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Discovery of a New Phase of Early Flint Mining at Grimes' Graves, Norfolk

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2013

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Extract

The discovery of Floor 85, in 1920, with its definite three period stratification, for the first time demonstrated what some people had long suspected, viz., that the Grimes' Graves industry was not confined to any one period exclusively, but was the outcome of a practically continuous local development from an early stage in the pre-historic period down to the end of Neolithic times, and the exploration of this Floor established three important facts:—

(1) That an early industry had existed on the site characterised by the practice of naturalistic engraving on flint crust and the production of flint implements of certain distinctive types from mined flint of the variety known as Floor-stone.

(2) That that industry was the earliest so far recognised at Grimes' Graves and was clearly not contemporary with any of the 366 visible mine shafts on the site, but ante-dated them so considerably that the implements of the lowest level, F.85c, had become patinated and buried beneath accumulations of humus, etc., before mining operations commenced at that place.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1924

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References

page 113 note * Armstrong, A. L., “Proceedings,” P.S.E.A., Vol. III., p. 434 and p. 548Google Scholar.

page 113 note † Armstrong. Ibid., p. 550.

page 114 note * Report. Grimes' Graves Excavations, 1914.

page 115 note * The new pits discovered have been numbered in sequence with the two pits examined by the P.S.E.A. in 1914, and described in the official Report.

page 117 note * John Dyer and A. Ashley, of Brandon.

page 121 note * Bos. Longifrons). In view of the discovery of this species in the lowest layer of Aveline's Hole, associated with a typical Pleistocene fauna, and similar authenticated finds elsewhere, this species can no longer be considered as indicative of a late date and hasty deductions therefrom are, at this stage, to be guarded against. See “Proceedings,” Bristol University Spelæological Soc., vol. I., No. 2, p. 65Google Scholar.

page 123 note * “Report,” 1914, Excavations, p. 211, Fig. 81. “Archæologia,” LXIII 118, Fig. 17. Also two examples, not yet described, found upon chipping floors during 1923 (Rev. H. G. O. Kendall and A. L. Armstrong).