Metre-wide wheel found at Must Farm shows Bronze Age transport and technological ingenuity, say archaeologists

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

Archaeologists have found a large intact wheel at Must Farm's astonishing time capsule of Bronze Age Britain

An “unprecedented” large prehistoric wheel found with its hub intact at the site of a set of roundhouses destroyed by fire 3,000 years ago could reveal the design expertise of Bronze Age Britons, say archaeologists at Must Farm in Cambridgeshire.

Described as “remarkable but fragile”, the earliest complete wheel of its kind spans a metre in diameter and is thought to date from between 1100 and 800 BC. An incomplete Bronze Age wheel was found a few miles away at Flag Fen during the 1990s.

Kasia Gdaniec, the Senior Archaeologist for Cambridgeshire County Council, thinks the wheel could have given the settlement’s residents access to other areas of the fen over the river.

“This wheel poses a challenge to our understanding of both Late Bronze Age technological skill and, together with the eight boats recovered from the same river in 2011, transportation,” she says.

“This site continues to amaze and astonish us with its insight into prehistoric life, the latest being the discovery of this wooden wheel.”

A set of circular wooden houses, believed to be the best–preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain, have led archaeologists to dub Must Farm “the Peterborough Pompeii”.  A wooden platter, tools, a small wooden box and bowls and jars with food remains inside have also been discovered at a site abandoned when it burnt down.

A smaller wheel, measuring 0.8 metres and dating from around 1300 BC, was found at Lingwood Farm near Cottenham, and the earliest wheels in Europe date to the Copper Age of at least 2500 BC.

The four-year, £1.1 million excavation will excavate 1,100 square metres of the quarry area.

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Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/archaeology/art547377-archaeology-must-farm-wheel-pompeii-peterborough