Discovery and Learning 2011
Swansea Bay: Trackways to the past by Andrew Sherman
LEFT: An archaeologist cuts a lonely figure between high and low water on Swansea Bay. During the Bronze Age the area would have looked vastly different to what it does today.
In prehistory Swansea Bay would have looked significantly different from how it does today. The sea level was lower, so it was further out. We think that from time to time areas of dunes developed between the hinterland and the sea and prevented the local rivers draining freely into the sea. This created a large area of boggy marshland behind them, like today at Jersey Marine and Oxwich. Then conditions would change as deposits of clay or sand replaced the marsh. These changing environments survive in the present as layers of peat, some with fossilised trees, separated by layers of sand and clay. As the sea erodes these deposits, a series of peat shelves is created, which can be found on the beach at Oystermouth, Blackpill, Brynmill, Margam and Kenfig. When there was marshland, it would have been a good place for fishing and wildfowling, and a series of hoof prints preserved in the Kenfig peatshelf suggests that the area may have been used to graze cattle. LEFT: Fossilised tree remains at Swansea Bay.
ABOVE: Cattle hoof print from Kenfig peat shelf.
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