Thousands of years of Cornish history uncovered during A30 dualing works
A series of fascinating pictures show the history that has been uncovered by Cornwall Council's archaeological unit
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The long-awaited scheme to dual the A30 has been underway since 2020 and Cornish commuters are now used to dealing with the roadworks between Chiverton Cross and Carland Cross. As the ambitious project nears its end, a surprising twist has been shared by Cornwall Council’s Cornwall Archaeological Unit as they have uncovered thousands of years worth of Cornish history.
Among the unearthed finds were tool preparation areas from the Mesolithic period, a Bronze Age burial mound, and evidence of Roman road construction - dating back up to 10,000 years.
Working with principal contractors Costain, archaeological investigations have been completed in 16 separate areas – each a large project in its own right – and these have included four full excavation areas, 22 strip map sample excavations, 19 watching briefs, two flint scatter recording areas, two paleo-environmental sampling areas and two historic building records.
The nature of the scheme has created an opportunity to look at a completely random (in archaeological terms) cross-section across nearly 10 miles of Cornish landscape and the investigations have revealed a large number of significant sites that would otherwise remain unknown.
Now, as the team approaches the final part of its programme, it has shared the initial results from the fascinating project in a series of pictures. Scroll down to keep reading and see some of the historic discoveries made along the way.
Read more: Behind the scenes of the £330m A30 dualling scheme as project nears its end
Read more: A30 in Cornwall - the full history from 1675 to today
The remains encountered span 10,000 years of Cornish history, from the first Mesolithic hunter-gatherers re-populating the landscape following the end of the last ice age to relics of the 20th Century’s Cold War.
Perhaps the most significant finds were the earliest. At Ventonteague, just west of Carland Cross, the team found a huge scatter of flint tools and waste, marking an area where people had gathered for millennia to prepare tools from flint pebbles carried up from the north coast, which at that time would have been 10 or 20 miles further north than the current coastline.
By collecting the flint using innovative sampling methods the archaeological unit was able to recover around 100,000 pieces of flint from this one area, and in the process also recovered a sizeable collection of worked slate tools, slate beads, daub, and hazelnut shells.
Much of this would have gone unnoticed without the sampling technique used. Even more excitingly, the scatter was associated with a number of hollows and posthole features that are thought to represent structures used by the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers that were knapping the flint 10,000 to 6,000 years ago.
(Image: Cornwall Council)1 of 6The subsequent Neolithic period saw the introduction of pottery and agriculture. The team found isolated pits containing pottery throughout the scheme but more significantly identified a circular structure built of stakes enclosing an area containing a pit full of flint nodules.
By this time people were occasionally using flint imported from the chalk of East Devon, possibly because the large nodular pieces could produce bigger tools or because its distinctive colour was socially valued . Each nodule had at least one flake removed from it,- perhaps a form of assaying or testing the flint for quality. This cache of valuable imported flint had seemingly been stashed within a building and then abandoned for nearly 6,000 years.
The Early Bronze Age saw the introduction of metalwork and the construction of round barrows, largely but not always, on highly visible higher ground. The team excavated one barrow close to Carland Cross at Higher Ennis, high on the ridge that runs west from there, but also several in lower ground close to Ennis and Ventonteague and possibly another at Trevalso, near Zelah.
The only one of these containing a burial was at Higher Ennis, where cremated remains were found in an unusual urn that appeared to have elements of a style more usual further east in Britain – perhaps a visitor to Cornwall.
(Image: Cornwall Council)2 of 6One of the Ventonteague barrows also contained a whole urn, this time without human remains. Also found were whole Bronze Age urns from a number of pits, three at Nancarrow, Marazanvose and one from a roundhouse at Trevalso.
The Bronze Age saw the introduction of more substantial roundhouses, stone-walled and set in hollows. One was excavated at Trevalso, along with a more ephemeral post-ring structure nearby. Both contained substantial quantities of Trevisker ware, the pottery prevalent in Cornwall at that time, as well as a bronze socketed hammer from one building and a stone mould for a bronze object, possibly a razor, from the other.
Another roundhouse at Marazanvose was a much larger structure and contained evidence for a range of industrial processes, including possible metalworking.
Roundhouse-building continued into the Iron Age and the team found a few examples at Tolgroggan at the western end of Zelah. These seemed to be contemporary with a field system that aerial mapping shows to be associated with a nearby round, a fortified enclosure known to be prevalent in Cornwall throughout the Late Iron Age and Roman periods.
The scheme crossed the ditch of one of these rounds at Trevalso – it was quite substantial at up to 3m deep and 5m wide. Although there wasn’t the chance to see much of the interior of the round, the team did identify three or four oval Romano-British houses nearby.
(Image: Cornwall Council)3 of 6