Finds at major Carlisle dig include mysterious "tridents"

[Savwafair2012 Profile]

A seven-month excavation with up to 60 staff has ended on the Carlisle northern development route (CNDR) that will link the M6 to the A595 in Cumbria. Hundreds of tonnes of soil from a mesolithic camp (8500–4000BC), possibly for exploiting the salmon-rich estuary, was sieved using a Dutch system in which water was pumped through wheelbarrows whose bottoms had been replaced with wire mesh: over 200,000 flint artefacts were recovered. Early farming artefacts (3800–3370BC) include two "tridents", long wooden forks only seen before in 19th century finds, from a bog in Armagh and a lake in Cumbria. There was also a flint arrowhead with hafting mastic still attached.
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