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

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.

The spade was made from a single piece of oak, and would have taken hours for a prehistoric person to create.

Ed Treasure, from Wessex Archaeology who led the environmental analysis of the spade, said: “The moment the spade started to be uncovered the team on site knew it was a very special object and now we’re able to analyse it here in the laboratory, we’re starting to reveal its story.

“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.

“This is an incredibly exciting moment and we’re looking forward to finding out more as the process unfolds”

Although fragile, the spade offers a rare glimpse into how prehistoric humans worked with Dorset’s landscape in the past. By the Middle Bronze Age, people across the country were settled into rural agricultural lifestyles that we might recognise today, with farmsteads, villages and extensive field systems. However, there is little evidence to suggest that there was a permanent domestic settlement where the spade was uncovered. Instead, archaeologists believe that people were visiting this site seasonally.