Ancient fecal samples are providing new insights into the lives of Bronze Age people living in the Fenlands of eastern England. Researchers examined ancient human feces for evidence of infections and the type of diet humans had by determining the types of microorganisms that lived in and around the digestive tracts of Bronze Age Fen people at Flag Fen near Peterborough.

According to David Orton, professor of archaeology at the University of York, and lead researcher on the project, “Marsh was clearly their favored grazing. Even a partial reliance upon freshwater resources, such as occurred during the Bronze Age, had clear long-term consequences for human parasitic disease burden.” “It was not necessarily an unpleasant dietary component at the time” says Andrew West assistant curator of bioarchaeology at Smithsonian’s National museums of Natural History, a member of the Flag Fen excavation team. “These were healthy adults. They certainly wouldn’t get diarrhea. But over 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, what did it give them”?

Orton found traces of whipworms. whipworms and roundworms in addition to parasitic amoebas. All are associated with human fecal contamination or ingestion of untreated marsh water with parasitic cysts and eggs.