More than 2,000 artefacts possibly dating back as much as 6,000 years have been discovered on the site of a new school in Anglesey. It is the largest ever Neolithic discovery in Wales after being discovered by the CR Archeology team who have been on the site at Llanfaethlu since November 2014.
     "Until about 50 years ago all we knew about this period in North Wales came from the megalithic tombs and chance finds but this changed with the discovery at Llandegai, Bangor of a single house. This settlement (at Llanfaethlu) has the best preserved houses and is the only one which has more than one house," Archeologist Cat Rees said.
     Matt Jones added: "The number and quality of artefacts is unlike anything else in North Wales. The main excavation started and we found one building, which we originally thought was it. That alone was fantastic but we soon discovered two others, this may have been a village." Cat continued: "So far we can tell from the finds that people were using the site for at least 1,000 years and we have found more than 2,000 flint, stone and pottery artefacts. We also have burnt hazelnuts, acorns and seeds which will allow us to radiocarbon date the site and reconstruct the Neolithic diet." Matt said there was even a chance the site may have been a stone axe factory, with high-quality stone from Penmaenmawr discovered.
     The dig almost never happened when a pit group was initially discovered in a small evaluation trench. But the group returned to examine a larger area as the houses extended beyond the excavation limit.
     Anglesey is rich with ancient monuments with approximately 30 Neolithic and Bronze age burial chambers on the island, several ancient settlements and standing stones. The find at Llanfaethlu however is unlike any other in terms of the number of artefacts which will now be analysed and soil to be carbon dated. CR Archeology, who will wrap up the site in the next few days have had locals visit the site every week and held public talks on their discoveries.

Edited from Wales Online (15 October 2015)