Project Consultant : Christine Shaw
The Ancient Farm came into being as an open air research laboratory where the Romano-Celtic world could be explored by full scale experiment. The original focus was directed towards finding out about the agricultural and domestic life of the Celtic Iron Age in Britain but expanded over time to embrace wider related issues, particularly on the Romano-British side. The principal evidence upon which the work is based comes from archaeological excavations of prehistoric sites both in Britain and in north-west Europe, though recourse to Roman commentators has been embraced from time to time.
The present site at Bascomb Down is the third one to be developed for this research programme, which began over 20 years ago in 1972. In fact, the Butser Ancient Farm has pioneered this approach to archaeology on a world-wide scale and many foreign organisations have based their work upon the methods and techniques developed here in England.
Over the decades an enormous range of information has accumulated. Much was never published due to time pressures and sometimes because it was not the normal type of material to be accepted in detail for academic publications, which prefer "digested" data.
This page and its links relate to the pictorial records of experimental activities held in a slide collection approaching 10,000 items.
Created 18 January 2002 - Updated 12 April 2008