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Francis Pryor has become a fairly recognisable face on the television in recent years since the media have embraced the history documentary as a product with some mileage. With a few appearances on Time Team and a number of one-off shows in his own name Francis Pryor makes a very good presenter, friendly, uncomplicated and clear in his delivery of the subject at hand, but his real contribution to archaeology comes from his work in the cold mud of East Anglia where he has worked for well over thirty years. Juggling a career as a lecturer both in the UK and in Canada he spent the summers working in his beloved flatlands with a small dedicated team on what was more a labour of love than a lucrative or well funded project.

The wet conditions of the Fens offer major advantages as well as additional problems to archaeologists working there. Alongside the obvious problems of laying out trenches in an area that is basically shifting mud, waterlogged earth and shallow ponds is the upside, which is the excellent preservation of ancient remains in these low oxygen muds. Low oxygen means that bacteria don't thrive and hence even wood will survive for millennia. It was in this landscape of extremes in 1982 that Francis Pryor made the first of many discoveries. The first of thousands of wooden planks and stakes was discovered near Peterborough and over the next three decades a whole ancient landscape was re-discovered. Much of what was uncovered was Bronze Age, some from the very earliest part of the period and hence relates to settlement and ritual activity from four and a half thousand years ago, some finds, including skeletal remains were even older pushing back into the Stone Age.

The book works on two levels really. Foremost it is an analysis of the finds from the area, the vast majority being wooden structures, track ways, stakes and the like but also with a lesser amount of items that appear to be votive offerings, that is items put into the waters as a sacrifice to the gods and spirits thought to use the waters as a gateway between their world and this one. But as well as an analysis of finds and a reconstruction of what the area was like four millennia ago, it is also a record of the development of the project from one mans personal interest to a well established tourist and scientific centre. One thing that it neatly highlights is how difficult it is to get any sort of help or funding from any form of authority or council, most of the resources called on by Pryor and his small and unpaid team were from private companies and favours.

What you end up with then in this book then is a mixture of archaeological report and snap shot history of the problems and logistics of running such a project. The whole is illustrated with loads of photographs and maps and diagrams as necessary. For anyone with an interest in prehistory then this is a worthy read and highlights the development of a landscape from the end of the Stone Age through to the Iron Age. It is fairly easy to read but does help if you already have some understanding of prehistory, but Francis Pryor's text is full of colour and description which helps liven up what is often a dry subject. All in all a good little book on a fairly specialist topic and whilst its not what you would regard as a starting point for people who don't normally read in this subject area it will reward any who make the effort.

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