Antiquary
An interest in the past, instigated by observing worked stone tools in a clay mining pit, led him to become a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and the Royal Society and to conduct excavations at a site just south of Hoxne, not far east, and across the River Waveny, from his home in Diss. Frere wrote a letter to the Society of Antiquaries about flint tools and large bones of extinct animals that he had found at a depth of approximately twelve feet (four meters) in a hole dug by local bricklayers. He described the worked flints as ...weapons of war, fabricated and used by a people who had not the use of metals... The situation in which these weapons were found may tempt us to refer them to a very remote period indeed, even beyond that of the present world.... In addition, Frere carefully described the stratigraphy of the find, with the tools lying below an apparent ancient sea floor. The letter was officially read at the Society on 22 June 1797 and published in 1800, but Frere's interpretation was so radical by the standards of his day that it was overlooked for six decades.
Frere's is presently considered one of the important middle Pleistocene sites in Europe, because of what he observed in his letter: juxtaposition of artifacts, animal remains and stratigraphic evidence.
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