STONE Age artefacts unearthed in a gravel pit near Ringwood are causing excitement among the Oxford University archaeologists who discovered them.

Scientists believe the chipped flints dating from the upper palaeolithic era, around 12,500 years ago, are tools left behind by nomadic hunter-gatherers migrating northwards along the river valley in the wake of the last Ice Age.

More than 400 flint items ranging from simple flakes to finished scrapers, borers and knives were discovered when archaeologists made a test dig at Nea Farm, Somerley, before the site is exploited for gravel.

The finds made at Nea Farm have been linked to similar finds made during the 1970s excavations at Hengistbury Head, 10 miles away.

Dr Nick Barton, an upper palaeolithic expert at Oxford Brookes University, said: "Nea Farm represents one of the most significant discoveries in Britain in more than a decade."

"The resemblance between the finds at the two sites is uncanny."

So far only a small portion of the site has been investigated and archaeologists are confident of finding more evidence of Stone Age man as their work continues during the summer.

One preliminary theory is that the Nea Farm site was a prehistoric workshop where the Stone Age craftsmen fashioned tools from the abundant natural resources of stone, wood and bone.

The site, which originally stood on the banks of a River Avon tributary, has been preserved through the intervening millennia by a thick covering of sand and hopes are high of finding fire places, tent structures and even footprints left behind by the area's earliest human inhabitants.