These little rolls of birch bark are 10,000 years old. They may have been waiting to be used as firelighters. Or perhaps their resin was to be used as glue to fasten microliths to a bit of mesolithic technology. A lot of them were found at Star Carr. Whatever they were intended for, they are now available for your viewing delight at the British Museum. Mmm.
Image credit: Rhiannon
Great pic Rhiannon. I must admit I had to click on it because it looks like a pair of rusty sparkplugs in thumbnail size.
Ha they do rather, very good. I was quite thrilled to see them you know.
When I was on an outdoors course recently, birch was The Tree to look for when starting your fire. You break off all the tiny snappy twiglets and put a bunch of them over your burning tinder, and all the resin makes them burn like mad. The label in the museum suggested these were firelighters and maybe, but you'd have to stick them in the embers maybe, you couldn't have let the fire go out and use one of these because it's not like you could have stuck your cigarette lighter under them, you'd only have the tiniest spark off a bit of flint and some pyrites or something (hence the fluffily prepared mushroom). Experimental archaeology that's the way forward eh.
Perhaps the similarity to a "spark" plug is more pertinent than I intended (sorry). Don't go getting any firelighting ideas back in the library though will you? I've read "In The Name Of The Rose"...