Retiree Uncovers Wooden Artifact 2,000 Years Older Than Stonehenge

Markings on the timber may help piece together lost European history

Christopher Parker
Daily Correspondent

June 9, 2023 1:36 p.m.

Precious little is known about the Neolithic era in Britain—a problem most prominently exemplified by Stonehenge. Theories abound as to the origins of the 5,000-year-old structure, ranging from religious rituals to alien communication. The Neolithic people of Britain left behind no written records for archaeologists to pore over for clues.

But sometimes clues can come from unexpected places, as retired surgeon Derek Fawcett discovered four years ago. While digging a foundation for a workshop on his property in West Berkshire, 50 miles west of London, he uncovered a wood fragment, about three feet long, preserved in peat since Neolithic times.

“It was a rather surprising find at the bottom of a trench dug for foundations for a new building. It was clearly very old and appeared well preserved in peat. After hosing it down, we saw that it had markings that appeared unnatural and possibly man-made,” Fawcett says in a recent statement from Historic England, the government agency that coordinated the research on the artifact.

The Nottingham Tree-ring Dating Laboratory and the Center for Isotope Research at the University of Groningen worked in tandem to date the wood, which they placed at somewhere between 4640 to 4605 B.C.E. with 95 percent confidence.

That means that this artifact predates Stonehenge by about 2,000 years—the oldest wood carving ever discovered in England. David Keys of the Independent reports that excavations around Stonehenge in the 1960s led to a theory that “giant totem-pole-like timber obelisks” were erected on the spot before the current stones.

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/oldest-wood-artifact-in-britain-dates-back-to-neolithic-era-180982323/