The Environment and Context of the Glastonbury Lake Village: A Re-assessment

Abstract

Glastonbury Lake Village is one of very few wetland settlements to be almost entirely excavated in the British Isles and Europe. Its stratigraphic context was originally investigated by Godwin who correlated Glastonbury with a “second flood horizon” dated at c. 2060–1900 cal BP. Henceforth both were directly linked to marine incursions through the Axe valley in the late Iron Age. Godwin's investigations of the site lead him to believe that it bordered on open water to the east. Further stratigraphic work in the 1980s by Housley suggested that the village should be conceived of as a swamp village rather than a true lake village constructed in a very shallow lake or swamp. From both the remaining landscape features, its location and stratigraphy it is clear that it was close to a former course of the River Brue. This paper uses recent stratigraphic, pollen and diatom work in the Panborough Gap area and upstream of Glastonbury to re-assess the environment at the end of the third and beginning of the second millennia BP. A simple conceptual hydrogeological model is used to test hypotheses about the causes of flooding. The environmental data is consistent with the creation of tidal channels during the period of marine incursion in the early-mid Iron Age some of which remained open in the late 3rd millennium BP, and with the presence of marine and brackish water diatoms indicating periodic backing up of brackish water. The environmental evidence of a functioning partially estuarine channel to the north of the village is assessed in the light of the structural, artifactual and palaeoecological evidence from the original excavation. Both the broader environmental evidence and the archaeology suggest that Glastonbury Lake Village was in direct contact with the estuary of a tidal river discharging to the north through the Panborough Gap and Axe Valley and to the upper Brue valley to the south and west. In archaeological terms this may go some way to explaining the size, complexity and semi-specialised nature of the site. The evidence for abandonment due to rising water levels or flooding is also assessed and the case found as yet unproven and attention is drawn to other possible factors.