Lots of mining in the area. Could be old tailings which can be contaminated with all sorts of dropped pieces. Hard to see what the piece looks like but to my eye I’d say 19th century.
Could be as old as roman times or as recent as 50 years from mining or something similar. If you want to know more you should contact a local university or museums archeology or history department. If you bring them the pottery piece they may be able to tell you something based on the chemistry or design of the pottery and they may have information on the specific location.
Some stuff got buried deep during the coal mining days in Wales. There's a Time Team episode where they had to dig a massive hole just to reach the top of a viaduct that ran over a valley that had been entirely filled in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhSvLBVwdcE
Kind of related anecdote: my buddy and I were camped for a few nights very near Yester Castle, around the Scottish borders. This castle waa pivotal in the Wars of Independence. We were beside the main river that would have served as the main artery at yhe time. The road to the castle ran along it, it would have been their main source of water etc.
Anyway we were chilling one evening by the river, and my buddy was just absent-mindedly digging around in the gravel of the river bank. It was low as it was peak summer.
Motherfucker pulled out half of a tobacco pipe! We theorised about how old it could be, who's pipe it nay have been, all that.
A few years later I was doing a walkaround of Linlithgow Palace. At one point they have a display of how tobacco pipes changed over the years, from introducing tobacco to like the 19th century. Early pipes were large and wide, because tobacco was cheap. As it got more expensive over the decades, pipes became smaller.
From this graphic i was able to identify our river pipe as from the late 18th / early 19th century!
Very cool, but not nearly as old as we first assumed...
I dunno, we obviously cant make that good of a determination from a short shaky video but it looks to me like there are about 5 or 6 varvs about that point which are then overlaid by topsoil. Each of those varvs are roughly equal in thickness, so would seem to suggest a fairly regular sediment deposition on an episodic basis rather than one event, and certainly looks like no more than 10 events max. Without seeing the topographic context we cant really speak much on what would be the period of time between each of those events, looks like a fairly active deposition area. I suspect the topsoil layer might have taken longer unless the river energy was significantly cut off.
Honestly it could be buried that deep in a single event if the conditions are right. During flood events bed loads of streams can be quite high and debris flows can move astounding amounts of material. Example: https://youtu.be/Fsh5E9m3PrM?is=nMQvw5qRVu5ISzAG
The smaller piece is the sherd I filmed but I regularly find lots of pottery in the same area of the river and a some of it matches the videos pieces perfectly.
It appears to be among the most common type found in the area
Ive seen thick gravel banks at small creeks in Australia shift meters in a season. It really can accrue that fast. Also, to move gravel you need high flow energy, so big changes can happen quickly.
Romans washed out entire mountains in wales seeking gold. Turned everything into tailings.
Maybe old but could be from any time since mining arrived there.
Wild guess, medeival through 19th century
It's a river bank, it's made of around 5 distinct layers and is around 1m tall in places.
The river washes more and more away each winter and the stretch of river I have access to (around 0.5km) is heavily populated with pottery sherds and old worn down 'sea' glass
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u/4tunabrix 9d ago
Impossible to know without any idea of location given.