Retired geologist finds lost Bronze Age settlement in his garden after watching Time Team

A retired geologist discovered a lost Bronze Age settlement in his back garden - after learning to identify artefacts by watching Time Team. Dr Andrew Beckly has amassed a horde of more than 2,500 artefacts including blades and axes after a chance discovery under his lawn.

Dr Beckly turned up an arrowhead while sifting earth in his back garden - and said the discovery "shot the history of the area back by 4,000 years". He said he found it not long after he finished re-watching the popular Channel 4 history programme Time Team with his wife.

Andrew credited the show in helping him to quickly identify the arrowhead when it turned up in his garden sieve. He said: "I was sieving earth in the back garden to get the stones out of it.' And during lockdown you couldn't get building materials and I was building a wall and was using the stones for that.

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Finding the arrowhead was the starting point. "I went to my wife and said 'guess what I found' - obviously she didn't have a clue. But it shot the history of the area back by 4,000 years.

"I knew enough to recognise an arrowhead like that, I was a geologist and I am an avid fan of Time Team. Me and my wife re-watched them all not so long ago. We always watch Time Team.

"All knowledge helps and you learn things without knowing it. That and visiting museums and having a general interest but otherwise I might not have known."

Dr Beckly wasn't sure whether the arrowhead was a 'stray shot' or evidence of something much bigger, so he expanded his search to nearby fields. There he unearthed evidence which could challenge historian's assumptions about life in Bronze Age Britain.

He said: "I decided to go back to basics and learn what these things are. 'I went and got a couple of books on prehistoric flintwork and gained an outline knowledge. But primarily I let the artefacts teach me.

"I drew every single piece in detail to scale on graph paper across four volumes of books. That's how I built my knowledge of the material, I let it do the educating rather than trying to fit the books to what I found.

''What I have discovered is repeat examples of things here which don't appear in the textbooks. My gut feeling is this would have been a great location for historic hunter gatherers. I have heard frustrations expressed that it is commonly thought prehistory took place in the east of the country because they had Doggerland.

"As a result there is a perception by many that the south west is pretty much ignored. But it would have been warm and the Channel would have only been a river at this time, so it would have been easy to come across from the continent.

"The alternate view is we actually had an Atlantic province rather than just the eastern province. It shifts the balance away from everything being in the east."

Calling upon archaeologist and Time Team star Francis Pryor's work, Dr Beckly proposed that the Wellington hillside would have been the "perfect place" for our predecessors, primarily as what is now recognized as the M5 motorway can be seen as a desirable route for migrating animals.

With his findings, including unearthing 'microliths' small tools dating back to woolly mammoths' era, Dr Beckly suggested continuous habitation of the area for almost 10,000 years - something that "nobody had noticed before".

He further noted: "There is an assumption there isn't very much prehistory in the west country and now this suggests there may be an awful lot more than we realised."

When he initially discussed his findings with heritage specialists, they were brushed off as 'rubbish' only to later be identified as Bronze Age artefacts.

Dr Beckly's finds could now undergo an assessment by Heritage England for further examination. Their research could substantiate Dr Beckly's claim that one of his tools indicates evidence of trade, and even potential migration, between France and England before recorded history.

After reportedly finding a 'bladelet' strikingly similar to samples typically discovered in France, Dr Beckly proposed this possibility. He said: "There may be things here which shift the notch. 'There are things here like this bladelet which look like samples found in France. We could have evidence of connections 10,000 years ago.

"It could tell us there was trade and migration between France and the UK 10,000 years ago, but we don't know.

"There are 2500 artefacts here indicating the existence of culture and people for as far back as 10,000 years ago. We are at an early stage in the evaluation but we could be looking at things which are previously undescribed."