Ramsgate archaeologist discovers 3000 year old Bronze Age toddler's shoe - possibly oldest found in [View all]

Ramsgate archaeologist discovers 3000 year old Bronze Age toddler’s shoe – possibly oldest found in country and smallest in world

February 21, 2023 Kathy Bailes

Archaeologist Steve Tomlinson, from Ramsgate, was mudlarking with friend Emily Brown last September when he discovered a 3,000-year-old, late Bronze Age toddler’s shoe in north Kent. The shoe is potentially the oldest found in the British Isles, and also thought to be the smallest Bronze Age shoe found in the world.

Steve explains the extremely rare find and its huge importance:

It was a sunny and clear day on 17th September 2022 when I made a visit to North Kent to go Mudlarking. Mudlarking is a term coined from the 18th and 19th centuries where people would descend on the foreshore rivers, mainly the river Thames, in the mud, looking for items of value in the hope it would make them a livelihood to survive. Nowadays “mudlarks” look for items of historical importance in the hope to fill the gaps of history.

On that day I was in the company of Emily Brown, a professional archaeologist and a very good friend of mine, to check out an area she had not visited before. The day started well, and between us we had a good selection of finds including plenty of pottery sherds from the Roman period, and various small objects like a small piece of Roman tesserae. We had been out for 3 hours scouring the shoreline, and the tide was turning when we hit the last leg of our day. As we made our way along the foreshore, nothing would prepare me for what I was about to stumble upon when I came across what looked like a very old shoe like piece of leather washed up on the mud/shingle, it was around 15 centimetres in length.

I picked it up and I immediately thought it looks like the sole of an old little shoe, I showed it to Emily, and we made a few guesses to its age. Could it be modern? (I doubt it), Could it be Viking (doubt it) Could it be early medieval? (More likely), on further inspections the latter looked very much the case, I was sure I had come across part of a one-piece leather constructed shoe a typical type design popular within the early medieval period something like a turnshoe, but these types of shoes were also known within the Prehistoric period (so who knows). In 2018 I found an Anglo-Saxon shoe sticking out of the mud dating to 942-969AD (after carbon dating), over 1,000 years old so I knew this could be something quite special.

More:
https://theisleofthanetnews.com/2023/02/21/birchington-archaeologist-discovers-3000-year-old-bronze-age-toddlers-shoe-possibly-oldest-found-in-country-and-smallest-unearthed-in-world/