Prehistoric Flint Tools in Breckland

During the early 20th century, the Brecks were a favourite hunting ground for the collectors of prehistoric flint tools, who promoted the district as one of the richest sources of Stone Age artefacts in Eastern England, and as a centre of late prehistoric (8,300 BC to AD 40) activity. The Grimes Graves Late Neolithic and Bronze Age flint mine complex, is central to the area, and the abundance of high quality knapping flint must have had a significant impact on local flint-working practices. However, a new generation of archaeologists challenged this assumption during the early 1980s, using environmental evidence accumulated from excavations. They claimed that rather than a centre of late prehistoric activity, that settlement was sparse and riverine in pattern - with most of the lithic finds dating to the Late Neolithic and Bronze Ages (3,500 to 600 BC).

One of the aims of the Thetford Forest Project is to map out the densities, characteristics and locations of flint flake scatters and prehistoric finds, to test the suggestion that the lithic finds are concentrated in the river valleys.

Lithics - an introduction

Flint forms into layers of nodules in chalk beds. It is an excellent raw material for tool production - it can be fractured in a controlled manner, to produce very sharp edges. Many of the chalk beds have experienced erosion, exposing flint to the surface, scattering broken nodules in the top soil. Some have entered rivers and seas, to be rolled into pebbles and gravel. A knapper (person working flint) will select a nodule, or broken flint, and prepare it for tool production, by striking off odd ends to make flat surfaces, or striking platforms. The knapper will then start to strike flakes off the edge of this core. When struck with a hammer(stone), flint fractures conchoidally. Flint has a slight elastic nature, so that when it is struck, the energy dissipates away from the point of impact, forming a conchoidal bulb on the ventral (inside) face of the new flake. This bulb, sometimes with other signs, such as ripples, a bulbar scar, and fissures, distinguishes the flake as man made, rather than as natural.

A knapper may remove flakes from a core, in order to leave a blank core tool, such as an axe head. The flakes are then waste flakes, although some may later be retrieved and utilised. However, in the majority of cases, it is the flakes themselves that are removed from the core, that are intended to be used or altered into tools - such as knives, arrowheads, scrapers, or just as sharp edges. Once no more flakes can economically be removed from the core, it is discarded as a waste core.

Flake Utilisation

Another factor worth noting, is the variation in the percentage of flakes with signs of retouch or utilisation. Some surveys produce high percentages of flakes with retouch or signs of utilisation. Other compartments produce much lower percentages of flakes with utilisation. Could this data be used to suggest areas of land-use? Perhaps the areas with low rates of retouch were sources of raw material; while areas with lots of retouch and used flakes suggest areas where people used the flakes - cultivation, gathering, or habitation.

Although it is too early for conclusions, analysis of the finds suggest that many of the Breckland flake scatters are probably of late prehistoric date. High percentages of flakes carry hinge fractures and cortex, suggesting a low standard of flint workmanship, and broad squat forms usually dominate. Many of the flakes have miscellaneous retouch, shallow notches, and irregular shapes. Scrapers are frequently informal, and waste cores often take the form of 'battered lumps'. Even thermal flakes and old discarded and patinated flakes are occasionally utilised. I would suggest that most lithics were deposited on to the surfaces of the Brecks between 2,900 BC, and 100 BC. However, many of the forest-walks also produced smaller numbers of heavily patinated flakes, that are often slim, and more blade-like. These flakes may be suggesting an earlier exploitation of the district, perhaps during the Later Mesolithic or Earlier Neolithic.

Burnt Flint (Pot-Boiler) Densities

I am also examining the distributions and densities of so-called pot boilers. These are smallish burnt flints, usually whitened and crackled by intense heat. A number of archaeological origins have been suggested for these burnt flints - from heated stones used for cooking food, to the waste product of prehistoric saunas. Excavated as piles of white crackled flints, often mixed with charcoal and prehistoric pot sherds, they are undeniably archaeological. However, scattered over the surface, should all such finds be regarded as data? So far, I have failed to find any relationship between burnt and struck flint densities. They appear to be most common on the upper slopes, where the river valleys meet the uplands.

Prehistoric ceramics

Several sherds of Bronze Age pottery were recovered during forest-walks 1 to 3 on the edge of uplands at West Stow. The presence of any prehistoric ceramics here was very unexpected - five kilometres from a river; and on brown earth soils on the edge of uplands.

Prehistoric pottery is very frail, and has a poor survival rate in acidic Breckland topsoil's, which are prone to both frequent ground frosts and high temperatures under the sun. Subsequently such finds are rare on the surface. When they do occur, they are often automatically associated with 'settlement'. However, there is no reason why such sherds could not be deposited with manure, as in later ages. Alternatively, their moderate presence in the West Stow case, could be the result of another process. They may even represent settlement, and have been dispersed by later ploughing. The presence of any prehistoric ceramics on these compartments was very unexpected, the location seems unattractive for either cultivation or settlement. However, the surveys also recovered evidence of cultivation here both during the Roman period, and in recent centuries. Therefore, could the prehistoric ceramics have also been deposited there with manure and waste?

The Grimes Graves Belt

Francis Healy², basing her research on the finds of the old flinters, suggested that a belt of high density flint artifact scatters stretched through the parishes of Santon and Weeting, to the south and west of the Grimes Graves Flint Mine site. Surveys that have been carried out so far in that area confirm the existence of such a belt of flakes - although not a consistent belt.

2.(Healy, Francis. Aspects of East Anglian Prehistory. Geo Books 1984)