Real Life Treasure Hunt Stories
Salisbury man uncovers one million hidden treasures
03/11/08One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. Remember that next time you're walking the dog, because the ugly stones you keep kicking out of the way could be over 75,000 years old.
Brian Poole has lived in Salisbury for around ten years, in that time he has discovered over one million Stone Age flint tools in fields around Wiltshire.
His passion started over 50 years ago, where as a small boy living in Canada, Brian started to uncover Indian arrow heads:
"Having a great success uncovering arrow heads spurred my interest. It’s a matter of researching and studying in between digs and knowing what you're looking for. What looks like rocks to the untrained eye, are actually nicely worked artefacts."
Brian has lived all over the world and has built up a substantial collection of pieces, which are proudly displayed in glass cabinets and frames around his Salisbury home. The oldest is 450,000 years old, the youngest a mere 6,000 years old.
Brian first discovered many of the fields he now digs in through metal detecting:
Brian with replica Stoneage Axe
"I'd seen the fields from a distance, waited until they were ploughed, got in there quickly, did some metal detecting then started to discover lots of artefacts."
Wiltshire is the perfect place to find early Stone Age tools according to Brian:
"It's the London clay, the highest quality flint is found in it, so where you have high quality flint you have a high quantity of artefacts.
I can tell a tool from a rock because of the primary strike which is when you first split the flint. Then you see the secondary groves all around the tool, used to make the flint sharp. Sometimes there are engravings on the top of the tools in the more recent pieces.
Tools would be used for scrapping animal skin, removing animal hide, wood work and cutting meat.”
And with over a million pieces in his collection, Brian shows no sign of stopping his hunt:
"I love the countryside, this is my exercise, and I'd encourage any one to have a go. I'd like to see the countryside used in education, to see children going out and enjoying the countryside and learning from it, it's fun and it’s not raining every day!"
