This Old Shoe

I love posting archaeology stories like this.

LONDON — Perhaps it was left for symbolic reasons, or simply forgotten in the mud. Archaeologists said Tuesday they had found a 2,000-year-old shoe hidden in a hollow tree used to construct an ancient well near Wellington in southwest England.

"As far as we know, this is the oldest shoe ever found in the United Kingdom," said Stephen Reed, who led the team from Exeter Archaeology that made the find on the site of a modern day quarry. "It is reasonably well-preserved, with stitch and lace holes still visible in the leather."

The shoe is being studied by conservationists in Salisbury, southwest England, and is expected to be displayed at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter.

It was found when the owners of Whiteball Quarry (search) began working in the area, where a Bronze Age iron-smelting site had been discovered in 1989.

Nearby, researchers from Exeter Archaeology found two water troughs, along with two timber-lined wells, preserved by waterlogging and probably dating from the early part of the Iron Age (700 BC to AD 43).

Yup. Cool.