The last crusade

AMONG the glories that archaeologists have unearthed at Must Farm, or “Britain’s Pompeii”, as some in the profession giddily dub it, is the first set of stacked bowls from the Bronze Age. The charred earthenware, excavated from the Cambridgeshire fenland, looks unremarkable, but the manner of its storage reveals new things about the past. Archaeologists have inferred that, even 3,000 years before Ikea, Britons could afford to own more pots than they really needed. Indeed, Must Farm shows that these Britons had more of almost everything—textiles, weapons, jewellery imported from the Mediterranean—than previous finds had indicated.