Very rare Bronze Age wooden tools discovered in British trenches

A Bronze Age wooden spade has been unearthed by British archaeologists. It is extremely rare that wooden crafts from such an ancient period have been preserved.

This spade offers a glimpse into life at a time when people grew crops and increasingly lived in settled communities.

“It’s very specific,” says Ed Treasure of Wessex Archeology in Salisbury, England. “It’s a very direct connection to the past.”

The spade was discovered in a bog near Poole Harbor on the south coast of England, where Wessex Archeology has been excavating for several years. The Moorish Arne Coastal Modification Project is working to restore coastal wetlands in the area, and archaeologists are conducting excavations to ensure that no useful artifacts are accidentally lost.

The researchers were digging a ring gully, a circular trench that is thought to have originally surrounded the shelter. In one of the ring gullies they found the handle of a spade. “It was an almost unbelievable moment,” says Treasure, who was not personally present. “I could tell right away that it was a carved piece of wood.” The spade was carved from a single piece of oak.

Moist conditions did not expose the shovel to oxygen, slowing down rot.

Using debris found with the spade, the team radiocarbon-dates the spade to 3,400 to 3,500 years ago. “A small part of the spade broke off during the burial, but we used it as a date,” Treasure said. Nearby pottery also showed a similar age. This dates the origins of the spade back to the Middle Bronze Age.

“We’re in the midst of some pretty big changes in prehistoric Britain,” Treasure says. People stopped living as nomads and began spending more time in settled communities, growing a variety of grains and other foods.

However, there are no signs of permanent settlement at this location throughout the year. Of course, it was and still is a wetland. “We strongly believe this is a seasonal use of this landscape,” Treasure says. People may have brought in animals for summer grazing, cut peat for fuel, or collected reeds for thatching.

Future research will try to understand how plows were made and what they were used for. “It may have been used to cut out the peat on site,” Treasure said. “It may also have been used to dig the ring ditch where it was discovered.”

It is rare that a spade from this era has been preserved. One of the only other examples is the Brynlow shovel. It was discovered in Cheshire in 1875, rediscovered in the 1950s by fantasy writer Alan Garner in a school assembly hall, and eventually radiocarbon dated to almost 4000 years ago.