Britain’s ancient settlements, burial mounds and sites of ancient ritual are always attractive, enticing and enjoyable in their mysterious associations. The sense of mind activity in the ether (one way of putting it) is always a great driver for walks and visits to such sites. There are few such ancient sites where it is impossible not to feel some fallout from the buzz of a way of thinking and living which long preceded the scientific age.
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Flag Fen, Towards Reconstructed Village
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Recently, we came back from a visit to Flag Fen on the way back from Stratford-on-Avon. This is the site of Bronze age ( c 2500 BC and after) activity – a settlement of early farmers, who eventually (due to climate change, flooding etc) built a 1 km causeway across a flooded plain, so as to continue inhabiting and managing the landscape.
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Flag Fen - Old and New Crossings
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This causeway eventually disappeared over time: so much so that the Romans built their own road about 100 yards parallel to it, not knowing the existence of a road already buried there from 1000 years previously. In recent times it has been rediscovered, after modern fenland draining.
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Flag Fen - Original Timbers Preserved
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Archaeology has unearthed many artefacts in the region, but especially large quantities of tools and personal items, deliberately broken and pegged down into the mud all along the causeway. These clearly were not “lost”, but deliberately offered up as a gift or sacrifice.
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Real-world reflection - or a world beyond?
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It is surmised that the rituals involved here, were emblematic of offerings to a world beyond the water. One can imagine the non-scientific mind and the way it might interpret the rules of image reflection / refraction in water. On the smooth surface appears a world in replica, populated by figures which move in time with the viewer. What world is this which lies beyond? What does it ask of me? Over time the answers are lost in mystery, but the gifts of precious objects are a witness to a very real conversation these minds were having.
