Yorkshire site is home to oldest surviving house

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have unearthed the country's oldest surviving house in the North Yorkshire countryside in a discovery which could rewrite the history of ancient Britons.

The "sensational" find at a Stone Age site, near Scarborough, dates back 10,500 years when the country was still part of mainland Europe.

The wooden building, which is circular, 3.5 metres wide, and shows evidence of a possible fireplace, predates the house previously thought to be

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Britain's oldest, at Howick, Northumberland, by at least 500 years.

The team of researchers excavating the site at Star Carr, which would have overlooked a giant lake, have also found a wooden platform which is the earliest evidence of carpentry in Europe and an 11,000-year-old tree trunk with its bark still intact after being preserved in peat.

Carbon dating and analysis of hundreds of scattered flint tools reveal the house would have stood in 8,500 BC when it was previously thought Britain was home to nomadic hunter gatherers who left little evidence of their existence as they moved around.

Now academics believe settlers were gathered at the Star Carr site for up to 500 years.

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It is thought they migrated from an area which is now beneath the North Sea, as they followed the animals they were hunting including deer, wild boar, elk and enormous wild cattle known as auroch.

Although they did not cultivate the land, the inhabitants did burn part of the landscape to encourage animals to eat shoots and they also kept domesticated dogs.

Archaeologists from York and Manchester universities have been working at the site since 2004 and first began excavating the house two years ago.

Fears the peat which has preserved the artefacts is now drying out could mean a much larger excavation is launched in future.

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Dr Nicky Milner, from York University, said: "This is a sensational discovery and tells us so much about the people who lived at this time.

"From this excavation, we gain a vivid picture of how these people lived.

"For example, it looks like the house may have been rebuilt at various stages. It is also likely there was more than one house and lots of people lived here.

"The platform is made of hewn and split timbers; the earliest evidence of this type of carpentry in Europe. And the artefacts of antler, particularly the antler head-dresses, are intriguing as they suggest ritual activities."

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During the excavation Dr Milner has been working alongside Dr Chantal Conneller and Barry Taylor, from Manchester University.

Dr Conneller said: "This changes our ideas of the lives of the first settlers to move back into Britain after the end of the last Ice Age. We used to think they moved around a lot and left little evidence. Now we know they built large structures and were very attached to particular places in the landscape."

Mr Taylor added: "The ancient lake is a hugely important archaeological landscape many miles across. To an inexperienced eye, the area looks unremarkable – just a series of little rises in the landscape.

"But using special techniques I have been able to reconstruct it as it was then. The peaty nature of the landscape has enabled the preservation of many treasures including the paddle of a boat, the tips of arrows and red deer skull tops which were worn as masks.

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"But the peat is drying out, so it's a race against time to continue the work before the archaeological finds decay."

English Heritage has now entered into a management agreement with the farmers who own the land at Star Carr to help protect the archaeological remains.

Keith Emerick, English Heritage's inspector of ancient monuments, said: "We are grateful to the landowners for entering into this far reaching agreement. Star Carr is internationally important, but the precious remains are very fragile.

"A new excavation currently under way will tell us more about their state of preservation and will help us decide whether a larger scale dig is necessary to recover information before it is lost forever."

FINDS 'IMPORTANT AS STONEHENGE'.

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To the untrained eye the Star Carr site where evidence of the house has been found may look like nothing more than open fields.

Archaeologists say, however, it is as important to understanding Britain's history as Stonehenge.

The historic finds date back to around 9000BC.

In 1947 local man John Moore discovered a flint blade in a ditch and on digging the land he found a large number of flints. His work came to the attention of Cambridge University academic Dr Harry Godwin who began researching it a year later.

It is important to archaeologists because so many artefacts have been "amazingly" well preserved in peat.