A Settlement of the Early Iron Age at Abington Pigotts, Cambs., and its Subsequent History; as Evidenced by Objects Preserved in the Pigott Collection
It is remarkable that so few attempts have been made to illustrate continuity of settlement on a given site through successive culture phases in East Anglia. No more valuable study could be undertaken by any field archæologist, than the careful examination of successive deposits on such a site. Especially useful would be the analysis of the transitional phases, showing the extent to which the art and craft-workers of one period influenced the technique and style of their successors and descendants; such a study should also throw light on the material, social and economic effects on the peasantry of the district of invasion and conquest, an evil from which East Anglia seems to have suffered every 500 years or so from about 1000 B.C. onwards. I cannot offer you, first hand, such a study; but it may be worth while, as an approach to the ideal, to illustrate a collection of objects from a settlement which seems to have been occupied during three (or four) culture phases for a total period of some 2,000 years.