CULTURE INTERVIEW
I found Flag Fen in 1982 when I was surveying drainage dykes known as Fengate. But first, Francis’s team was tasked with excavating it. “What we uncovered there, right on the edge of the Fen, were (at that time) the earliest fields ever discovered in northern Europe – going back pretty much to 2,000 BC,” he recalls. “They were superbly well preserved – we even found animal footprints. And there were cattle droveways, sheep drives, little farmsteads and roundhouses – I mean, it was extraordinary.” Then came one of the greatest discoveries of Francis’s career, and one he’s still renowned for. In fact, just days before we met, he’d unexpectedly heard his name mentioned in relation to this find on Radio 4’s Yesterday in Parliament programme, and a couple of weeks later he made a cameo on the BBC’s Look East . The find in question? One of the most important archaeological sites in Cambridgeshire: the Bronze Age timber causeway and landscape at Flag Fen. “I found Flag Fen in 1982 when I was surveying drainage dykes. I knew there was likely to be something out in the depths of the fen there because the fields we had just discovered were all pointing at it. And then my foot hit a piece of wood,” he explains. “I pulled it out of the ground, and it was oak – you don’t typically get oaks growing in wet fen – and the point of the post had been sharpened with a bronze axe, the blade about two inches. I immediately recognised it as a late Bronze Age socketed axe from around 900 BC because I had seen identical tool marks on wood in Holland, of that period. All the hair went up on the back of my neck!” he enthuses.
peat that was sticking to it, I noticed there was a fingerprint in the surface – a Bronze Age fingerprint – and that person, probably a lady since the thumb was far smaller than mine, had also cut her thumb!” he laughs. “That moment will stay with me for the rest of my life.” People power Another chapter of Francis’s career – and of archaeology in general – began during the period of Flag Fen’s excavation. Time Team : the beloved Channel 4 television series that brought (and in fact still brings, via YouTube and Patreon) live archaeology to the public in a way never seen before. Presenter Sir Tony Robinson’s role was essentially to be a representative for the average person, narrating in layman’s terms to an audience of millions a host of exciting digs across the UK. The expert teams carrying out those digs included Phil Harding, Helen Geake, Carenza Lewis, Stewart Ainsworth, John Gater, Raksha Dave and many other archaeologists and specialists – headed up either by the late great Mick Aston or by Francis.
Returning to the site with his team of archaeologists, more and more posts were found, running along the edge of a dyke for a distance of around 80 metres. “At one point, they were covered by the Roman road that runs across the Fens, known as the Fen Causeway. We know that road was probably built in the 1st century AD, and the posts were about a metre below the bottom of it, separated by lots of peat and other soil that would have taken around 1,000 years to accumulate. So, that told me that the posts had to be Bronze Age,” Francis continues. Having persuaded English Heritage to fund an excavation, initial work began that same year and continued right through until 1996, revealing the best part of ten acres of superbly preserved Bronze Age wood, along with bronze swords, daggers, spears and other items likely deposited as offerings to the waters – even a wooden bowl that still contained porridge. “On the morning that the bowl was found, I’d cut my thumb before going down to the site. And I’ll never forget this: as I was very carefully removing some of the
LIVING HISTORY Francis introduces visitors to Flag Fen (left), where there’s also a reconstructed roundhouse (top) and log boat exhibition (above)
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