Hidden Husbandry: Disentangling a Disturbed Profile at Beckery Chapel, a Medieval Ecclesiastical Site Near Glastonbury (UK)

ABSTRACT

Beckery Chapel, near Glastonbury, is the site which has the earliest scientific dating evidence for monastic life in the UK, and later in the medieval period became a Chapel that played a significant role as a destination for pilgrims, as part of the Glastonbury Abbey estate. The site was previously excavated in the 1880s and the 1960s, and in 2016 the South West Heritage Trust excavated a building, that proved to be an outbuilding used when the medieval chapel was in operation. Soil micromorphological analysis was conducted first to understand the sediments within the profile from this building, which appeared fairly homogenous and bioturbated in the field. It untangled the bioturbation processes and revealed a rare northern European, geoarchaeological example of a livestock enclosure from a dryland context in this temperate environment. The results of our innovative multi-proxy approach highlight the potential and methodological considerations for future studies to integrate micromorphology, palaeoparasitology and mycology to examine animal management on dryland archaeological sites. They increase the knowledge of the economic activities of the ecclesiastical occupation at Beckery, contributing to an enhanced understanding of the Chapel site, its wider landscape and its role as part of the Glastonbury Abbey estate.

KEYWORDS:

• Soil micromorphology
• palaeoparasitology
• phytoliths
• geoarchaeology
• coprophilous fungi
• bioturbation

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Avalon Marshes Landscape Partnership scheme: [Grant Number N/A]; Somerset County Council.: [Grant Number N/A]; Heritage Lottery Fund: [Grant Number N/A].

Notes on contributors

Rowena Y. Banerjea

Rowena Y. Banerjea, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Reading, writes on the application of geoarchaeology to understand the formation processes of the archaeological record, and to understand frontier landscapes in medieval Europe. Rowena has publications on these topics in the journals Antiquity, Geoarchaeology, Journal of Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, Journal of Archaeological Science, and Quaternary International.

Lionello F. Morandi

Lionello F. Morandi holds a Doctorate from the University of Reading and has held a post-doctoral position at the University of Tübingen, where he is currently affiliated with the Competence Center Archaeometry-Baden-Württemberg. His research interests are wide, and he is actively involved in a number of projects ranging from early Iron Age Mediterranean to ethnoarchaeology, bioarchaeology and palaeolimnology.

Kevin Williams

Kevin Williams is a senior technician in the school of archaeology, geography and environmental science and it's research enterprise, Quaternary Scientific (QUEST) at the University of Reading. Overseeing a suite of laboratories principally for the extraction of Paleoecological proxies. His research interests are using archeobotanical approaches to vegetation history related to Medieval elite landscapes and the vegetation history of Neolithic Corsica. He is also involved in developing methodologies for extracting proxies from challenging sediments.

Richard Brunning

Richard Brunning, PhD Archaeology Exeter, MA Medieval Studies York, is the Senior Historic Environment Officer at the South West Heritage Trust, based in Taunton, Somerset. He is a specialist in wetland archaeology and waterlogged wood and has had responsibility for the Somerset Levels and Moors area for over 25 years. His interests include all aspects of wetland archaeology, the archaeology of the prehistoric and early medieval periods and experimental archaeology.