Report on an Early Bronze Age Site in the South-Eastern Fens

Abstract

Plantation Farm, Shippea Hill, is situated in the south-east corner of the Fenland, some seven miles ENE. of Ely. The vast Fenland plain, formed essentially by the filling-up of a corrugated basin of Jurassic and boulder clays with post-glacial peats, silts, and clays, provides a field for the study of post-glacial changes of environment in relation to man without equal in Britain. As reported in a recent number of the Antiquaries Journal, a Research Committee has been formed at Cambridge under the presidency of Dr. Seward, F.R.S., to organize research in this work and to secure adequate co-operation of specialists in the different sciences. Notwithstanding great advances in the technical equipment of research, remarkably little has been added to our knowledge in this field since the publication of Skertchley's Geology of the Fenland in 1877. We have had, therefore, to begin at the beginning, and this report, which establishes the stratigraphical context of the Early Bronze Age in the deposits of the south-eastern fens, represents one of the first-fruits of our activities. Sir Charles Hiam very kindly allowed us to work on his land, and the Trustees of the Percy Sladen Memorial Fund generously made the excavations and borings possible. We may also take the opportunity here of thanking Mr. Charles Leaf for his part in the initial discovery of the site.