Fire, Ice, and Water: Prehistoric Pompeiis - online with Edward Martin

Title-picture above: The Eruption of Vesuvius by Joseph Wright (1774), now in Huntingdon Library in San Marino, California (thanks to Wikimedia Commons for this Public Domain image).

Fire, Ice, and Water: Prehistoric Pompeiis - online with independent scholar Edward Martin FSA, MCIfA

Friday 28th November 2025, from 10.15 - 11.15, 11.45 - 12.45, & 13.45 - c.15.00

An exploration of sites, both Continental and British, where volcanic activity, freezing or waterlogging, has led to the exceptional preservation of ancient artefacts, structures and actual bodies, enabling a fuller than usual understanding of the lives of people in prehistory.

• 1. FIRE! The Bronze Age volcanic sites of Nola and Afragola in Italy, Santorini in Greece and, and the Bronze/Iron Age site at Must Farm in the English Fenland.
• 2. ICE! Ötzi the Copper Age ‘Iceman’ from the Italian Alps and the frozen Iron Age burial mounds at Arzhan, Ak Alakha and Pazyryk in the Eurasian steppes.
• 3. WATER! The Neolithic-to-Iron Age Swiss ‘lake villages’, and Bronze Age and Iron Age bodies from northern Europe.

Some Suggestions for Optional Background Reading

Most of the material for this course comes from specialist articles and monographs, but here are some books that are both more general and more accessible:

• Aldhouse-Green, M., Bog Bodies Uncovered. Solving Europe’s Ancient Mystery, Thames & Hudson, London 2015
• British Museum, Frozen Tombs. The Culture and Art of the Ancient Tribes of Siberia, BM, London 1978.
• Cunliffe, B., The Scythians. Nomad Warriors of the Steppe, Oxford University Press 2019.
• Doumas, C.G., Thera. Pompeii of the ancient Aegean, Thames & Hudson 1983
• Fleckinger, A., Ötzi, the Iceman, Südtiroler Archäologiemuseum, Bolzano 2014
• Glob, P.V., The Bog People. Iron Age Man Preserved, Faber, London 1969
• Glob, P.V., The Mound People. Danish Bronze Age Man Preserved, Faber, London 1974
• Knight, M., Ballantyne, R., Brudenell, M., Cooper, A., Gibson, D., and Zeki, I.R., Must Farm pile-dwelling settlement. Vol. 1: Landscape, architecture and occupation, McDonald Institute Monographs, Cambridge 2024.
• Marinatos, N., Art and Religion in Thera. Reconstructing a Bronze Age Society, Editions Souanis, Santorini 2016.
• Menotti, F. (ed.), Living on the Lake in Prehistoric Europe. 150 years of lake-dwelling research, Routledge, London 2004.
• Rudenko, S.I. (trans. M.W. Thompson), Frozen Tombs of Siberia. The Pazyryk Burials of Iron-Age Horsemen, University of California Press, Berkeley & Los Angeles and J.M. Dent, London, 1970.
• Simpson, St J. & Pankova, S., Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia, Thames & Hudson, London 2017
• Spindler, K., The Man in the Ice, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1994

About Edwrad Martin FSA, MCIfA

Edward worked for many years as an archaeologist with Suffolk County Council, specialising in prehistoric and historic landscape studies. He co-edited An Historical Atlas of Suffolk (3rd edition 1999) and wrote the prehistory chapter in the new Pevsner architectural guide for Suffolk. He is a vice-president and a past chairman of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History and has tutored courses for Wuffing Education since 2005.

- please note that these proceedings are not recorded -

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