Bronze Age discovery by ‘Time Team’ fan
A retired geologist says he discovered a lost Bronze Age settlement in his back garden after learning to identity artefacts by watching Time Team.
Dr Andrew Beckly has amassed a horde of more than 2,500 artefacts including blades and axes after a chance discovery under his lawn.
Dr Beckly turned up an arrowhead while sifting earth in his back garden and said the discovery “shot the history of the area back by 4,000 years”.
He said he found it not long after he finished rewatching the popular Channel 4 history programme Time Team with his wife.
Dr Beckly, of Wellington, Somerset, credited the show in helping him to quickly identify the arrowhead when it turned up in his garden sieve.
He said: “I was sieving earth in the back garden to get the stones out of it.
“And during lockdown you couldn’t get building materials and I was building a wall and was using the stones for that.
“Finding the arrowhead was the starting point. I went to my wife and said ‘guess what I found’ – obviously she didn’t have a clue.
“But it shot the history of the area back by 4,000 years.
“I knew enough to recognise an arrowhead like that, I was a geologist and I am an avid fan of Time Team.
“Me and my wife rewatched them all not so long ago. We always watch Time Team.”
Dr Beckly was not sure whether the arrowhead was a ‘stray shot’ or evidence of something much bigger, so he expanded his search to nearby fields.
There he unearthed evidence which could challenge historian’s assumptions about life in Bronze Age Britain.
He said: “I decided to go back to basics and learn what these things are.
“I went and got a couple of books on prehistoric flintwork and gained an outline knowledge. But primarily I let the artefacts teach me.”