liThe excavation at Glaston was nearing completion. We had nearly finished recording and excavating remains of the Domesday village, so we made a final check of the far corner of the site. Here, several weeks of wind and rain had weathered the base of a trench and revealed a curious group of animal bones projecting from what had previously been considered to be the 'natural'surface.

As the site had been in use as a farmyard until relatively recently, we thought at first that the bones were the remains of a fairly recent animal burial. However, there was something distinctly odd about the whole deposit which could not be ignored. We cautiously excavated further and found many more bones, some of which we realised were extremely large.

Suddenly, sitting in the midst of the whole assemblage, we found a beautifully crafted flint blade. It seemed quite unlike the usual Neolithic blades: what was it? At this point the alarm bells started ringing and the whole assemblage was rushed back to the university where the reality of what we had discovered began to dawn on us. We had made the find of a lifetime: a unique open-air upper Palaeolithic site~

Above. Glaston on press day. The leafshaped point and othel signs ofhuman activity were found in the polytunnel at the far right. The evidence for the hyaena den was mostly found in the polytunnel to the left.

Sources: John Thomas University of Leiceste

Archaeological

Services, Attenborough

Building, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH.

JST6@le.ac.uk Roger Jacobi, British Museum, 38 Orsman Road, London N1 50J.

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