Archaeological remains dating back to the last Ice Age have been found during work to upgrade a major road in Nottinghamshire.The remains, along with Iron Age and Roman settlements, were uncovered during work to upgrade the A46 between Newark and Widmerpool.
The Highways Agency said the finds included ancient flint tools and flint knapping debris dating back to about 11,000 BC - around the end of the last Ice Age when Stone Age hunter-gathers returned as the climate began to warm up.
A46 Highways Agency project manager Geoff Bethel said: "As the A46 follows the route of the old Roman road, we expected to uncover a number of artefacts from Roman Britain and we were not disappointed.
"But to uncover such rare flint tools dating back to the end of the Ice Age was very exciting."
Evidence of such early people had been found in caves, but the pieces of flint found at Farndon appeared to show these people were making things out in the open, possibly in a temporary campsite, the Highways Agency said.
The archaeology excavations also provided insight into the Iron Age and Roman communities that used to live in the area.
Evidence of an Iron Age settlement at Owthorpe Junction, just east of Cotgrave, Nottinghamshire, was uncovered, and a 4,000-year-old Neolithic circular monument with eight Bronze Age burials was found further north at Stragglethorpe junction.
The archaeological team uncovered part of the settlement that lined the road leading into the town, including Roman timber buildings, rubbish pits, wells and track ways, as well as a number of burials, all dating back around 2,000 years.
Phil Harding, Stone Age expert and presenter of Channel 4's Time Team, worked on the excavations as a field archaeologist for Cotswold Wessex Archaeology.
Read and watch more interesting archaeology excavations informative.
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