Late Pleistocene Notts

The Independent and the daily Mail August 26th  (see also www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1306616/Axes-Ice-Age-dating-13-000 ….) excavations preceding road widening on the A46 in Nottinghamshire have found Iron Age and Roman remains – and flint tools and flint knapping debris dating back to 11,000BC (shortly before the Younger Dryas event). The A46 at this point follows the line of the Roman road known as the Fosse Way. There has been much speculation in the past that a track on the line of the Fosse Way (linking Exeter with Lincoln) existed prior to the Romans – and it seems a route may have existed here much earlier than that. Phil Harding of Time Team fame worked on the excavations as a field archaeologist for Wessex Archaeology. He said a piece of a Neolithic era axe was found – made of greenstone (with an origin in the Lake District) was one of the finds. Other material suggested the locality (in Notts) was regularly visited from the Late Palaeolithic through the Mesolithic era – to the Neolithic and beyond.