We know from finds of “bog butter,”
especially in Ireland, that Bronze Age people used marshy bogs as refrigerators.
But while bogs will keep butter fresh, they won’t work with maturing
cheese, which must be kept in a cool, airy place.
I suspect man-made caves called fogous, which have been found in Britain,
may have been dug just for this purpose.
Butter and cheese must be strained, and a durable strainer can be made of green, march rushes. For cheese, baskets can be made of wild water-mint stems and bog myrtle. Both mint and bog myrtle are aromatic, they not only flavour the cheese, but keep flies away.
Interestingly, you must use bone sewing needles, like those of the Bronze age, to make these baskets. Steel needles break the fibres. It takes me about four hours to make a bone needle, using replica flint implements. Using a flint saw, I cut a narrow rectangular shape from a lamb’s leg bone. Then I bore a hole in one end and use a notched scraper to smooth the end to a needle point.