Butser Ancient Farm, in Hampshire, is about the investigation of farming and living between 1000BC and 410AD, i.e. the Iron Age to the end of the Roman era in Britain. Although obtaining an ideal site was problematical, eventually a site with virtually no discernible archaeology was found. Butser offers educational and research facilities to schools, universities and the public. Steve stressed that this does not involve re-enactment and ‘dressing up’, although the site is increasingly used by film and television companies as a backdrop to period drama. Instead, Butser is involved in experimental archaeology. Each experiment is carefully thought through, and only after similar answers have been obtained on several occasions can a theory be said to have been ‘proved’. In fact, a number of previously-held theories have had to be reconsidered due to work at Butser. For instance work on building and rebuilding the timber roundhouses has shown that some chronologies attributed to postholes may be wrong.

Despite the depredations of human thieves and of a comparatively modern pest, rabbits, crop trials continue with einkorn, emmer, spelt and barley, hand weeded and with no use of chemicals. Yields are found to be high with greater nutritional value than modern cereals. Livestock is also reared. Careful monitoring of an earthwork surrounding the site will produce useful data on how such installations change over the years, and regular geophysical monitoring on one part of the site is already yielding valuable data on how measurements are affected by soil moisture levels etc. Artefacts are made using the contemporary technology. Despite Peter Reynolds sadly dying during an early stage of the work, and objections by the local planning department to the original more authentic design, a Romano-British villa, based on one discovered at Sparshott, Hampshire, has been built on the site.

Yvonne Masson