Is there an archaeologist in the house?
Is it or isn't it a flint tool?
Is it or isn't it a flint tool?
When I'm working in the vegetable garden I often pick up pieces of flint (the soil is full of them!) and wonder if it's just a broken stone or a flake of flint worked by someone thousands of years ago?
I picked up this one while I was planting potatoes the other evening – and found it in the pocket of my trousers today!
Does anyone know an expert who can tell?
I'd love to know.
Thank you
Celia
x
PS: Here's the reverse and a 50p coin for scale:
I'd love to know.
Thank you
Celia
x
PS: Here's the reverse and a 50p coin for scale:
21 comments:
My neighbour called on an archaeologist recently to look at some flint pieces in his garden. It was confirmed as a Bronze Age flint working site. Those flakes have been so neatly napped off. It has to be!
My OH is an archaeologist and says "always a bit hard to tell from a photo alone but looks pretty convincing- almost certainly a flake with retouch around the top to make a scraper. Does the other side look like it's been struck as well?"
Based on my previous experience in Paleolithic archaeology (though it's about 8 years since I last studied flints in detail) I'd second Jet_fusion's OH.
Hi Emma - it does look neat doesn't it!
Hi Jet_fusion - I've added another photo of the reverse side and a 50p coin for scale. I'm getting excited now! But I suppose they're all over the shop in Suffolk!
Celia
It does look worked, but then what would I know?!
Oo-arr! Reck'n you'd best arrsk ol' Phil with that feather'n 'is 'at...
Yes, as you say, East Anglia still pitches up all sorts of goodies. Keep weedin' them cabbages!
It's got to be Celia... too neatly chipped around the edges for chance.
Hey Celia,how exciting to dig up something more interesting than weeds and spuds.......
Hard to get your head around it could be a tool used by someone thousands of years ago.
Claire :}
Is it a slug?
amazing to think of this pressed between thumb and finger thousands of years ago. and don't us archaeologists just get everywhere!
It looks so ergonomic doesn't it? Little spaces for the fingers to fit, have you tried working with it yourself? Very exciting that piece of flint! Love Vanessa xxx
Sorry, I can't help . . . but it looks interesting!
I think I'd be using that myself - it looks a very useful object! What a glorious thing to find. I mainly dig up car parts here...
I wish I could dig up something so interesting. I'm like Wendy, it's usually old tractor bits though I did get some cow bones once - gave me a bit of shock!
ooharrrh - I think we Time Team experts can state categorically that it is napped flint! My best finds in the veg patch are bits of old pipe stem.
It definitely looks knapped and therefore made to be used as a tool, what an exciting thing to find.
Looks like it to me, the untrained but interested amateur. Those chips off the cutting edge look to have been done deliberately rather than by accident!
What a wonderful find!
I'm an archaeologist in the New World, but I know a knapped flint when I see it! how cool!
on the back view, the part at the bottom where it bulges out is where someone hit it with another rock to break it off. the curving lines radiating from there are a result of the force.
I wish I found things like that in my garden in the US!
I love your art, by the way! I found you from here:
http://theanimalarium.blogspot.com/2011/04/sunday-safari-spring-siesta.html
I have spent all my life trying to find flint tools. So I'd be prepared to say yes, just because I like the romance of it. And it sounds as if a few more educated people think so too.
Yep. Got my Certificate in Archaeology 10 years back but it's a worked flint for sure. Conchoidal fracture (like a shell)Bulb of percussion and touched up edges. You lucky madam!
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