20 March 2024
Cambridge research on the sophisticated domestic lives of Bronze Age Fen people which came out in March has given a striking example of the way open research can enhance the spread of academic work.
Reports on thousands of artefacts from ‘Britain’s Pompeii’, the remains of a stilt village that went up in flames and dropped into the River Nene in Cambridgeshire around 3,000 years ago, are now available in two open-access publications from Cambridge’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research (volume 1 and volume 2, published as part of the McDonald Institute Monograph series and made publicly available in Apollo).
A related Guardian report flags the open-access angle to the story as well as the intriguing contents of the items preserved in the river silt – the report details a stack of spears with three-metre shafts, a necklace with beads from Denmark and Iran, and a human skull made smooth by touch.
The two Must Farm volumes were downloaded over 3,500 times on 20 March when they first came out (check figure with Agustina). By 24 April, downloads had climbed to nearly 17,000, comprising 12,800 for volume 1 and 4,000 for volume 2. Apollo DOIs were widely shared across social media and hardback copies were selling swiftly in parallel.