Junior Joneses on the archaeological trail

Between them they might not be old enough to have seen the latest Indiana Jones movie, but these two junior Joneses have helped unearth part of an axe that is thousands of years old.

Between them they might not be old enough to have seen the latest Indiana Jones movie, but these two junior Joneses have helped unearth part of an axe that is thousands of years old.

George and Eleanor Bell, six and five respectively, will not be able to see the PG-13 rated Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for a few years yet, but by the time they are they might well have added a few more fossil finds to their collection.

The youngsters were helping their parents Jennifer, 43, and Steven, 45, renovate their Wramplingham farm house earlier this year when they made the exciting find.

'We were putting some drains in the front garden, as we had just renovated the farm house, and my children found this fairly substantial flint,' said Mrs Bell, an administrative assistant for Age Concern, who lives at Green Lane, Wramplingham.

She said they took the piece of flint, which is between 7 and 8ins long, to the castle museum in Norwich to see if they could find out more about it.

'They confirmed that it was part of an old axe head dating back to between 4,000 and 2,300 BC. We were quite excited when it came back and they confirmed what it was. We looked on the internet to see how they made these axes. We will probably keep it at home in a cabinet,' said Mrs Bell.

'We had two pieces that went in - a lid from a pot that we found as well. They said it was a lid from a tobacco holder from the 18th or 19th century.'