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Science & Environment

By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News
31 October 2016

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Science & Environment

WWW.STARCARR.COM

Recent excavations at Star Carr, a Mesolithic site in North Yorkshire, revealed that organic materials
were being degraded

Archaeological remains at wetland sites across the world

could be at risk of being degraded and lost to environmental
change, say scientists.
University of York researchers carried out experiments
demonstrating how changing conditions in wetlands were destroying
ancient organic material.

Their work focused on the Mesolithic site of Star Carr in North

Yorkshire.
Concern about Star Carr was raised after excavations in 2006 to
2007 showed that materials had broken down.
The site, dated to about 9,000 BC, became famous precisely
because of the preservation of material found buried deep in the
peat when it was discovered in 1948.
Those discoveries included more than 20 red deer antler
headdresses that were thought to be used in shamanic rituals. Other
organic material, including fossils and pollen, allowed scientists to
reconstruct the environment - building up a picture of Britain just
after the end of the last Ice Age.

BRITISH MUSEUM

Star Carr is famous for some unusual and remarkably well preserved materials,
including antler headdresses

But the 2006 dig, by York and Manchester University researchers,

revealed "jelly-like" demineralised bone samples and wood that was
flattened and crumbly. This caused scientists to question whether
such precious materials would be safe if they were left in situ.

Wetland in a bucket
Dr Kirsty High, lead researcher on the project, explained that
environmental changes had altered the chemistry of the site.
"The main thing that preserves wetland sites is the lack of oxygen,"

she told BBC News. "At Star Carr, it is that the water table has
dropped."
This has brought in oxygen, which has reacted with sulphur
compounds in the peat to produce sulphuric acid and this "highly
acidic environment" destroys previously preserved organic materials.
The researchers recreated this geochemistry in fermentation
buckets in their laboratory. They buried bone and wood samples in
separate buckets of sand, garden compost and Star Carr peat for a
year, and found that the materials decayed very quickly in their
"micro-wetland".
"If you had another site where the water table had dropped, the
same thing could happen. Sulphur is present in a lot of different soils
and mineral types," Dr High explained.
The scientist added that, fortunately, most of the important material
was excavated from Star Carr between 2010 and 2013.
"We don't think it would survive much longer if it was left there," she
said.
"But in the Vale of Pickering - the whole area - there is quite a lot of
archaeology. And there are obviously a lot of other wetland areas in
the UK that have a lot of archaeology like the Somerset Levels and
the East Anglian Fens [that could be at risk]."
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