Page 36 - br-aug-2020

August 2020 August 2020

BERE REGIS HISTORY SOCIETY

One of the bonus rewards of surveying a site in which
there might be some interesting pottery between 2000
and 200 years old, and some old tile fragments, and bits of
broken brick, is the discovery of something never seen
before. On one of these searches at the beginning of July
a piece of Calcium Carbonate encrusted flint caught my
eye. It was about 14cm
long and I put it in the bag knowing it to be a
good example of a flint undamaged by the
plough. When I got back something made me
clean it before the other 432 finds from that walk.
As the dusty dirt got washed away something
unusual and quite beautiful was revealed. It was
covered on both of the flat sides by carvings of
foliage, triangles, stick-men, flowers and
geometric patterns. I couldn't believe my luck as
none of this was visible when it was still dirty.
Something convinced me to think of an excuse
to keep it. The problem now is to try to determine
if this is Neolithic, as we know that people were
here something like 5,000 years ago, or whether
this is perhaps 20th century. There is only one
man I know who might be able to help as I am
completely out of my depth with this find.

Good progress is being made with the first
edition of the BRHS Bulletin but I won't make any
promises on the publication date yet. It will be
available in both "hard copy" and also on-line
hopefully in a month or two.
John Pitfield

Project Secretary

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