Post Ex-Diary 22: Working Towards Publication

May 11, 2020

The Must Farm Team

The Must Farm Team

Here at the Must Farm project, we’ve always been eager to share our discoveries, theories and excitement to be working with such fantastic archaeology. From our daily content during the excavation to the monthly post-excavation diaries over the last few years, we’ve done our best to keep people up to date with the latest developments in our research.

However, our regular online updates are coming to an end as we focus our attention on drawing everything together for the publication of the Must Farm pile-dwelling settlement. This is an enormous undertaking as we finalise plans for each context of the excavation, incorporate the findings of almost 40 different specialists, explore the spatial data and relationships of thousands of artefacts and much, much more.

Creating the overall synthesis and interpretation of any archaeological site is a complex process and this is especially true of a site like the Must Farm pile-dwelling settlement, with its density of material and excellent preservation conditions. The whole team is busier than ever working towards completing two volumes that tell the story of the pile-dwelling settlement: its construction, short life-history and destruction. Once finished, both volumes will be available to download and read for free online.

Exhibitions of Must Farm’s material will also take place following the publication. At the moment we don’t have any further details on exactly when and where these will take place. If we hear any further information on this, we’ll share these on our social media channels and update the project’s website.

The end of our regular updates also means that we won’t be monitoring messages and questions on our social media accounts as often. If you have an enquiry or want to get in touch with the project this can be done via the Cambridge Archaeological Unit.

Since we first started sharing our updates in October 2015, we’ve received thousands of questions and comments from people all around the world. We’ve been consistently amazed and surprised by the enthusiasm, excitement and interest people have shown for our project. Getting so many positive comments and seeing large numbers of people engage with both the Bronze Age and archaeology has been a real highlight for the team. It certainly helped get us through some of the freezing winter mornings where we were delicately removing sediment and recording waterlogged timbers!

We all want to say a huge thank you to the Must Farm community for being such a fantastic group and for following our work so diligently over the last five years. This certainly isn’t the end and we can’t wait to reconnect and share the results of all our labours once the publication is done. Keep your eyes peeled and hopefully we won’t be away for too long.

The Must Farm Team


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About

Schematic diagram showing different architectural elements
The Must Farm pile-dwelling settlement was excavated by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit with funding from Historic England and Forterra.

Publications

Must Farm Pile-dwelling settlement publications
Read the Open Access publications the Must Farm pile-dwelling settlement: Volume 1. Landscape, architecture and occupation and Volume 2. Specialist reports.

Dig Diaries

The excavation of the Must Farm settlement was carried out between August 2015 and August 2016. Take a look at our diary entries documenting the excavation process. ...read more

Discoveries

See some of the discoveries from the Must Farm pile-dwelling settlement.

Making Must Farm

Find out about our work with AncientCraft recreating Must Farm’s material.

FAQs

Further information on the Must Farm project.