18. Credibility Crunch Hits Iron Age Building

The story of the Iron Age building boom of the later Twentieth Century starts with one man, Gerhard Bersu [left], driven to these shores by that most clichéd of archaeological plot devices, the Nazis. It is his initial speculations and concept of a roundhouse that has dominated thinking for seventy years. The concept has become an article of faith for many archaeologists, who, perhaps unwittingly, show a near religious belief in the veracity of his ideas about buildings.

However, religion and archaeology are unsatisfactory bedfellows, and anyone who has read articles 1-9 on this site will realise that I think it is time to return to the evidence and common sense, and to prick this aged speculative bubble.

6. Little Woodbury’s bastard children

Roundhouses were real buildings, and the plans of their foundations are characterised by the geometry and accuracy that any large timber frame structure requires. The obligatory search for circles in posthole palimpsests has inevitably thrown up other slightly oval and irregular patterns that are still interpreted as ‘roundhouses’.
I will illustrate this difficult point with examples produced by former colleagues in Essex. At least they were aware of my views, and so have had some chance to defend themselves. For the record, I will offer an alternative view of what they found in a later blog.