3,000-year-old Bronze Age wooden tool found near Poole

Dorset View ^ | October 23rd, 2024 | editors / unattributed

[SunkenCiv]

Archaeologists discovered the near-complete wooden spade dating back to the Bronze Age while excavating The Moors at Arne... Archaeologists have discovered a near-complete wooden spade that was made during the Bronze Age, meaning it is one of the oldest and most complete wooden tools ever found in Britain.

Scientific dating shows the prehistoric spade is around 3,500 years old. It was uncovered while the team from Wessex Archaeology were excavating the site of a new habitat scheme, The Moors at Arne, on the edge of Poole Harbour.

According to the archaeologists, the spade would likely have been a precious tool and a great loss to its prehistoric owner and provides physical evidence of the relationship humans have had with this challenging waterlogged landscape for thousands of years.

However, it is thanks to Dorset's waterlogged grounds that the spade was able to survive in the ground for over 3,000 years. It is extremely rare for organic material like wood to survive in the earth for so long except in exceptional circumstances...

"It's made of oak and radiocarbon dating of the wood itself confirms it is c.3500-3400 years old, placing it firmly in the Middle Bronze Age. Further scientific dating will shine more light on when the spade was made.

[SunkenCiv]

Experts from Wessex Archaeology clean excess mud from the spade.

© Wessex Archaeology

[SunkenCiv]

It's actually a paddle from a prehistoric frat hazing.

[Revel]

And just to think that we are lucky to get 5 years out of treated lumber the way the EPA made them make it today.

[tumblindice]

{Thank} êower {sir}, menen attraction with pron ðe ic besettan {another?}

[SunkenCiv]

LOL

[Candor7]

Calling it a spade would be racist.

Its should be “digging tool.”

[Herakles]

That’s mine give it back

[poconopundit]

Hey SunkenCiv,

Fascinating story. To think an oaken tool could last that long! Amazing.

In the attached story, they mentioned that the spade was excavated from the "Moors of Arne", near London.

As a youngster, I read Sherlock Holmes's Hound of the Baskervilles, and more recently saw the scary murder mystery movie in black and white. Upon further surfing I discovered the setting of the novel was the Moors of Dartmoor on the southwestern tip of England.

So I leave the link to the Dartmoor as a great place for intrepid FReepers to roam at night when the moon is high and the hounds are loose on the moor!

[Robert DeLong]

Then this must be you? 😋

The longest version I have come across, In London's Hyde Park

[caddie]

If they see a “Craftsman” carved on the side they can take it back and get a new one.

[Does so]

“...we are lucky to get 5 years out of treated lumber the way the EPA made them make it today.”

According to an archived permit, my treated dock is 28 years old.

[SunkenCiv]

:^)

[SunkenCiv]

I got interested in Sherlock Holmes as a kid, a kid's version of his final confrontation with Moriarty (I guess that was authentic), then a few years went by, I visited an actual bookstore for the first time (Walden, in a mall that has since been torn down) and it was probably nearing Christmas, so there were reissues with nice leather bindings. Hound is remarkable, with its venn diagram incursion into the horror genre. That guy could write.

[Cincinnatus.45-70]

Thanks, SunkenCiv! What a great tool design! Wish I had had one like it as a kid on the farm 70 years ago.

[Revel]

Well of course. The industry started using the nonarsenicals for consumer products beginning in 2004.” That means yours contains the old formula. Not the copper based formula used since 2004. Otherwise your dock would have rotted out years ago.

[Does so]

It may be unrelated, but with the newly mandated copper the cyanobacteria have taken over the lake. Smallmouth Bass have moved on.