YOUNG DIG IN TO PAN`S PAST

By Annette Walton - Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Working together to try to uncover some artefacts are Freya Williams, 13, left, and Cameron Gould, nine. Picture by Laura Holme.

THANKS to a unique collaboration, youngsters from Pan, Newport, took time out from the beach to take a journey back in time, uncovering their historical heritage in the process.
The Big Dig saw over 20 children brandishing trowels and spending the day exploring a piece of waste land, off Garden Way in Pan, as the latest event of a government-funded project involving Wessex Archaeology and the Pan Neighbourhood Partnership.
It is thought Pan could be one of the country’s most important prehistoric sites. Flint tools, thought to be from the Middle Palaeolithic Age (between about 150,000 and 30,000 years ago) were first discovered in the area around Great Pan Farm in the 1920s.
In 2006 many volunteers from Pan and from other areas around the Island, together with metal detector enthusiasts from History Hunters, Vectis Searchers and the IW Metal Detecting Club, joined forces to walk the fields on either side of Pan Lane in the search for clues to Pan’s long history.
As well as uncovering a few pieces of flint, they also found waste flakes that indicated people were making tools, as well as using them in the area.
Although the junior sleuths who took part in last week’s dig, did not discover anything quite as ancient, they were delighted with the range of bottles, pieces of pottery and other odds and ends they eventually unearthed.

More pictures in the Friday, August 17, County Press.

YOUNG DIG IN TO PAN`S PAST

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