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The Flaking and Flake Characteristics of a Pre-Red Crag Rostro-Carinate Flint Implement
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2013
Extract
It is now some considerable time since the attention of the archæological world was directed to the discovery of a series of flint implements of a peculiar and novel type to which Sir Ray Lankester gave the descriptive name rostro-carinate. These particular implements, as their name implies, bear, in their anterior region, a marked resemblance to the beak of an accipitrine bird, and also to the prow of a boat, the boat being turned keel upwards. Both Sir Ray Lankester and the author have, from time to time, published papers on these specimens (1), and the latter has lately put forward reasons for believing that the rostro-carinate was the ancestral form of, and gradually developed into, the well-known Chellian palæolithic implements of rhomboidal section (2). Since the first discovery of these beak-like flaked flints, and the spreading abroad of a knowledge of their characteristics, a number of similar specimens have been found in parts of England other than Suffolk and Norfolk, where they were first discovered, and it may be said that the fact of their occurrence over a very wide area is established. The author has seen and examined rostro-carinate flint implements from Warren Hill, Suffolk; the Thames and Lea Valleys (3); Lakenheath, Suffolk (4); Savernake, Wiltshire (5); Selsey Bill, Sussex; Kent's Cavern; the North of Ireland; France and Egypt (6). Dr. Peake has also described and figured rostro-carinate implements found by him in Oxfordshire (7). It must not be imagined, however, that all the specimens from the aforementioned places are of the same age, for it is clear that the “fashion” of making rostrocarinates, though very much in vogue in Pliocene and early Pleistocene times, was not confined solely to these periods, but occurs sporadically in later cultures. And this is in accord with what we know of the occurrence of other types of flint implements.
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