Bronze Age Woodworking

At the Bronze Age lake village site of Flag Fen in Cambridgeshire, the archaeologist there, Dr Francis Pryor has been doing experiments to see how people of those times split wood before the invention of saws. It must have been difficult. You don't really think of the importance of the invention of such a simple thing as a saw.

Flag Fen site is vast, most of which is wood. A timber platform has been uncovered which was thought to covered an area of about 4 acres and stood in the middle of a lake. This platform was edged by a wooden boardwalk 11ft wide. Just one of the split oak wooden planks that made up this boardwalk was found to be 10 ft in length. Rows of timber piles from the Bronze Age were found to be submerged in the fen, these formed what was called a post alignment. It has been suggested that this post alignment could have stretched for an area between 2970 ft to 3300 ft long. Many piles have been found, 2000 are estimated to have been used at the beginning of the row of posts at what was known as the Fengate site alone. Over 4 million pieces of wood have been estimated to have been used in the building of the post alignment and the timber platform, Over 2 million trees have been estimated to have been used. These tree would have had to been felled, brought to the site, split into radial planks and driven into the bed of the water.

Just think, it must have been an immense undertaking, remember Flag Fen has been dated from 1365 to 967 BC, some of that wood is nearly 3000 years old. There was no modern machinery then, not even the basic saw. Could it be done now with the rudimentary equipment that was available in the Bronze Age?

Well experiments were done to see how those prehistoric people could have achieved this great technological feat.

Wood in the Bronze Age was split. Bronze axes could be used to cut timber across the grain, but wooden wedges were used to divide the trees along their length, into the equivalent of planks. Evidently there are two methods that can be used to split a tree. With both methods the first step is to split the tree in half. This is done by placing small thin wedges into the tree trunk. Oak was used as this was the principal wood used in the Bronze Age at Flag Fen. The wedge was tapped into the wood. As the seasoned and therefore hard wood of the wedge came into contact with the softer "green" oak of the newly felled tree, it started to penetrate the wood. When wedges were placed at both sides of the tree and gently hammered in, after about an hour the oak tree trunk divided in two. All this with out even cutting a small slot in the wood for the wedges to get a hold.

After the tree was split in half, this was repeated and the trunk split into quarters, and then eighths, and so on until the required size was achieved. This is known as the "radial" method of splitting wood. While it is certainly the simplest method, it is the most wasteful. The finished pieces of wood are all wedge shaped. The narrow ends are then removed producing a lot of superfluous wood which is then discarded. As trees that were used had to be individually felled, this system was not really very satisfactory, although because of the simplicity of use it was used through out the Bronze Age.

The other system in use during the Bronze Age was called the "tangential" system. This system was more difficult process but did not produce so much wastage of wood. Wood was split across the grain tangentially. Small sharp seasoned oak wedges are placed across the grain of wood parallel to the newly cut end in the half of timber already cut. This is a very difficult process that requires a lot of skill. But done correctly planks of wood are achieved that are quite modern in appearance.

Well I thought that was interesting remembering that was wood production 3000 years ago.