© Oxford Archaeology East
Skeleton from grave 293, Anglo-Saxon child burial.
Skeleton from grave 293, Anglo-Saxon child burial.
Scientists from the University of Bristol and the British Museum, in collaboration with Oxford Archaeology East and Canterbury Archaeological Trust, were able to find two examples of the product during recent excavations.
The use of birch bark tar dates back to the Palaeolithic era. It is very sticky, and is water resistant, and also has biocidal properties mean that it has a wide range of applications, for example, as a multipurpose adhesive, sealant and in medicine.
Archaeological evidence for birch bark tar covers a broad geographic range from the United Kingdom to the Baltic and from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia. In the east and north of this range there is continuity of use to modern times but in western Europe and the British Isles the use of birch bark tar has generally been viewed as limited to prehistory, with gradual displacement by pine tars during the Roman period.
Comment: Recently birch bark tar discovered on an archaeological site contained sufficient traces of DNA for scientists to recreate the genome of a 5,600 year old Dane. With this new realisation of just how commonly used it was, and over such vast stretches of time and geographic regions, one wonders how many more insights it could provide.
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