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Description: | Microliths, made from flint. They have all been knapped, using larger blade blanks or flakes, which have then been ?cut? into smaller pieces, by precisions blows. The pieces consist of two blade ends, four sections of blades, and one flake: this latter may simply be a waste flake, although its almost regular shape shows that it could have been mounted on a tool or weapon. The two blade ends, both triangular show no signs of retouching. The same can be said of three of the blade fragments, one of which is rectangular, and the other two sub-rectangular. Although one of the latter pieces has some partial cortex remaining on one corner, these three blades could have been mounted to act as tool edges, being straight and sharp. The fourth of the blade fragments, which appears to retain the original bulb of percussion of the blank from which it came, has been further flaked on three edges of one sides, to form a piece which is roughly square with sharp cutting edges on three sides. Small bladelets such as those discussed here may have been mounted end to end in a line, to act as a larger cutting edge. The blade ends could be mounted to act like shark?s teeth, perhaps on a harpoon or similar weapon. The edges of the seven pieces appear fresh, suggesting that none of them were used for very long if at all. This suggests that either they were not used, or that they came loose from their mountings during use, or that they were rapidly lost during use, as might happen with a weapon- or, if part of a tool, the whole item may have been discarded. These pieces all date from the Mesolithic period (c. 10,500 to 4,500 B.C.), when people started to use composite tools combining several small microliths, rather than large single blades. | Format: | text/html | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ | Publisher: | The Portable Antiquities Scheme | Rights holder: | The Portable Antiquities Scheme | Subjects: | archaeology | Temporal: | -10500
-2500 | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefac... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | text/html | Go to resource |
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