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A Flaked Flint from the Red Crag

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2013

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Extract

The remarkable specimen which forms the subject of this communication was presented to me by Mr. Reid Moir, who had extracted it with his own hands from the base of the Red Crag exposed in Messrs. Bolton & Laughlin's brick field, near Ipswich.

It is a fragment of a nodule of chalk flint, irregularly rhombic in outline, with nearly flat base and a rounded upper surface which slopes away on each side from a medium line (the shorter diameter) joining the two obtuse angles of the rhomb.

The upper rounded side formed part of the original surface of the nodule and retains the whitish weathered crust, 8 mm. or more in thickness, which was formed while the nodule lay embedded in the chalk. The exterior of this crust has since been traversed by solutions which have deposited in its pores some silica and ferric hydrate, thus forming a brown superficial layer which is now too hard to be scratched with a knife.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1920

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References

page 265 note * Since this was written I have again visited Prof. Capitan's collection of Aurillac flints, and was more than ever impressed by the artefact appearance of some of them, as Prof. Capitan remarked, “Nature and Man seem sometimes to make the same thing.” The resemblance of these Miocene flints to those from the base of the Red Crag is very striking, so much so that it is difficult ro resist the conclusion that the “eolith” question is not multiple, but one.

page 265 note † L'Anthropologie”, Vol. 26, pp. 1 to 67, 1915Google Scholar.

page 265 note ‡ “Ancient Hunters,” 2nd Ed., p. 60.