Construction crews in Biel, Germany, set out expecting nothing more than concrete footings and routine groundwork. Instead, several metres beneath the surface, they uncovered the faint outline of a long-vanished lakeside village. The site, buried near what is now the campus of the Bern University of Applied Sciences, had been sealed in damp, oxygen-poor soil—conditions that preserved wooden structures for thousands of years. Excavations in 2018 …