I, Eddie Wills, conducted my first archaeological experiment at infant school, when I made a pot that I could use boiling-stones in! But it was not till some years later that I perused this interest again, when as a student I hafted a stone axe. I was suitably enthused, and subsequently helped a colleague in an experiment to replicate a Bronze Age cremation using a fox carcass. During the early nineties I was Warden of Upton Country Park near Poole, Dorset, where I was instrumental in the construction of a Romano-British farmstead building, based on an example from the Purbeck Hills. In 1998 I moved to take up the position of Warden at the Peat Moors Centre near Glastonbury in Somerset. The Centre consisted of three reconstructed roundhouses from Iron Age Glastonbury Lake Village and reconstructions of locally found Prehistoric trackways, including the Neolithic Sweet Track. The purpose of the Centre was primarily interpretation of the archaeology to visitors to the area, who travelled from all over the world to see it. As time allowed, several experiments were conducted over the years, notably pottery kilns, woodwork and construction techniques. The earliest roundhouse constructed in 1992 collapsed at the end of 2007 and its continuing collapse monitored over the ensuing months, including a limited excavation by Reading University. Somerset County Council who own and manage the site, decided to close the Peat Moors Centre at the end of the 2009 season. I have subsequently set up my own historic environment interpretation company ‘the oldboar.network’ conducting archaeological education in schools and at historic sites, in order to continue my Iron Age interests. Together with some of my former associates from the Peat Moors Centre, I am also setting up the Somerset Lake Village Project with the intention of creating a reconstructed Iron Age lake village in the Brue valley close to Glastonbury.
