Carved wood dating back 6,000 years goes on display

A piece of decoratively carved wood experts believe is the oldest ever found in Britain has gone on display.

The 6,000-year-old piece of oak, found in Boxford, Berkshire, was only the second wood carving to be discovered from the Mesolithic period in the country.

It was found by chance in peat about 1.5m (5ft) below ground as a workshop was being built by landowner Derek Fawcett in 2019.

He contacted West Berkshire Council's archaeologists, who passed it onto Historic England, which conserved it and carried out age analysis before it was displayed at West Berkshire Museum in Newbury.

Experts could not use dendrochronology - more commonly known as tree-ring dating - to find a match in the wood but were able to take radiocarbon measurements from two single annual tree rings.

They found there was a 95% probability that the final ring formed in the wood dates back to 4640 BC to 4605 BC, during the Mesolithic period or the Middle Stone Age.

At that time, people were tending to live a more settled lifestyle and moving away from hunting and gathering.

The Berkshire wood is 2,000 years older than Stonehenge and 500 years older than the other known piece of carved Mesolithic timber, which was found near Maerdy in Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales, in 2012.

The meanings behind the markings on the wood are not known but they are reminiscent of the decoration seen in early Neolithic pottery.

"We are absolutely delighted to be installing this incredible artefact," Marie-Louise Kerr, the museum's curator, said.

"It might not look like very much when you first see it but…it's something that was made by the people of West Berkshire 6,000 years ago."

The wood is now slightly smaller than when it was found after tests and was conserved with a waxy material called polyethylene glycol, followed by freeze-drying.

The council said it was working with the Boxford Heritage Centre over the possibility of putting the wood on display there in the future.

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