RIGHT under my feet Bronze Age families struggled to survive 1,000 years before Christ was born.

Anything but bronzed, I should have thought, what with those easterly ripping across the Fens. Huddled up to keep warm. Always hungry. Fighting off intruders. What a life ...

"Not necessarily," said Dr Francis Pryor, the man who knows all about it. Another illusion gone.

We were at the Bronze Age settlement out Fengate Way. He discovered it and his excavations there have done his reputation as an archaeologist no harm. They have also put Peterborough on map. It's the best example of its Wind in northern Europe.

Above on right is Bronze age Bert

Bert Bronze and his family apparently fed like Henry VIII is supposed to have done: sturgeon, carp, eels, tench, ducks, geese and probably heron.

But life wasn't idyllic. Damp was a problem. For one thing, the settlement was built on an island they made themselves - a stupendous job - in a shallow lake about 18 inches deep.

"in a cold and wet winter things would have been tough. Hyperthermia left and right," said Dr Pryor. "In summer it would have been malaria."

Although they were capable of removing skull bone to relieve pressure on the brain they didn't have much in the way of medicine.

But at another Bronze Age settlement where the nearby Eastern Industry now is, Dr Pryor found seeds of opium poppy which even quite recently people took to relieve malaria.

There was also the Bronze Age "aspirin" - tea made out of willow bark - no doubt useful after Bert's night on the mead.

Dr Pryor reckons that Bert and his tribe about 500 of them - were the first Peterborians. At least, the settlement is the oldest ever discovered round here.

It began nearly 3,000 years ago. They knew how to organise, too. Building the island proved that. First they laid large timbers on the lake bottom then covered them with smaller Pieces. When all that had bedded down firmly, they drove pointed timbers right down through the lot as frameworks for their houses. It was a colossal undertaking. Between three and five million timbers were involved. All Bert had to work with were wooden wedges for splitting logs. There weren't any saws.

Moreover, there is evidence that the Bronze Age folk grew their trees in cultivated woodlands for the future.

"People who did that sort of thing were working for their great-grandchildren. That means a society with laws of inheritance and land tenure," said Dr Pryor.

"It would happen only in a stable society." Much later the Romans came. They built one of their famous roads right across the man-made island.

Once Bert had gone the site was merely fenland until 1982, when part of the island's base was discovered during dyke cleaning.

"it was the find of a lifetime. The chance to dig something like this is what archaeologists dream about. It was a very big ripple in the archaeological world and it's going to go on and on," said Dr Pryor.

"I feel strongly that archaeology is too important to be left to archaeologists alone. We should be campaigning for Real Archaeology, like Real Ale. We've seen too much bogus jousting and feasting which passes for heritage. It give a misleading impression of the past.10

There is enough work on the site to keep him going for the rest of his career, and he wouldn't mind if that's how it turned out years of getting to know Bert Bronze and his family.