It could easily have gone on to the bonfire or into the skip. But Derek Fawcett decided to take a closer look at the blackened, waterlogged piece of wood found at the bottom of a 5ft trench dug for foundations for a new workshop.
“They asked me to look at something they had pulled out of a hole in the ground,” he said. “It looked like a big stump of wood. I wondered if I could turn into some nice bowls.” Fawcett contacted a local archaeologist, who in turn contacted Historic England. Its experts, working with scientists from the Nottingham Tree-ring Dating Laboratory and the Centre for Isotope Research at the University of Groningen, carried out radiocarbon dating of a timber slice from the wood.
The piece is 1 metre long, 42cm wide and 20cm thick. Historic England said the purpose of the markings was unknown, but they were reminiscent of decoration seen in early Neolithic pottery, and were also believed to be similar to decoration on the Shigir Idol – a wooden sculpture found in the Ural mountains of Russia that at 12,500 years old is believed to be the oldest example of carved wood in the world.