‘Prehistory beneath our soccer pitches’: bronze age finds excavated from Cardiff sports activities area

At first sight, it doesn’t really feel just like the kind of spot the place you might occur upon extraordinary insights into the each day lives of the individuals who inhabited bronze age Britain.

However within the nook of a sports activities area in Cardiff, archaeologists and volunteers are uncovering a trove of artefacts on the positioning of two roundhouses that give clues into how folks lived and labored there 3,500 years in the past.

Final weekend folks cheered and clapped because the crew pulled out a clay furnace {that a} bronze age metalworker might have used to create weapons, instruments and jewelry – believed to be solely the second of its sort discovered within the UK and considered a discovery of worldwide significance.

Later this week a pot, probably an urn, found nestling within the clay subsequent to the furnace that would have contained the ashes of the prehistoric metalworker who used the furnace can even be extracted.

“It’s so thrilling,” says Oliver Davis, co-director of the Caerau and Ely Rediscovering Heritage Project (CAER). “The scope and scale of this web site continues to astound us. We haven’t bought a king beneath a carpark [a reference to the discovery of the burial place of Richard III in Leicester] however we now have prehistory beneath our soccer pitches.”

The spot in Trelai Park, Ely, was found in 2022 in a geophysical survey carried out when a college deliberate to construct synthetic sports activities pitches in a nook of the fields.

They discovered proof of what turned out to be a big roundhouse – billed because the oldest home in Cardiff – and cautious excavation was begun by CAER, a partnership between Cardiff College, the group growth organisation Motion in Caerau and Ely, native faculties, residents and heritage our bodies.

Since then they’ve discovered that really two roundhouses had been constructed on the positioning. The primary appeared to have been intentionally taken down, presumably when the house owners died, and a brand new one erected as an alternative.

Davis factors out the place of the fireside within the centre of the newer home. “Three and a half thousand years in the past, you’d have a fire blazing,” he says. “It could have been darkish and smoky. We’ve discovered loads of pottery there so we all know that’s the place they’re cooking, making ready, and possibly consuming meals.”

In one other space, the crew unearthed proof of cereals being ready, in a 3rd quite a few flints, suggesting that was the place instruments had been made. The flooring of the 2 homes are intact as a result of the sphere has by no means been ploughed. “It’s the precise floor that folks trod on within the bronze age,” says Davis. “That’s extremely uncommon. We’re getting this sort of extremely wealthy image of how folks lived three and a half thousand years in the past.”

Davis believes the furnace pre-dates the 2 roundhouses and the pot or urn might comprise the ashes of a metalworking ancestor of the residents. He additionally thinks they might have discovered proof of a timber circle beneath the homes. “It may have been an essential gathering place,” he says.

Ely hit the headlines final 12 months when a riot took place after two teenagers who were being followed by the police died.

Dave Wyatt, a reader in civic mission at Cardiff College, thinks a significant a part of the venture is placing the group at its centre. “This creates new life alternatives for everyone and challenges loads of the destructive tales,” he says. When the Guardian visited on Monday, pupils from the Herbert Thompson main college had been being proven round.

Scott Bees, a former postal employee from Ely and now an archaeology pupil, stated: “The most important factor I get from it’s discovering out the place all of us come from, the place this group comes from.”

Volunteer Sian Davies, a retired care employee, discovered an arrowhead on the web site final week: “To be given the prospect to come back down right here and dig and delve in historical past means an terrible lot. Discovering one thing like an arrowhead is a pleasure.”