As a visitor to Skomer in April you might have spotted a group of people working in North Valley with shovels and spades and you probably asked yourself what they were up to. Here you have the answer: They were archaeologist and they excavated a burnt mount. The work on Skomer was then followed up by some radiocarbon analysis which enabled the scientists to date what they had excavated .The buried land surface beneath the mound of burnt stones has been dated by blackthorn charcoal (very accurate) to 489 BC plus/minus 31 years, the early-middle Iron Age, while a cattle tooth from within the burnt mound dates to 85 BC, a great date in the later Iron Age. This is exciting stuff, and gives us our first scientific dates for the archaeology on Skomer.
Read more and see some pictures on the Heritage of Wales blog.
Our sister Trust in Gwent has been a longstanding campaigner about the proposed new M4 route which will be environmentally catastrophic if it goes ahead. Here you have to opportunity to sign a petition to stop the proposed M4.
B
(Skomer Warden)
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