New site

[Sunny]

I have driven passed this site - on the way home from work - for over a year now and constantly plotted in my mind to stop off and explore the field; which sits on top of a ridge. The geology is Upper Greensand, so the field has no natural flint contamination.

Being on a hill top ridge I was not expecting much, as it is not close to any immediate water courses, although being sand it is likely rain-water will seep through and come out as spring down one of the slopes (which I did not get around to exploring).

The searching was really easy, as the flint stood out to the eye against the background sand. I think the nearest flint is about 15-20 miles away, which clearly caused the hunters to be very sparing with their material. There was none of the usual large amounts of debitage waste I get on my chalk geology sites. In fact almost every piece of flint I found had secondary pressure flaking to use as tools. Even pieces of what would normally be waste chips had been retouched to create very small thumb-scrappers. Talk about easy searching !

I picked up 13 scrappers in 2 hours, which is pretty good going by the standard of any of my best Mesolithic/Neolithic occupation sites.

The best piece of the day (in my mind) is the late Mesolithic arrowhead, with tiny pressure flakes down one side (not sure they will come out in the photo; macro lense on order). Also a picture of the best drill that came out.

At one point I thought I had found a Reverse Petite Traverse Arrowhead, but on closer examination it turned out to be a Gun Flint. I should have been pleased with the gun flint, they are not a common find, but I had my heart set on the Petit Traverse Arrowhead..... which is one I am yet to add to my collection.


A great result for a few hours of effort and one site I will be visiting next winter for a whole day !

[gregszybala]

Congrats, the new site looks to be real promising.

[2ndoldman]

That dream find is always just one step further along the path. Great finds and have fun searching for that Petit Traverse Arrowhead

[sailorjoe]

Congratulations on finding a new site and thank you for showing us your finds. I know practically nothing about flint/chert artifacts from the British Isles and lots of what I know comes from the contributions made by you and Painshill so what I have to say is more of a question or meant to clarify things for me. Question 1: Is the site a Mesolithic site or a Neolithic site? The assemblage of tools in the first photo resembles pics I've seen of Mesolithic tools. I read somewhere that the Mesolithic corresponds somewhat to the Archaic that we have in the USA. (If I found an assemblage of tools like that over here I would expect them to be found on Paleolithic or early Archaic sites.) Question 2: Is the artifact in pic #2 the one you are calling an arrowhead? I think that the bow was invented in the eastern hemisphere earlier than in the western but were bows in use in Europe during the Mesolithic? (I could probably do a google search to find out, but just call me lazy. LOL) #3: If I found a tool over here like that, I would be inclined to call it a burin (graver) as opposed to a drill because of its uniface appearance.

[painshill]

I can’t comment on the site except to say that it would be moderately unusual to find a site which had only Mesolithic occupation unless it’s an early hunting camp. If an occupation site has Mesolithic tools it usually has Neolithic ones as well (although the reverse is not necessarily the case). The Mesolithic in Britain commenced around 12,000 BP and was succeeded by the Neolithic around 6,500 BP.

The second picture is a cortex-backed scraper/blade. The point is in the 4^th, 5^th and 6^th pictures and I would agree it’s an arrowhead… providing the scale on the ruler is in centimetres not inches. I don’t think it could definitively be said to be Mesolithic from its form alone since that type was certainly also used into the Neolithic. Only undisturbed stratigraphy and association with definitive Mesolithic types would tell you that. Even the transverse (not traverse) types mentioned are not exclusive to the Mesolithic… just characteristic of it. I’ll post some examples of those when I’ve had a rummage through some storage boxes.

As far as we can tell, the invention of the bow in Africa, happened as part of the transition from Palaeolithic to Mesolithic… but we don’t know exactly when. There is a suggestion that it may have been as long ago as 75,000 years or as recently as 35,000 years. The so-called “Sibudu point” associated with the Howiesons Poort people in the Middle Stone Age of South Africa can be precisely dated to a little over 60,000 years ago since it’s bone, has organic plant gum residue and was found in association with stone tools having bone and blood residues that were protected in a cave environment. Although it’s non-tanged and cannot definitively be said to be an arrowhead, it has distinct parallels in form with the style of bone points known (for certain) to have been used with the bow by modern Kalahari Bushmen, Iron Age and Late Neolithic people in Africa.

Bow technology then probably spread into Europe via Asia and happened at least 11,000 years ago, so that would certainly be in the Mesolithic and perhaps a little before. In North America, the evidence suggests that the bow also arrived from Asia but via the Palaeo-Eskimo tradition as a much later technology… probably from around AD 600 into the part of the continent which is now south of the Canadian border.

The oldest bows found in Europe so far are from the Holmegård swamp in Denmark and date to around 8,000 BP. The oldest arrows we have are from Stellmoor in Germany and date to between 11,000 to 9,000 BP. Although they have a two-part construction with a foreshaft, we’re sure they were used with the bow because they have shallow grooves on the base.

[Sunny]

Congratulations on finding a new site and thank you for showing us your finds. I know practically nothing about flint/chert artifacts from the British Isles and lots of what I know comes from the contributions made by you and Painshill so what I have to say is more of a question or meant to clarify things for me. Question 1: Is the site a Mesolithic site or a Neolithic site? The assemblage of tools in the first photo resembles pics I've seen of Mesolithic tools. I read somewhere that the Mesolithic corresponds somewhat to the Archaic that we have in the USA. (If I found an assemblage of tools like that over here I would expect them to be found on Paleolithic or early Archaic sites.) Question 2: Is the artifact in pic #2 the one you are calling an arrowhead? I think that the bow was invented in the eastern hemisphere earlier than in the western but were bows in use in Europe during the Mesolithic? (I could probably do a google search to find out, but just call me lazy. LOL) #3: If I found a tool over here like that, I would be inclined to call it a burin (graver) as opposed to a drill because of its uniface appearance.

I used to just call all of these sites Mesolithic, but as Roger points out they continued in use, simply because a good place to live/survive in the Mesolithic must still have been a good place when they arrived at the Neolithic !

I have also come to accept that even in the bronze age they were making a heck of a lot of very crude flint tools; just plain lazy I guess. Because we do find some extraordinarily beautiful bifacially pressure flaked pieces from the Neolithic onwards. But on a day-to-day basis they produced functional stuff that was (at best) crude. This makes dating sites - here - by lithic design quite problematic. And made all the worse by a mixture of occupation periods on one spot.

I do find that the vast majority of fields are not 'busy'. They hold enough worked stone to make searching them interesting, but when you find an occupation site then you really do know it; with a marked increase in finds. This particular field has two distinct areas that produced the finds and the thing that struck me was the volume of small scrappers. This could be a result of the shortage of raw material or indicative of a specific period of occupation; I don't know which.

We are not as lucky as you guys in the US with such an abundance of beautifully constructed bifacially worked points. They are rare items here and we simply don't get the sophisticated quality of large spear points that you have the realistic opportunity of finding. But we do get much older stuff; really old :0)