Skull of ancient beast found at Haughton Strother quarry

Dec 3 2009 by Tony Henderson, The Journal

EXCAVATOR driver John Rutherford expected yet another routine scoop of sand and gravel as he worked his shift at a riverside quarry.

Instead, John came face to face with a beast which wandered Northumberland 7,000 years ago.

Dangling from the bucket of his machine was the intact skull and horns of an auroch, which is a species of wild cattle that stood 6ft at the shoulder.

The startling discovery was made at Thompsons of Prudhoe’s Haughton Strother quarry.

It sits on land owned by Nunwick Estates and is sited on a bend in the River North Tyne near Humshaugh, where the river has moved progressively eastwards over many centuries, leaving behind a series of infilled river channels.

“If the excavator bucket had been 10 centimetres either side it would have smashed the skull,” said Robin Taylor-Wilson, director of Durham-based Pre-Construct Archaeology, who advise Thompson’s of Prudhoe.

“It is very rare to find a complete auroch skull, but it came out hanging off the bucket from a wet area as if it was meant to be.”

The skull has been radiocarbon dated to 5670-5520 BC, when northern Britain would have been sparsely occupied by mobile groups of hunter and gatherer peoples.

Two red deer antlers were also found in the same area as the auroch skull and one produced a similar radiocarbon date.

Aurochs became extinct in Britain around 4,000 years ago.