Site Event/Activity record ESF26976 - Investigation of a burnt reconstructed building - Farmer's House, West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village

In February 2005, one of the experimental reconstructions of a Sunken-Featured Building (SFB), referred to as the Farmer’s House, was destroyed by fire. The detailed investigation of the burnt remains was undertaken during July and August 2005, in a manner comparable to a conventional archaeological excavation. The evidence is described, discussed and illustrated in detail in this report. Using techniques of investigation generally applied in contemporary forensic fire scenes, an attempt has been made to understand the nature and dynamics of the fire and to identify the seat, and possibly the cause, of the fire. In addition, a suite of scientific techniques currently used to analyse archaeological deposits was employed to understand the remains and also to inform the use of these techniques, given that it is known when and how the building was constructed, what it contained and how it was destroyed. The information is compared with the archaeological remains of this building-type and used to inform the debate about the effect of fires relating to buildings in the archaeological record, specifically relating to the (re-) construction of SFBs, i.e. an aid to interpretation by comparative data (S1).