Archaeologists stumble upon large metal artifact, uncover country’s oldest find: “They’re a rare thing.”
Alongside the wheel, a 3,500-year-old ceremonial urn from the Bronze Age and several flint tools have also been uncovered.
A team of archaeologists has discovered an Iron Age cartwheel rim while excavating in the Scottish Highlands, according to CNN Brazil. In addition to the wheel, they also found a ceremonial Bronze Age urn estimated to be 3,500 years old, various flint tools, about 25 Neolithic wooden buildings, decorated pottery fragments, as well as traces of irrigation systems and animal enclosures.
According to the archaeologists, who were working near the Scottish city of Inverness on land being developed for a golf course, this forged iron wheel rim is the oldest ever discovered in the region.“These things are incredibly rare. None of us had ever seen one before. We were a bit baffled,” said Andy Young, an archaeologist with Avon Archaeology Highland.
A highly skilled blacksmith
Young explained that, based on the team’s analysis, the iron rim would have been fitted around a wooden wheel. To construct it, the blacksmith likely had to forge together several strips of cast iron, weld them on an anvil, and then carefully heat and rapidly cool the metal as it was pressed onto a freshly made wooden wheel, causing it to tighten by compression.The archaeologist noted that the primitive rim appears to be part of a burial site for a very important figure, as it was enclosed by a wooden fence forming an area known as a palisade circle. It is also highly likely that the rim was once buried with a matching counterpart, but Young believes it was either plowed up or destroyed by modern agricultural equipment.
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