Research Items

Abstract

Pollen Analysis from the Norfolk Fens. An attempt to reconstruct the conditions of discovery of a bronze spear-head with loops at the junction of socket and wings of the Middle Bronze Age has recently been described by H. and M. E. Godwin, J. G. D. Clark and M. H. Clifford (Proc. Prehist. Soc. East Anglia, 7, pt. 3). The discovery was made some years ago at Queen's Ground, Methwold Fen, by Mr. John Harrod, of Methwold, from whom it was obtained for the University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge. The site was visited by members of the Fenland Research Committee, to whom Mr. Harrod was able to indicate the horizon of discovery very closely. The spear-head was found at the base of the lowest draw of peat. The level indicated by attendant circumstances was confirmed by recognition of a well-marked horizon of the surface of the undisturbed peat in the disused trench. Uncontaminated samples of peat were taken, the peat in each instance overlying chalky boulder clay. As the result of the pollen analysis, bore A appears to have included three major phases: (a) an early phase with high birch and pine pollen values; (6) the middle phase with overwhelming dominance of alder pollen; and (c) the latest, with co-dominance of ash and alder pollen and showing in its last stages small amounts of beech pollen and high values for hazel pollen. The earliest phase certainly represents the end of the Boreal climatic period and the base of (b) the early Atlantic. This is supported not only by the change-over from pine and birch to alder, but also by the presence in small amounts of oak, elm and lime, with the two latter genera at first dominant over the oak. Probably the change from (6) to (c) indicates a change to generally drier soil conditions with an extension of the fen area locally covered by fen carr (scrub) or fen woods. The record of beech pollen below a late Middle Bronze Age horizon is of interest to botanists since precise evidence is lacking of the history of appearance and spread of this tree in Britain.