A series of new archaeological reconstructions are being developed over the next two years as part of the Avalon Marshes Landscape Partnership project, a Heritage Lottery Fund scheme preserving and celebrating that area. Three buildings are being built, representing different periods and based on local archaeological evidence. A roundhouse will be created, following evidence from Glastonbury
Lake Village, the dining room of a Romano-British villa is being made, complete with working hypocaust system, and a Saxon hall has been erected based on the first hall at Cheddar Palace (Rahtz 1979).
The three buildings will demonstrate the use of varying materials and building styles and will provide the setting for educational activities. It is intended that each building will be more completely and permanently furnished than was possible at the previous Peat Moors Centre. The thermal dynamics of each building will be examined and contrasted, to incorporate some experimental archaeology into their operation. The new roundhouse will have a much reduced thatch and will incorporate two shuttered windows so that some of the experimentation not incorporated into the first three roundhouses can be made in the fourth one. Smoke, light and heat experiments can then take place with the contrasting third and fourth roundhouses.
In addition to the buildings, two logboats have been made and it is intended that they would be used in occasional voyages across the wetlands of the nearby nature reserves, allowing people to experience what it may have been like to travel to and from Glastonbury Lake Village in the Iron Age. The proposed new Avalon Marshes Centre, which will be the ‘home port’ of the fleet, will include an area of open water where school groups and the public can have a brief experience of the canoes afloat.
A series of trackways have been built in Shapwick Heath NNR, but the brushwood, hurdle and corduroy ones have been deemed by Natural England to be too unsafe for the public to use without supervision. The public have been Figure 2.5: The original roundhouse at the Peat Moors Centre a year after its collapse began. Source: Richard Brunning.
46 the life cycle of structures in experimental archaeology
allowed to walk on replicas of the Meare Heath and Sweet Track plank walkways. Both these trackways have been specially modified to make them safer for the public and so will not constitute proper archaeological experiments. However, their appearance will be similar to the originals and and it is now possible for the public to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors along a replica of the Sweet Track through a reed bed on exactly the same line as the original structure 5,821 years earlier. A poor experiment, but hopefully a marvellous experience.
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