New evidence has been found which shows that the site of Glastonbury Abbey, reputed to be one of the oldest churches in Britain, has been inhabited for far longer than previously thought.
Mythology claims that the site in Somerset was first claimed for the church by Jesus’s disciple, Joseph of Arimathea, but there has been no evidence to back the claim. The earliest ecclesiastical evidence dates back to Anglo Saxon times and early Roman material has also been found.
Now a re-evaluation of material found during digs in the 1950s and 1960s shows evidence of continuous occupation of the site from around 400BC right through Roman Britain, the subsequent Dark Ages and up to the foundation of the Saxon church.
John Allan, consultant archaeologist to Glastonbury Abbey, said: “We now realise that the Abbey site had a much longer history than previously known, reaching right back into prehistory and including the mysterious Dark Ages.
“We hadn’t realised these periods were represented in the excavated pottery, until this project.”
He said that shards of amphorae – pottery urns used to hold wines and oils – dating to the period around the end of the Roman occupation of Britain in 410AD and the beginning of the Saxon period in the West Country around 650AD had been found, an indication that it could have been an important site at the time.
Evidence of the pots, made in the eastern Mediterranean, has previously been found at Tintagel in Cornwall and South Cadbury hill fort in Somerset.
But there is no evidence to determine whether the site was being used for religious or secular activities at the time. The research has been based on findings in 1981 by Ralegh Radford, Glastonbury Abbey’s director of excavations between 1951 and 1964.
Mr Radford published an interim report but several attempts at full publication were never completed.
Following his death in 1999 his excavation archive was retrieved and deposited with the National Monuments Record at Swindon, making the publication of a full report possible.
The new research has been conducted by the archaeology department at the University of Reading and the abbey will be hosting a one-day symposium on June 9 to publicise the findings.
The research also provided new evidence on the later mediaeval history of the Benedictine abbey, which fell victim to Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century.
They show the wealth that it enjoyed as an important centre of pilgrimage for Christians, built up around the legend of Joseph of Arimathea and later the mediaeval legends of King Arthur.
Scientific analysis has also established the precise origins of some of these finds with the most distant coming from Italy, Spain, Portugal and France.