Calling Card for the Future: Plastic Waste Found at Iron Age Site

A team of researchers now believe that plastics "entering the archaeological and geological record" may be the defining feature of the modern man after finding more than 2,000 pieces of plastic at an open Iron Age site in Wales.

In their report, published in the journal Antiquity on January 7, notes that while there is increasing awareness of plastics' role in marine pollution, the new discovery aims to highlight its ubiquity in a terrestrial setting.

Castell Henllys, An Iron Age Settlement

Castell Henllys is an Iron Age village located in the Welsh Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, Wales, in the UK. According to studies conducted on the site, it housed an affluent clan that included a community of about a hundred people working together for survival - producing food and goods some 2,000 years ago.

Situated around what used to be a hill fort, it is surrounded by a rural site that now includes four reconstructed roundhouses - primitive circular structures defined by their large, conical roofs made from straw, wood, and other natural materials. Teams of archaeologists and researchers rebuilt the roundhouses using the same materials available and would have been used by the settlers during the Iron Age.

"This is the only site in the UK where this has been done and has been open to the public and schools for over 35 years," explains Harold Mytum, lead researcher and archaeology professor at the University of Liverpool, emails CNN World. He notes that emulating the construction methods and materials show the effectiveness of the prehistoric design of the early settlers in Castell Henllys.

As a tourist destination in the modern period, Castell Henllys now covers thirty acres of woodland and river meadows at Pembrokeshire Coast National Park's heart. Tourist guides in the Iron Age site represent members of the Demetae tribe - a Celtic people that lived in this part of Wales from the Iron Age to after the Roman periods.

Open Site and Plastic Discoveries

Researchers detail what was originally an experiment to examine how building materials decay and degrade over time has turned into something else after an unexpected discovery - a trove of plastics containing more than 2,000 separate pieces of waste.

The report also notes that although the historical site remains well-cleaned and well-maintained, small plastic remains - such as children eating lunches near the site's structures - are being hidden underneath benches and corners of the roundhouses.

Since the location of the Iron Age site is a rural area - sitting in the countryside of west Wales - Mytum noted that "the amount of plastic litter was a surprise."

Among the plastic remnants recovered from the site were bottle caps, straws, wrappers, plastic bags, utensils, food wrap, and even apple stickers. Researchers behind the report also noted finding "an almost complete Godzilla-themed thermos wrapper."

Mytum shares that they were expecting to find remains of items used by the original inhabitants of Castell Henllys. Instead, they discovered wastes and in amounts that were "disturbing in their environmental implications."