The chronology of Glastonbury Lake Village

Peter Marshall,Stephen Minnitt,Paula J Reimer,Richard Brunning,Elaine Dunbar,Christopher Bronk Ramsey

doi:10.15184/aqy.2020.167

Abstract

The Glastonbury Lake Village in Somerset, UK, is made up of 90 mounds comprising 40 roundhouses. Excavations between 1892 and 1907 revealed Iron Age structural and material remains unparalleled in Western Europe. The settlement's exact chronology, however, has remained uncertain. Here, the authors present a programme of radiocarbon and dendrochronological dating and chronological modelling on samples from recent excavations. The results indicate that the site was founded in the early second century cal BC, with the last structures being built just over a century later. This new, robust chronology can be used to date a wide range of associated material culture, and complements chronologies established for other Iron Age sites.

Highlights

The prehistoric settlement of Glastonbury Lake Village is located in a pasture field on Common Moor, 1km north of Glastonbury in Somerset, UK
The waterlogged depositional environment of the settlement resulted in the extraordinary preservation of a vast range of Iron Age material culture, from the eponymous Glastonbury Ware pottery to objects of wood, shale, bone, metal, glass and stone—some imported to the site from great distances and others the product of extensive craft production at the settlement itself
The new radiocarbon dating programme for Glastonbury Lake Village was conceived within a framework of Bayesian chronological modelling (Buck et al 1996)

Summary

Introduction

The prehistoric settlement of Glastonbury Lake Village is located in a pasture field on Common Moor, 1km north of Glastonbury in Somerset, UK. Nine determinations (Table S1 in the online supplementary material (OSM); Bronk Ramsey et al 2002) were obtained from 15 bone samples submitted to the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, with the calibrated dates providing “a potential maximum time span of 792 BC to AD 145 or a minimum span of 472–8 BC” (Coles & Minnitt 1995: 176 & fig 6.16).

Results

Conclusion