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Description: | A group of 104 flint and chert cores and tested pebbles weighing 3.2kg and spanning 5-240g from a 2 hectare field amongst a total of 850 worked flint fragments including waste and utilised pieces and tools. The flints have individual GPS records to a few metres accuracy which form a cluster extending beyond but centred in the field close to a brook at the edge of its flat alluvial plain and slightly above. The flints form a broad funnel to a crossing point and continue less frequently on the other side. There is no modern obvious preferential ford but fallen branches make natural bridges and a particular one may have begun a tradition and a path beaten to it may have been maintained long after it had rotted. The find rate was 30-50 flints per hour and compares with a background expectation of one tenth of this and a few scatters exceeding ten times this field. The first search was on an unequally visible surface with patchy weed cover and manuring. It was fortunate that this was ploughed in and heavy rain shortly allowed a more equal search. The maps have necessarily not been included in this entry but the data is available on request. The field overlies mylor slate and there are many fragments with the associated vein quartz. There is also much granite from the nearby intrusion and up to boulder size greenstone or lava which also occurrs nearby. Most of this material must be here naturally. There were only a couple of possibly ground pieces so intense dwelling or settlement is not suggested. There was no unusual coloured sediment or prehistoric pottery found so there are no erosion of archaeology issues at this time.The cores span a period from the Mesolithic to well into The Bronze Age. Small pebble cores like illustration 640.1 represent the earlier kinds with discoidal cores such as 639.9 worked from a cortical platform being more recent. An outstanding blade core of opposed platforms and very likely Mesolithic has nodular cortex but thermal cracks so may have come from the land surface of Devon or further.(illustration 639.2). Typical Neolithic cores include the carefully worked out core; 640.10. Some likely Later Neolithic cores are increasingly sourced from traded nodular cortex and include 637.6 which is of somewhat informal form and may even be Bronze Age. Cores have been reused as scrapers such as 638.3 and 639.12. Tested pebbles make a significant contribution to the cores(10%) and may be due to people caching them as the nearest source at Marazion beach is over 5km away. Some have been used as simple nosed scrapers with minimal further retouch; 637.13 and 640.15. The reader is commended to analyse the cores statistically and compare them to other finds ie microburins and scrapers found on this site and under separate entries. Finally please enjoy 638.2 found close to the centre of the scatter which may have been picked up for amusement in prehistory when searching for the flint beach pebbles.Microburins, backed bladelets and blades from this scatter can be found at CORN-3C1831. Flint knives are recorded in CORN-4A1CE8.
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
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