Over the past three
weeks archaeologists from the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff have been
excavating one of the Stone Age axe factories on Rhiw Mountain. The dig is
situated on the eastern
slopes
of the mountain over looking Hell’s Mouth with Garn Fadryn the peaks
of Snowdonia and the Meirioneth mountains visible in the distance. The
head of the project was Dr Steve Burrows.
One of the main reasons
for excavating this particular site was to find charcoal thus enabling
them to do some carbon dating and establish when exactly the stone was
quarried. Dr Ken Brassil who also worked on the project liaised with the
local primary schools and arranged for all the children and teachers to
visit the
site
on Wednesday and Thursday the 20th and 21st of
September. Dr Brassil
had also asked the poet Iwan Llwyd along to talk to the children about the
site and to have a poetry workshop with them.
All the children were
encouraged to create a poem about their experience and thoughts of their
visit. Each school was given a stone from the dig to write their poem on.
At the end of the school visits the stones were returned to the dig and as
the project came to a close yesterday the whole site was filled in and
returned to it’s former
state,
having hopefully
revealed to the archaeologists and all of us more of how our prehistoric
ancestors worked.
Dr Burrow has promised
to send us a report of the dig when they have had time to examine the
samples and sift through the evidence found at this site. We’d like to say
a big thank you to all the members of the dig for being so welcoming and
for taking the time to explain to us, and everyone that visited the site
what exactly was going on. And hopefully we’ll see them back again soon
revealing more secrets of the prehistory of Rhiw.
**********
20th and
21st September 2006
Aberdaron |
Tudweiliog |
