Some finds from Lincolnshire, England

[FlintfinderGeneral]

Here's a selection of Neolithic arrowheads that I've found fieldwalking over the past year or two. I hope these are of some interest. All now live in small plastic bags with map ref and date of finding.
First some leaf-shaped ones. There seem to be more of these locally than anything else, often with minimal retouch. The one at top left is very weathered so perhaps has been out on the surface?



A different sort of leaf-shaped:



Not sure what you call these - Oblique?



Flat oblique:



The nearest I've got to finding a barbed and tanged. The one on the left looks a bit speculative but I think it's ok.



Finally a particularly nice leaf-shaped that I found in July at a field edge .

[Hal Gorges]

Nice photos, presentation and explanation General..nice collection.

[redrocks]

Nice material

[SDhunter]

I’m only seeing waste flakes, debitage.

[FlintfinderGeneral]

I’m only seeing waste flakes, debitage.

Well that's a pretty sweeping assessment.

[SDhunter]

I’m sorry. Maybe they are what you say, but I could find a thousand little pointy rocks like that If I am wrong, I will become educated.

[Cecilia]

Regardless, this novice learned on this site that debitage artifactual!

Any lithic artifact found in (one of our) Mother Countr(y/ies) may very well be from time before our prehistory. I have some old books re prehistorical European life; my favorite, The Testimony of the Spade was written by archeologist Geoffrey Bibby and published 1957. I will check it and others for any material that may provide you lil’ food for thought.

[Hal Gorges]

Good.🤗

[Mattern]

Go get em CC.

[clovisoid]

Painshill would certainly know more about his local stuff, but the group looks like a nice scattering of Neolithic arrowheads and tools to me.

There simply was not nearly as much effort or "art" put into common tools in some parts of the European Neolithic when compared to what you see in Africa or the Americas. A sharp edge, and the right thickness to fit the arrow shaft was about the extent of it. The same people that knocked those out made some great art and things like Stonehenge, so they could do cool stuff, they just didn't waste much time on essentially disposable tools.

[Hal Gorges]

👍

[FlintfinderGeneral]

There simply was not nearly as much effort or "art" put into common tools in some parts of the European Neolithic when compared to what you see in Africa or the Americas. A sharp edge, and the right thickness to fit the arrow shaft was about the extent of it. The same people that knocked those out made some great art and things like Stonehenge, so they could do cool stuff, they just didn't waste much time on essentially disposable tools.

Thank you for pointing out the above. I live in hope finding a high-status barbed-and-tanged but so far it's all been their everyday tools. Here are close-ups of some of the above arrowheads. Hopefully the retouching, sometimes so fine that you need a glass to see it, is visible on these images which I've had to downsize. Examples like these are scattered all over my local range of hills and I've been known to find ten or a dozen on a longish walk, with usually one or two decent ones amongst them. There must have been a lot of hunting here because arrowheads far outnumber scrapers. I'll create a thread for some of those and other tools when I have a moment.

[painshill]

Welcome to the forum from another Brit (I'm in Surrey).

I don't doubt at all that those are Neolithic points... and you have a good eye to have spotted them. Some are undoubtedly arrowheads, but it's unwise to assume that's the case for all of them. Points like that served other purposes too... especially the cruder ones with less aerodynamic profiles and fatter ends less amenable to hafting.

[FlintfinderGeneral]

Welcome to the forum from another Brit (I'm in Surrey).

I don't doubt at all that those are Neolithic points... and you have a good eye to have spotted them. Some are undoubtedly arrowheads, but it's unwise to assume that's the case for all of them. Points like that served other purposes too... especially the cruder ones with less aerodynamic profiles and fatter ends less amenable to hafting.

Fair comment....I tend to think of them as arrowheads if they fit the recognised shapes, especially if the ends are recessed or tapered, but I accept that we can't always know and some of them might be for different purposes. The above types are common round here but I haven't (knowingly) found a single transverse arrowhead and only one of what I believe is a petit tranchet.

[painshill]

Fair comment....I tend to think of them as arrowheads if they fit the recognised shapes, especially if the ends are recessed or tapered, but I accept that we can't always know and some of them might be for different purposes. The above types are common round here but I haven't (knowingly) found a single transverse arrowhead and only one of what I believe is a petit tranchet.

Yes, transverse/tranchets are pretty scarce. Although they extend into the Neolithic, you're more likely to find them on sites that had late Mesolithic occupation. Also more likely in areas that were wetland, which ties in with the belief that they may have been exclusively used for hunting wildfowl (especially geese and ducks).

I have a couple somewhere in my storage boxes. I'll post them if I can find them.

[SGT.Digger]

Curious if that’s ALL your finding as far as flint goes? If so I would have to reluctantly agree to some as points/tools . There would be many more waste flakes if they were producing those at camp . You don’t just get those angles without having to go through a lot of flint to get them

[painshill]

Curious if that’s ALL your finding as far as flint goes? If so I would have to reluctantly agree to some as points/tools . There would be many more waste flakes if they were producing those at camp . You don’t just get those angles without having to go through a lot of flint to get them

I don’t think what FlintfinderGeneral is finding is in any way atypical.

By Neolitihic times, the most usual camps were of the ‘causewayed enclosure’ type. Like this one (artist’s impression):


That’s where the debitage will be. There are several of those in Lincolnshire, notably at Uffington where there are five of them within a 5km radius. It’s not known if these related to groups using different enclosures for different seasons, or because they belonged to separate groups or subdivisions, or if they related to groups abandoning old territories and moving on.

It’s not at all uncommon to find lithic tools in abundance in the areas around these kinds of camps, with no associated debitage. If you were searching within a camp (often there are no remaining surface features to identify them as such) the lithic scatter story would be rather different. Where there they have been identified, they often have ‘scheduled monument’ status such you can’t collect from them anyway.

[FlintfinderGeneral]

Curious if that’s ALL your finding as far as flint goes? If so I would have to reluctantly agree to some as points/tools . There would be many more waste flakes if they were producing those at camp . You don’t just get those angles without having to go through a lot of flint to get them

Of course, and I do find quite a lot of debitage but I don't take it away as if I did, I would be overwhelmed by shoeboxes filled with stones. I'll take cores if I think they might give useful clues - I don't have the experience to assess them but someone might - and that's it. I know of at least two fields full of debitage with no or very few tools and I presume they are "factory" sites where tools were made and taken away. I do find debitage co-located with tools but I don't make a record of every flake and chip I pick up and discard, as that would be an immense chore and I doubt it would ever help anybody. 98% of what I find is on ploughland and the other 2% is at the roadside or embedded in footpaths, so I like to believe that the things I take away aren't going to distort the historical record too much.

[Cecilia]

Some of us are overwhelmed by our shoeboxes full (I prefer open big aluminum trays myself!)

[FlintfinderGeneral]

Yes, transverse/tranchets are pretty scarce. Although they extend into the Neolithic, you're more likely to find them on sites that had late Mesolithic occupation. Also more likely in areas that were wetland, which ties in with the belief that they may have been exclusively used for hunting wildfowl (especially geese and ducks).

I have a couple somewhere in my storage boxes. I'll post them if I can find them.

This is my one example of a petit tranchet. I'm not totally sure of it and would welcome your opinion. The leading edge is still pretty sharp. I have wondered if it might just be a broken flake, given the unpatinated side, but there is definite retouch on that which my pics haven't really captured but is partly visible in the last one. And as a general point, I'm not convinced that uneven patination always means a flint has been struck / worked at two different dates, as mixed soil content could equally be a factor.