ARTEFACTS covering every century from the 16th to the present have been discovered by divers at a single site in Poole Harbour.

Mike Markey believes the area inside the harbour entrance was probably used throughout the centuries by ships seeking shelter.

"It's a very typical anchorage where things have been dropped overboard," said Mr Markey, founder of Poole Bay Archaeological Research Group.

"Items found range from 15th or 16th century Spanish pottery to modern beer bottles and a traffic cone," he said.

"You expect to find the modern plastic rubbish as much as the ancient pottery," he said.

Brought up into the light from a depth of 10 metres was a broken but almost complete pot, believed to have been made in Donyatt in Somerset in the mid-17th century.

The site has been dived over the past few years and the top of a stoneware jar, which may be of 17th century German origin, is currently in the hands of experts for identification.

Among many other pieces of pottery was part of a stoneware jar with a stamp, which enabled archaeologists at Poole Museum Service to trace it to H. Kennedy's Barrowfield Pottery.

The jar came from Glasgow and is most likely to have been made between 1866 and 1881.

"We went there deliberately to make a surface collection of artefacts," said Mike, who carried out a lot of work in the 1980s on the Studland Bay Wreck, a 15th century Spanish merchant ship.

He said the initial search was over 6,000 sq metres but it was in a 500 sq metre area that was intensively searched that the pieces of pottery were found.

First published: August 24