Bronze Age settlement dug up in garden
A RETIRED geologist says he has discovered remnants of a lost Bronze Age settlement in his back garden after learning to identify artefacts by watching television’s Time Team.
Dr Andrew Beckly has amassed more than 2,500 artefacts, including blades and axes, after a chance find beneath his lawn in Wellington, Somerset.
It all started when he turned up an arrowhead while sifting earth and he claimed the discovery “shot the history of the area back by 4,000 years”.
He said he found it not long after he finished re-watching the popular Channel 4 history programme. He credited the show with helping him to quickly identify the arrowhead.
He said: “Finding the arrowhead was the starting point. I went to my wife and said ‘guess what I found’ – she didn’t have a clue ... it shot the history of the area back by 4,000 years.”
Dr Beckly was not sure if his arrowhead was a hunter’s “stray shot” or evidence of something much bigger, so he expanded his search to nearby fields where he unearthed evidence which could challenge historian’s assumptions about life in Bronze Age Britain.
He said: “I decided to go back to basics ... I got a couple of books on prehistoric flint work and gained an outline knowledge. But, primarily, I let the artefacts
‘It is commonly thought prehistory took place in the east of the country ... the south west is ignored’
teach me. What I have discovered is repeat examples of things here which don’t appear in the textbooks. My gut feeling is this would have been a great location for historic hunter gatherers.
“I have heard frustrations expressed that it is commonly thought prehistory took place in the east of the country ... the south west is pretty much ignored.
“But it would have been warm and the Channel would have only been a river at this time, so it would have been easy to come across from the Continent.
“The alternate view is we actually had an Atlantic province rather than just the eastern province,” he said. “It shifts the balance away from everything being in the east.”
Referencing the work of archaeologist and Time Team star Francis Pryor, Dr Beckly said he had “good reason” to think the Wellington hillside would have been the “perfect place” for our ancestors, in part because what is now the M5 would have made for an attractive route for migrating animals.
Dr Beckly said when he first brought his finds to heritage experts, they were dismissed as “rubbish” before later apparently recognising them as Bronze Age tools.
The site could now be examined by Heritage England which would carry out an assessment of the collection.