was used to line the waterhole, but wattle and daub were also used to build houses for thousands of years. Finding some preserved from as long ago as the Iron Age is incredibly rare.
You can see a similar weaved pattern and walls covered in daub in this photograph of a reconstructed Roundhouse.
Reconstructed roundhouse. Credit: MOLA
Scientists also found some other wood, including some small posts, but it’s still uncertain what they were used for.
Excavating the small wooden post. Credit: MOLA
After discovering preserved wood, archaeologists must act quickly. The most important thing is that the wood is kept wet until it can be carefully dried out in a lab by expert conservators. If it isn’t kept wet, it will begin to decompose quickly and can completely disintegrate!
What Can We Learn From The Wood?
“We can learn a lot from these wooden objects. As well as being able to see how people made and used them during their daily lives, finding out what type of wood they used will tell us about the trees which grew in the area. This can help us reconstruct how the landscape would have looked at the time, and how that landscape changed throughout history.
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It isn’t just wood which can be preserved in these wet environments! We also find insects, seeds and pollen. These all help our environmental archaeologists build up a picture of how the landscape of Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire looked 2000 years ago. Looking at pollen and plants preserved in the water, they have already identified some of the plants which were growing nearby, including buttercups and rushes!” the MOLA science team explains.
Archaeological works at the site continue. Now the wood will be carefully dried out by our conservators, and then the specialists can examine these wooden objects.
Written by Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com Staff Writer
