Archaeology

In addition to the excavation at Gibraltar Point, the History Group has walked many of the fields around Tackley. We have found pottery that has enabled us to identify hitherto unknown Roman sites, as well as many examples of worked flints including some that date back to the last Ice Age.

The most exciting find while field-walking has been a collection of a 100 or so microliths – small flint tools – that date from about 6000 BC, all found in a small area near Wood Farm. These suggest the existence there of a Mesolithic campsite where a group of hunter-gatherers stayed for a few weeks or perhaps a season.

Contact us if you would like to go on a field walk. They are usually in the autumn or early spring.

Archaeological finds also turn up in back gardens, and old sheds. If you have something that might be interesting, let us know and we may be able to identify and date it. If we can’t then we can suggest who might be able to. If you have archaeological artefacts or old coins you can take them to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford on the first Wednesday of each month when their staff hold a public identification session.