Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T15:10:52.118Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Prehistoric wooden trackways of the Somerset Levels: their construction, age and relation to climatic change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

H. Godwin
Affiliation:
University Sub-department of Quaternary Research, Cambridge

Extract

The Somerset Levels are a submerged landscape. The valleys between the Mendip and the Polden Hills extend to 90 feet (27 metres) below Ordnance Datum, and they are filled to approximately the height of present sea-level by a soft blue-grey clay deposited in brackish water. Radiocarbon dating of material from Burnham-on-Sea shows that the marine transgression had been almost completed by 4300 B.C. (Q 134), and a date from Tealham Moor places the final transition to fresh-water conditions about 3500 B.C. (Q 120) (Godwin and Willis, 1959). As fresh water accumulated upon the almost level surface of the recent clay, reed-swamp dominated by Phragmites communis and Cladium mariscus occupied the whole region, building up coarse, loose-textured peat to a thickness of 1 or 2 metres. In the normal course of hydrarch succession (possibly enhanced by a climatic turn towards dryness), the reed swamps were invaded by fen-woods of alder and birch. These were extremely widespread at a time given by the first tentative radiocarbon dates as within the third millennium B.C.

About 2000 B.C. there now began to develop within these fen woodlands an entirely different vegetation type, primarily composed of Sphagnum moss, cottongrass (Eriophorum spp.), ling (Calluna vulgaris), associated ericoid plants, and deer-grass (Trichophorum caespitosum). These communities quickly built up a complex of large raised bogs such as are now familiar around the Solway and the Central Irish plain, and of which Flander's Moss is a good Scottish example. These are gently domed structures rising a few metres above the level of the immediately surrounding land and relying almost entirely upon precipitation for their water supply.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1960

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bulleid, A. (1933). ‘Ancient trackway in Meare Heath, Somerset’, Proc. Som. Arch. Soc., 89, 1920.Google Scholar
Clapham, A. R. and Godwin, H. (1948). ‘Studies of the post-glacial history of British vegetation: VIII, Swamping surfaces in peats of the Somerset Levels; IX, Prehistoric trackways in the Somerset Levels’, Phil. Tr. R. S., B., 233, 233–73.Google Scholar
Dymond, C. W. (1880). ‘The Abbot's Way’, Proc. Som. Arch. Soc., 26, 107–16.Google Scholar
Godwin, H. (1940). ‘Studies of the post-glacial history of British vegetation: III, Fenland pollen diagrams; IV, Post-glacial changes of relative land- and sea-level in the English Fenland’, Phil. Tr. R. S., B, 230, 239303.Google Scholar
Godwin, H. (1941). ‘Studies of the post-glacial history of British vegetation: VI, Correlations in the Somerset Levels’, New Phytol., 40, 108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godwin, H. (1946). ‘The relationship of bog stratigraphy to climatic change and archaeology’, Proc. Hist. Soc., 12, 1.Google Scholar
Godwin, H. (1948). ‘Studies of the post-glacial history of British vegetation: X, Correlation between climate, forest-composition, prehistoric agriculture and peat-stratigraphy in Sub-boreal and Sub-atlantic peats of the Somerset Levels’, Phil. Tr. R. S., B, 233, 275–86.Google Scholar
Godwin, H. (1955). ‘Botanical and geological history of the Somerset Levels’, Advancement of Science, 12, 319–22.Google Scholar
Godwin, H. and Willis, E. H. (1959). ‘Radiocarbon dating of prehistoric wooden trackways’, Nature, 184, 490.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gray, H. St. George. (1927). ‘Notes: archaeological remains found at Middlezoy’, Proc. Som. Arch. Soc., 72, 86–8.Google Scholar
Gray, H. St. George. (1936). ‘Discovery of Neolithic pottery on Meare Heath, Somerset’, Proc. Som. Arch. Soc., 82, 158.Google Scholar
Smith, A. G. (1959). ‘The mires of south-western Westmorland: stratigraphy and pollen analysis, New Phytol., 58, 105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Zeist, W. (1955). ‘De Veenbrug van Nieuwe-Dordrecht’, Excursion guide of Drents Praehistorische Vereniging.Google Scholar
van Zeist, W. (1956). ‘De Veenbrug van Nieuwe-Dordrecht’, Nieuwe Drentse Volksalmanak, 74, 314–18.Google Scholar
van Zeist, W. (1959). ‘Studies on the post-boreal vegetational history of south-eastern Drenthe (Netherlands)’, Acta Bot. Neerlandica, 8, 156–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar