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Prehistoric man's use of stone in Britain
Prehistoric Man's Use of Stone in Britain The Henry Stopes Lecture, 1967
by F. W. SHarrON Delivered 1 December 1967
CONTENTS 1. 2. 3.
page 477
THE PALAEOLITHIC PERIOD THE MESOLITHIC PERIOD ... THE NEOLITHIC PERIOD 4. THE BRONZE AGE ... 5. THE IRON AGE REFERENCES
480 481 486 489 490
ABSTRACT: Prehistoric Man used stone for his implements and weapons before he had knowledge of metals and continued to use stone for a variety of purposes even after he knew bronze or iron. This lecture outlines the growing appreciation of the properties of special types of rock, the first groping attempts to select stone and the final highly civilised custom of mining or the setting up of factory sites at specially selected outcrops. The review covers the activities of Prehistoric Man in Britain up to the advent of the Romans.
honoured me with the award of the Stopes Medal, it presumably considered I had fulfilled the conditions which Henry Stopes laid down for its recipients: to have worked 'on the prehistory of Man and his geological environment'. It seemed appropriate, therefore, that in this lecture I might pursue a theme which has always interested me-the growing awareness by Prehistoric Man of the different properties of stone and minerals which gave to them a special value so that he searched for them above and below ground, and ultimately traded in them. As a geologist with but an amateur's interest in archaeology, I make no apology for restricting my survey to the British Isles; and I shall consider only the use of rocks and minerals as such and not the search for ores to be converted to metals from the Copper Age onwards. WHEN THE ASSOCIATION
THE PALAEOLITHIC PERIOD Prior to the discovery of metal smelting, Man had to rely predominantly on stone, wood or bone as the raw materials for his tools, and of these stone was both the most abundantly used and the most easily preserved. 477
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So we find Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Man, going back beyond a quarter of a million years, represented by almost no remains of himself (Swanscombe Man excepted) but by stone implements which must total hundreds of thousands. These tools, both core artefacts such as the familiar hand-axes and flake implements, are almost all made from flint, the only abundant natural material in Britain which, in the control of its splitting characteristics, approaches the perfection of a glass. It is noticeable, however, that many of these tools carry remnants of an original battered outer surface which shows that they were once pebbles. Older Palaeolithic Man clearly discriminated in his choice of material, but picked up what came to hand. There is no evidence that he mined his flint nor that it was brought from any distance beyond his own nomadic wandering. The distribution of these implements in Britain is most unequal. Occurring in thousands in the south-east and greatly abundant in the midsouth and in East Anglia, they decline rapidly in numbers to the northwest and are unknown in Scotland, north and north-west England, and most of Wales. Fig. 1 is adapted from Roe (1964) and on it I have added the north-western limit of the Chalk, as the source of flint in situ, and also the limit of Pleistocene tills and gravels which contain flint. The correlation between the occurrence of artefacts and the availability of flint is most striking but nevertheless must be largely fortuitous. It is hardly credible that Man's distribution was halted by lack of suitable tool-making stone, for we know he could make excellent implements from rocks other than flint; nor nowadays can the lack of records in the north and west be ascribed to the archaeologist's inability to recognise as artefacts objects made in such a rock as quartzite. We find also that in areas such as Antrim or western Scotland where flint-bearing chalk reappears, or in Aberdeenshire where there are flint-bearing gravels, there is no corresponding indication of Lower Palaeolithic Man. Undoubtedly the main control over Man's spread was a climatic one, with low-lying south and south-east England having more genial temperatures and less precipitation than the north and west. If the distribution of artefacts appears to be more related to the north-east-south-west Chalk outcrop than to the east-west limit of the major glaciations (roughly from South Wales to the Thames), it is probably because of the geological correlation between open country which gave good hunting and forested areas which did not. It appears that, toward the limit of his distribution, early Palaeolithic Man was hard pushed to find flint good enough for his large hand-axes. All available flint pebbles had been involved in glaciation and were usually full of frost flaws, so that manufacturing failures were probably frequent. Lacaille (1944) has recorded two instances of ovates with natural holes running through them, and I (1960) have noted half an ovate with the same
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feature. In the last case certainly the workman continued shaping the tool when the large hole was only too obvious. The implement is so unbattered that I suspect it broke across the hole before ever it was used. Two of these instances are at Rossington in Yorkshire and Harvington in Worcestershire, and so near the limit of available flint. At or beyond this limit there was a necessity for the scanty population to find other material, and the most acceptable, at least in the Midlands,
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Fig. 1. Distribution of Lower Palaeolithic artefacts, after D. A. Roe. The small spots represent individual finds or groups of less than ten; the large spots represent ten or over but may in some cases represent thousands. The broken line shows the north-west limit of the Chalk outcrop: the line of crosses is the approximate limit of Pleistocene deposits with flint common
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seems to have been the rounded quartzite pebbles of the Bunter, either from Trias outcrops or derived from gravels and tills. This is difficult material to work, but once a pebble has been firmly split in two, it is amenable to fracture under oblique blows and it can produce magnificent hand-axes of great toughness and durability. I know of about sixteen such implements-three from Hilton and two from Beeston in Nottinghamshire (Posnansky, 1963),one from Saltley, Birmingham (Evans, 1897), two from Baginton, Warwickshire (Shotton, 1934) and eight from Little Alne, Warwickshire (Clifford, 1943). All, except the unique find at Saltley, are accompanied by flint tools. Clearly at the limit of flint availability Palaeolithic Man was willing to use anything suitable that came to hand, but equally certainly he did depend on local material. Hence at Hilton we also find him using a hard sandstone and a glacial erratic of porphyritic andesite (Posnansky, 1963). On the Bristol Avon we have implements of indurated sandstone and of chert, probably Lower Carboniferous (Lacaille, 1954a), and at Pen-y-lan near Cardiff he used Coal Measure ganister to good effect at least once (Lacaille, 1954b).
THE MESOLITHIC PERIOD
Over the hundreds of thousands of years which comprise the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic we have no evidence that men in Britain treasured particular types of stone to the extent of quarrying or mining it, or even of collecting it, for transport elsewhere. The picture begins to look a little different at the end of the Palaeolithic, in the period of culture which coincides with the Post-Glacial amelioration of climate. This is the Mesolithic period, dated between 7000 and 3200 B.C. on the conventional radiocarbon scale. Some of its people lived in lowland lake areas (Maglemose culture), where they developed many fishing and spearing tools from bone, others lived on the hills. In the latter situations under the moorland peat, which gives an upper dating limit to the finds, may be found many flint tools, including delicately shaped microlithic points which were fixed in numbers into sticks or bones to make composite tools. These flakes were struck from pebbles, or nodules, as the larger ones show plenty of evidence of remaining cortex, and moreover they were manufactured in situ. Thus at Deepcar in Yorkshire (Radley & Mellors, 1964), and indeed at other Mesolithic sites, there was a definite working floor with thousands of fragments. Analysis revealed that 95 per cent of the material was white flint such as is found in the Chalk of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, 1 per cent was a brown translucent flint of unknown provenance and 4 per cent was black chert, presumably from the Carboniferous Limestone. But the Deepcar site is on Coal Measures, with no flint to be found anywhere
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near, and this is true of many other Mesolithic sites-Stump Cross near Grassington, Windy Hill, Lominot and Warcock Hill west of Marsden, on the Maglemose sites of Middlejoy and Shapwick in Somerset or Dozmore in Cornwall. Mesolithic Man therefore collected flint and transported it to his habitation sites for working there. It is the beginning of a behaviour whereby Man selected at one place stone which he valued for its special properties, to transport it and work it elsewhere. A characteristic implement of Mesolithic time was the pebble 'macehead'. Usually the rock was quartzite, most commonly of Bunter Pebble Bed origin secondhand into Pleistocene or Recent gravels but sometimes of sarsen. Occasionally the macehead was 'pecked' into shape, as has been suggested (Rankine, 1949) for a sarsen specimen, but usually a naturally smooth circular or oval bun-shaped pebble was selected with its major diameter between 3 and 5 in. (76-127 mm.). It was then bored from opposite ends of its minor axis to give a biconical or hour-glass perforation and presumably was hafted. One must assume that the drilling was done by a stick or bone rotated by a simple bow-drill and fed with an abrasive sand, and to do this in a Bunter quartzite pebble was a long and tedious business. Although this is a type of implement that is often picked up on a ploughed field without evidence of age, enough have been found in a Mesolithic context (Rankine, 1949; Clark, 1932) to ensure that we can credit the first mechanical perforation of hard stone to this period. One other evidence of Mesolithic Man's geological activities is the frequent finding of lumps of haematite, a mineral which was evidently searched for and collected as red ochre pigment but not at that time, of course, as an iron ore. THE NEOLITHIC PERIOD It is in the Neolithic period that the discrimination in the use of stone reaches its peak, but it is perhaps desirable first to indicate the time-limits of this period and the succeeding metal ages. The figures for this country are, of course, based on radiocarbon assays, which are still given on a C14 half-life of 5570 years, even though 5730 is now considered a more exact figure. Moreover it has been shown by measurements on extremely old wood fixed in the dendrochronological scale (Damon, Long & Grey, 1966), that there has been appreciable fluctuation in the 0 4 content of the atmosphere, so that radiocarbon ages of 4700 years can be an underestimate of true age by as much as 1000 years. This is, of course, an extreme error and figures nearer to the present are not claimed to be in error by the same proportion, but it means that the quoting of dates B.C. gives a false sense of precision, which is incorrect. Nevertheless, the table below has to be based exclusively on radiometric dates. PROC. GEOL. ASS., VOL. 79, PART 4, 1968
31
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F. W. SHOTTON
Iron Age
A.D . 43- 550 B.C. Late 550- 850 B.C. Bronze Age Middle 850-1400 B.C . Early 1400-1650 B.C.· Neolithic 1650-3200 B.C .
• J. G. D. Clark (Proc.prehist. Soc., 1965, 70), starts the Early Bronze Age around 1500 B.C. The period sometimes referred to as Chalcolithic, and more commonly as Beaker Period, is included in the late Neolithic rather than in the Early Bronze Age.
Although chipped cutting, scraping and piercing tools are predominant in the Neolithic, the speciality tool is the polished stone axe (or more rarely, adze), used with its blunted end mounted in a wooden staff, not only for cutting and shaping wood but also probably in a variety of agricultural operations. To make it, a suitably sized rough-out had to be prepared by flaking (if the stone was fine-textured) or by general battering or 'pecking' (if the stone was coarse grained), and then laboriously ground and polished to shape with suitable abrasive on a shaping stone. Very quickly Neolithic Man attached importance to certain rocks which acquired such a reputation that they were worked on quite a large scale, and their products traded throughout the length and breadth of the country and even shipped to or from Ireland . At the factory site or mine it is unusual to go beyond the stage of rough-outs, with grinding being done elsewhere, probably in the village, so that the characteristic of a factory is an abundance of flakes knocked off in preparing the rough-outs, together with a few of the latter that were either unsuitable in shape, or broken. When the rough-out was formed by pecking, the waste products become very difficult to recognise. Hence it is not surprising that at all the working factories which have been exactly located, the flaking technique of roughing-out was in vogue. None of the other type of site has been found, though in a number of localities we can indicate closely the rock outcrop that provided the raw material. It seems likely that serious axe-factoring began in Cornwall around the beginning of the Third Millenium B.C. (Piggott, in Evens, Grinsell, Piggott & Wallis, 1962). Associated with some of the earliest of Neolithic sites in the south-west (such as Cam Brea, Cornwall; Hembury Fort, Devon and Maiden Castle, Dorset) are axes of various sorts of basic igneous rock, often metamorphosed. Many of these have been put into petrological groups in the survey of British stone axes, others are still ungrouped, but all are suggestive of a Cornubian origin. Yet although several groups have been matched exactly with outcrops (e.g. Group III), no factory site has been found. The most abundant type, Group I, a uralitised gabbro, has not even been matched at outcrop although more than a hundred have been found in the south-west counties alone with a great concentration around
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Land's End. It has been suggested that this factory was drowned by the Neolithic submergence, but inability to locate the others may only be due to the working sites being uncluttered with waste flakes, since this type of igneous rock would almost certainly be roughed out by pecking. The Group I products were mainly slender, beautifully shaped little axes with almost circular conical butts that were handsome when new and polished, though now it is rare to find them not coarsely pitted by weathering of the feldspar. They achieved some repute, for they have been recognised as far from Land's End as Staines in Middlesex, Clacton in Essex, Irchester in Northants, Bridlington in Yorkshire, Cardiganshire, Anglesey and north Derbyshire, and this certainly means trade. It was a few hundred years later that there began the greatest period of the axe trade. It is usually dated about 2600 B.C. and it went on for 700years. There is no reason to think that Cornwall went out of business but it became overshadowed by several great factories in the Lake District, North Wales and Antrim, and later by the flint mines of southern and eastern England. In the Lake District, within about eight square miles (20 kms), including the highest peaks of the Borrowdale Volcanic Series, there are factories at Langdale Pikes, Scafell Pike and Glaramara (Bunch & Fell, 1949; Fell, 1964). All worked selected ash bands but Langdale stands out for the magnitude of its operations. The rock (Petrological Group VI) is a finegrained epidotised andesitic ash, soft green, often banded, and producing polished axes which are both beautiful and functional. It is not surprising that this product was traded into central Scotland and eastern and southern England. It was also shipped to the Isle of Man, traded along the west Scottish coast, and its occurrence on or close to the Welsh coasts of Flintshire, Pembrokeshire and Glamorgan suggests that it was also brought there by sea. It does not appear to have penetrated into the heart of Wales. It is characteristic of this great factory that quite a limited thickness of ash was chosen and rarely was any other type of stone worked . The outcrop is high, around 1750 ft. (533 m.) D.D., but from the crags of Pike of Stickle three great screes descend into Great Langdale, and it was these that provided the raw material , apart from a few other minor working sites. No quarrying was done , and since the rock breaks with a semiconchoidal fracture on being given a blow, the screes are rich with thousands of waste flakes and the occasional discarded rough-out. Apparently the roughly shaped axes were taken to more sheltered sites for grinding and polishing. At Ehenside Tarn in Eskdale, rough-outs, polished axes and grinding stones of red sandstone (? Penrith) were found together, and records from Low Furness and Cartmel suggest that these also were finishing sites. Another famous factory (or more strictly, series of factories) is at Graig
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Lwyd in Caemarvonshire. Historically it is notable as the first Neolithic
axe factory to be discovered in Britain, by one of your past presidents and the second recipient of the Stopes Medal, Hazzledine Warren (1919, 1921). The rock is a porphyritic microgranodiorite (Group VII) from the neck intrusions of that area, and, just as in Langdale, the working sites are on screes. It is not quite such an ideal medium as Group VI, but it was still worked on a great scale by the same methods and over much the same period of time. Its axes are scattered widely over Britain though not in quite the abundance of the Borrowdale ashes. It made some penetration into mid-Wales and even into north-east Ireland. Axes of Group VI and VII have often been found associated, indicating the contemporaneity of their working. The third of the known large-scale sites for axe manufacture is in Antrim (Jope, 1953), and it exemplifiesthe selectivity of Neolithic Man in his choice of raw material, and even suggests he was quite a good field petrologist. The tops of the Tertiary basalts of Antrim have been affected by lateritic weathering, with one particular soil, the inter-basaltic layer, several feet thick. At the hill of Tievebulliagh near Cushendall, a dolerite neck through the lava flows has metamorphosed this lateritic bole, close to the contact, to a hard, fine-textured porcellanite, excellent for axemaking. Mineralogically it consists of patches of haematite in a microcrystalline matrix of sillimannite with some quartz (Morey & Sabine, 1953),and is a most distinctive rock which has been placed in a Group IX. As expected, the raw material was selected from screes near to which tools were roughed out but not polished. What is of considerable interest is that the very special geological circumstances which produced the porcellanite at Tievebulliagh might be expected to repeat themselves at other necks. Neolithic Man discovered this at Brockley on Rathlin Island and there set up another factory. We do not know which of these two sites is the earlier, nor, indeed, whether there are others which have not yet been found; we do know that their products cannot be separately distinguished. Axes of this type concentrate in north-east Ireland, but two have been found near Limerick and, more significantly, they were carried across the sea, because they are known in (amongst other places) North Uist, Aberdeenshire, the Thames estuary, Dorset, Walney Island and central England sites in Warwickshire and Shropshire. There is another factory known at Mynydd Rhiw in the Lleyn Peninsula of Caemarvonshire (Houlder, 1961). The rock, Group XXI, is a bedded tuff indurated by intrusive dolerite sills. The factory is of small significance compared with those mentioned above, but it is interesting because the source rock was quarried. There are many other rock types used in Neolithic axes. One of these, the well-known spotted dolerite of the Prescelly Mountains in Pembroke-
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shire, came into limited use in late Neolithic times and continued into the Bronze Age, but the exact site of the factory has not been found. Another rock, Group XX, is an epidotised quartz-feldspar ash which points strongly to Charnwood Forest (Shotton, 1959), but it too is unlocated despite the fact that it gave rise to many flakes at the working site. No doubt these, and others, will one day be found. So far, Scotland has yielded little evidence of factory location. However, P. R. Ritchie (1955) has reported a site with chips and rough-outs of a green banded hornfels on the slope of Creag na Caillich, north of Killin, Perthshire. Presumably this site was small, since no finished tools referrable to it have yet been recognised. Only after the big western axe factories had been in production for several hundred years did a new type of activity begin to flourish on the Chalk of southern and eastern England. This was the mining of flint, for Neolithic people had discovered what the Brandon flint-knappers will tell you today, that flint with its 'quarry water' is even more amenable to controlled shaping than it is as a pebble. It now seems clear that this discovery, and the technique of mining, did not occur until the beginning of the Late Neolithic, i.e. about 2000 B.C. A mine was a wide shaft, perhaps 20 ft. (6.0 m.) deep and often widening downward, until it met the desired bed of tabular flint, possibly only 6 or 8 in. (150-200 mm.) thick, which was removed. The seam of flint would then be followed sideways in galleries of the smallest possible height, often communicating with passages from an adjacent bell-pit, until the mining area was a tortuous maze of open and filled-in holes connectedby a network of galleries. Mining was done principally with onesided picks made from the stem and brow tine of red deer antlers, and was dangerous, as the occasional skeleton testifies; but beautifully finished polished axes resulted, to be traded westward as the later products of the big scree factories in the west came across to the east. There may have been many flint mines, but two centres are outstanding in their scale of activity -Grimes Graves, near Thetford, on the Norfolk-Suffolk border, and Cissbury in Sussex. Finally, no account of the stone-axe trade would be complete without reference to the considerable scale of imports from overseas. Almost certainly some came in from Brittany, but the most interesting and widespread foreign type, namely jade, which was once attributed to Brittany, is no longer accepted as matched in that region. Campbell Smith (1963,1965) has recognised seventy-three examples in Britain, sixty-nine of jade or jadeite and four of nephrite. They have been found in Ireland, in Scotland frequently and as far north as Caithness, in north and central England, East Anglia, the south-west and a great concentration around the coast of Hampshire, which probably included the ports of entry. Where the axes
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came from is, however, still a mystery. Campbell Smith has suggested Switzerland or the Italian Piedmont. Stone was not, of course, used only for tools. Grinding mills or querns were necessary as cereals became cultivated, and we find rough sandstones and quartzite being used to make them. Those of quartzite at Mildenhall, Suffolk (Clark, Higgs & Longworth, 1960), had certainly been brought some distance, for quartzite naturally at Hurst Fen is not conceivable. It is in the very late Neolithic, also, that we first meet, as a medium for grinding, that well-known stone from the Eifel, commonly called Niedermendig lava, though the quem factories were actually at Mayen (Crawford, others 1955; Smith, 1965; Cannington, 1931). This stone was to achieve a supreme reputation equal to that of the Millstone Grit, and its importation reached a peak in Roman times and continued right into the Middle Ages. For purely ornamental purposes, jet began to be used in the late Neolithic, and presumably it was bartered. For his more massive monumentschambered cairns, alignments and stone circles (those that were truly Neolithic and not later) Man typically used local material-slabs of Jurassic limestone and sarsen stone in the south, slates and igneous rocks in Cornwall and Devon, Palaeozoic rocks and glacial erratics in Wales, in the north of England and Scotland sometimes New Red Sandstone but more usually Palaeozoic and Pre-Cambrian rocks which often were the largest local glacial erratics. The striking exception to local origin, which is probably late Neolithic in date, is the inner horseshoe ring of Stonehenge, made of the Prescelly spotted dolerite (Atkinson, 1956, 82). It is not known why this rock, the same as used for making axes, had mystic significance, but there is no doubt that the transport of the heavy blocks was done by Man. A journey of at least 160 miles (258 km.) was involved, probably in successive stages of roller, raft and again roller transport. In general the stones of megalithic monuments are unshaped or, at most, crudely roughhewn. THE BRONZE AGE With the incoming of copper and then bronze, the making of stone axes declined. This is understandable, since a simple bronze axe was better suited than stone for purposes such as cutting and splitting wood or bone and even for hoeing the ground. However, small chipped stone tools, almost exclusively of flint, continued to be made mainly from pebbles that were to hand. Some of these were extremely sophisticated, such as the daggers, barbed points and barbed-and-tanged arrow-heads and probably the finestwere made from mined flint, for the mines of the South Downs and East Anglia were active at the beginning of the Bronze Age. Some were imported in a fully manufactured state, for example a special type of barbed-and-tanged arrow-head from Brittany (Grinsell, 1964).
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With the decline of stone axes, a different kind of stone tool was devised. This is the perforated axe-hammer, fundamentall y like a large geological hammer with a vertical blade. It was bored for hafting and the hole is not nearly so waisted as in the earlier pebble mace-heads. Sometimes it can approach to a cylindrical form, when it is possible that drilling was done by sand fed down the inside of a metal tube. Axe-hammers vary immensely in their standard of manufacture. The crudest are naturally wedge-shaped joint blocks which have been perforated , the finest are perfectly shaped and balanced. There is a development, smaller in size, where the blade flares out ('single-expanded battle-axe') and the most perfect implement has an expanded blade at each end ('double-expanded battle-axe'). These ' battle-axes' probably were weapons, for they are often found with the grave goods of males. For axe-hammers, a stone with properties different from that of the famous axe factories was demanded. It had to be very tough (flint or Langdale ash would have flaked under heavy blows), it had to be capable of being drilled, but the sharpness of the cutting edge was of secondary importance. The rocks that were selected were therefore, for example, greywacke or sub-greywacke, ashy grit, dolerite, picrite, camptonite or other primary igneous rock of moderately coarse texture. Of the Neolithic sites, Cornwall and notably Group I continued in a minor fashion and for a short time to manufacture axe-hammers, and so did Prescelly (Group XIII), but on the whole new factories carne into use. The most favoured rocks were picrite (Group XII), micaceous sub-graywacke (XV) and Whin Sill quartz-dolerite (XVIII) with carnptonite (XIV), and Cornish granite less widely used. In addition there is no doubt that a wide variety of local rocks-e-greywackes, sandstones, gabbros, dolerites-i-were utilised more or less on the spur of the moment, and sometimes the raw material is clearly a glacial erratic. It will be noted that favoured rocks rather than factory sites have been mentioned. It is significant that no axe-hammer workshop has yet been located, and this is because shaping was done by pecking, which leaves little trace of its presence. Group XII picrite, which is disseminated widely over Britain, can be identified as coming from one or both of two small outcrops near Comdon on the Shropshire-Montgomery border (Shotton, Chitty & Seaby, 1951), but even with this close location, no working site is known. It will be seen that on the distribution map of sites (Fig. 2) most of the axe-hammer factories have to be left rather vaguely defined-Group XVIII certainly comes from the Whin Sill, whose extensive outcrop is well known, and we can imagine many working sites below the crags of Northumberland or the Pennine escarpment or in Teesdale, but none has yet been located. Group XV is even vaguer-the rock is closely matched by the Silurian Coniston Grit of the southern Lake District, but this
F. W. SHOTTON
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outcrop is very large and there is also the possibility of its being paralleled in the Southern Uplands (Shotton, 1959).Moreover, I am quite sure that a few of the examples found in the north Midlands were made from boulders in the Irish Sea Drift. Early Bronze Age man still had a good geological eye. Group XIV can be exactly matched with the thickest of the camptonite
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Fig. 2. Axe factories and flint-mining centres in relation to the broad geological pattern of Britain
PREHISTORIC MAN'S USE OF STONE
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sills in the Cambrian near Nuneaton, but no factory is known . I doubt if it ever will be found , for I believe its site is now obliterated by a modern quarry (Shotton, 1959). Th is site exemplifies the selection of good material occurring in limited quantity in the vast useless expanse of Coal Measures, Trias and Jurassic of the Midlands. Its products have a wide if not very numerous distribution-for example, once we get away from a cluster of about ten finds near to the source of XIV, we have a record at Northampton, two in Wiltshire and now (unpublished) one in Hampshire. With bronze axes and blades now coming into regular use, whetstones became necessary, and they are a feature of Bronze Age and succeeding periods. They are simple objects-usually natural rod-shaped pieces of stone, sometimes deliberately squared and occasionally perforated at one end . Expediency dictated a careful choice of stone and the most favoured is a closely cemented fine sandstone, though fine quartzose schists were also used. These probably were traded along with metal tools, for they often occur in areas where such rocks would not be expected to occur . The grosser use of stone in building foundations and megalithic monuments is still characterised by the absence of any elaborate examples of the stone-mason's craft, with the exception of the great trilithons of Stonehenge. Not only are the uprights and capstones beautifully squared from great blocks of sarsen, but they are locked together by peg-and-socket joints. We know that this stage of Stonehenge dates from the Early Bronze Age (Atkinson, 1956) and there are outlines of metal axes scored on some of the stones which strongly suggest the influence of Minoans in the construction. It seems impossible to ascribe the whole of the shaping to metal tools, however, when one compares the hardness of bronze with that of the near-quartzite of sarsen , and one must assume that the smoothing of the surface was done by stone or sand on stone. After all, the Aztecs, with no knowledge of metal, shaped basalt not only into perfectly squared building blocks but also into intricate sculptures. Stone used for personal adornment during the Bronze Age includes amber as well as jet. Amber could be picked up on British beaches but its abundance in necklaces and bangles suggests more than this, i.e. cultural and commercial ties with the Baltic regions. It is perhaps permissible to mention here also the wonderful gold ornaments of the later part of the Bronze Age, since native gold is a mineral. The sources of gold are partly from Europe and partly from Ireland and it is pleasant to think of our forerunners, three thousand or so years ago, panning the gravels in the streams coming down from the Mourne Mountains. THE IRON AGE The serious use of stone for tools virtually ceased at the end of the Lower Bronze Age apart from chipped flints. There is no doubt that Iron
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Age people still continued to shape points and scrapers from pebbles right up to the advent of the Romans, but polished stone tools are uncommon. When they do occur, they are usually small and beautifully made-for example, cylindrical hammers, with a strictly parallel-sided perforation, which clearly were suited for some specialised purpose like metal-beating or leather work. Hones for the numerous forms of iron blade were also in demand. Stones for pure adornment may include quartz crystals in their various colour forms. One of the most interesting developments of this time, also, is the use of the oil-shale of Kimmeridge for carving into rings, spindle whorls, counters, buttons and so on. It is so common in British Iron Age sites that it must have been the basis of quite an important industry. Any geologist who has demonstrated to his students that a fresh oil-shale will peel with a knife, will not be surprised that its unique properties were recognised. Last of all I would mention a most unusual industry which has turned up in west Shropshire in the form of a dozen or so examples, all so far without dating context and therefore not indubitably prehistoric. They are certainly not earlier than the metal ages. Calcareous nodules from Lower Ludlow Shales (and this we know from the occasional simple Monograptus and Cardiola interruptus were picked up after being eroded out of their outcrop and partly decalcified in their interior. The core has been scraped out, the edge levelled and excellent small bowls up to as much as 7 in. (18 em.) diameter have been made (Plate 12). Occasionally they carry a pouring groove and sometimes they are ornamented by scratch patterns round the edge. It would be interesting to learn when, and by whom, they were fashioned. REFERENCES ATKINSON, R. J. C. 1956. Stonehenge. London. BUNCH, B. & C. 1. FELL, 1949. A Stone Axe Factory at Pike of Stickle, Great Langdale, Westmorland. Proc, prehist. Soc. N.S., XV, 1-20. CANNINGTON, M. E.1931. The Sanctuary on Overton Hill near Avebury. Wilts. archaeol. Nat. Hist. Mag., 45, 332. CLARK. J. G. D. 1932. The Mesolithic Age in Britain. Cambridge. - - - , E. S. HIGGS & I. H. LONGWORTH, 1960. Excavations at the Neolithic Site at Hurst Fen, Mildenhall, Suffolk, 1954, 1957 and 1958. Proc cprehist, Soc. N.S., XXVI, 202-45. CLIFFORD, E. M. 1943. Palaeolithic Implements from Little Alne, Alcester, Warwickshire. Proc. prehist . Soc., IX, 52-4. CRAWFORD, O. G. S. 1955, in discussion of J. Roche & others. The Quem Factories of Mayen in the Eifel. Antiquity, 29, 68-76. DAMON, P. E., A. LONG & D. C. GREY. 1966. Fluctuation of Atmospheric C14 during the last Six Millenia. J. geophys, Res., 71, 1055-63. EVANS, J. 1897. Ancient Stone Implements. 2nd ed. London. EVENS, E. D., 1.. V. GRINSELL, S. PIGGOTT & F. S. WALLIS. 1962. Fourth report of the Sub-Committee of the South-Western Group of Museums and Art Galleries (England) on the Petrological Identification of Stone Axes. Proc. prehist . Soc. N.S., XXVIII, 209-66.
PROC. GEOL. ASS., VOL. 79 (1968)
PLATE 12
[To face p. 490
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FELL, C. I. 1964. The Cumbrian Type of Polished Stone Axe and its Distribution in Britain. Proc. prehist, Soc. N.S., XXX, 39-55. GRINSELL, L. V. 1964. Settlement in Prehistoric and Roman Times. A Survey of Southampton and its Region. Brit. Assoc. Adv. Sci., Southampton. HOULDER, C. H. 1961. The Excavation of a Neolithic Stone Implement Factory on Mynydd Rhiw in Caernarvonshire. Proc. prehist . Soc. NoS., XXVII, 108-143. JOPE, E. M. 1953. Porcellanite Axes from Factories in North-East Ireland: Tievebulliagh and Rathlin. Ulster J. Arch., 15, 31-55. LACAILLE, A. D. 1944. Palaeolithic Implements Manufactured in Naturally Holed Flints from Rossington, Yorks. and Dartford, Kent. Ant. J., XXIV, 144-6. - - - - . 1954a. Palaeoliths from the Lower Reaches of the Bristol Avon. Ant. J., XXXIV, 1-27. - - - . 1954b. A Handaxe from Pen-y-Ian, Cardiff. Ant. J., XXXIV, 64-7. MOREY, J. E. & P. A. SABINE. 1953. A Petrological Review of the Porcellanite Axes of North-East Ireland. Ulster J. Arch., 15, 56--60. POSNANSKY, M. 1963. The Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Industries of the English East Midlands. Proc. prehist. Soc. N.S., XXIX, 357-94. RADLEY, J. & P. MELLORS. 1964. A Mesolithic Structure at Deepcar, Yorkshire, England, and the Affinities of its Associated Flint Industries. Proc. prehist, Soc. N.S., XXX, 1-24. RANKINE, W. F. 1949. Stone 'Maceheads' with Mesolithic Associations from SouthEastern England. Proc. prehist: Soc. N.S., XV, 70-6. RITCHIE, P. R. 1955. Discovery and Excavation, Scotland. Report Scottish Reg. Gp. C.B.A., 35. ROE,D. A.1964. The British Lower and Middle Palaeolithic: Some Problems, Methods of Study and Preliminary Results. Proc. prehist. Soc. N.S., XXX, 245-67. SHOTTON, F. W. 1934. Stone Implements of Warwickshire. Trans. Birm, Arch. Soc., LVIII, 37-53. - - - - . 1959. New Petrological Groups based on Axes from the West Midlands. Proc. prehist. Soc. N.S., XXV, 135-43. - - - - . 1960. Two Acheulian Implements from the Warwickshire-Worcestershire Avon. Proc. Coventry Distr, nat. Hist. Scient. Soc., III (4), 110-12. - - - , L. F. Chitty & W. A. Seaby. 1951. A New Centre of Stone Axe Dispersal on the Welsh Border. Proc. prehist . Soc. NoS., XVII, 159-67. SMITH, I. K. 1965. Windmill Hill and Avebury, Excavations by A. Keiller. Oxford. SMITH, W. Campbell. 1963. Jade Axes from Sites in the British Isles. Proc. prehist, Soc. N.S., XXIX, 133-72. - - - - . 1965. The Distribution of Jade Axes in Europe with a Supplement to the Catalogue of those from the British Isles. Proc. prehist: Soc. N.S., XXXI, 25-33. WARREN, S. Hazzledine. 1919. A Stone-Axe Factory at Graig Lwyd, Penmaenmawr. J! R. anthrop. Inst., XLIX, 342-65. - - - - . 1921. Excavations at the Stone-Axe Factory of Graig Lwyd, Penmaenmawr, J/ R. anthrop, Inst., LI, 165-98.
F. W. Shotton Department of Geology The University Edgbaston, Birmingham 15
by F. W. SHarrON Delivered 1 December 1967
CONTENTS 1. 2. 3.
page 477
THE PALAEOLITHIC PERIOD THE MESOLITHIC PERIOD ... THE NEOLITHIC PERIOD 4. THE BRONZE AGE ... 5. THE IRON AGE REFERENCES
480 481 486 489 490
ABSTRACT: Prehistoric Man used stone for his implements and weapons before he had knowledge of metals and continued to use stone for a variety of purposes even after he knew bronze or iron. This lecture outlines the growing appreciation of the properties of special types of rock, the first groping attempts to select stone and the final highly civilised custom of mining or the setting up of factory sites at specially selected outcrops. The review covers the activities of Prehistoric Man in Britain up to the advent of the Romans.
honoured me with the award of the Stopes Medal, it presumably considered I had fulfilled the conditions which Henry Stopes laid down for its recipients: to have worked 'on the prehistory of Man and his geological environment'. It seemed appropriate, therefore, that in this lecture I might pursue a theme which has always interested me-the growing awareness by Prehistoric Man of the different properties of stone and minerals which gave to them a special value so that he searched for them above and below ground, and ultimately traded in them. As a geologist with but an amateur's interest in archaeology, I make no apology for restricting my survey to the British Isles; and I shall consider only the use of rocks and minerals as such and not the search for ores to be converted to metals from the Copper Age onwards. WHEN THE ASSOCIATION
THE PALAEOLITHIC PERIOD Prior to the discovery of metal smelting, Man had to rely predominantly on stone, wood or bone as the raw materials for his tools, and of these stone was both the most abundantly used and the most easily preserved. 477
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So we find Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Man, going back beyond a quarter of a million years, represented by almost no remains of himself (Swanscombe Man excepted) but by stone implements which must total hundreds of thousands. These tools, both core artefacts such as the familiar hand-axes and flake implements, are almost all made from flint, the only abundant natural material in Britain which, in the control of its splitting characteristics, approaches the perfection of a glass. It is noticeable, however, that many of these tools carry remnants of an original battered outer surface which shows that they were once pebbles. Older Palaeolithic Man clearly discriminated in his choice of material, but picked up what came to hand. There is no evidence that he mined his flint nor that it was brought from any distance beyond his own nomadic wandering. The distribution of these implements in Britain is most unequal. Occurring in thousands in the south-east and greatly abundant in the midsouth and in East Anglia, they decline rapidly in numbers to the northwest and are unknown in Scotland, north and north-west England, and most of Wales. Fig. 1 is adapted from Roe (1964) and on it I have added the north-western limit of the Chalk, as the source of flint in situ, and also the limit of Pleistocene tills and gravels which contain flint. The correlation between the occurrence of artefacts and the availability of flint is most striking but nevertheless must be largely fortuitous. It is hardly credible that Man's distribution was halted by lack of suitable tool-making stone, for we know he could make excellent implements from rocks other than flint; nor nowadays can the lack of records in the north and west be ascribed to the archaeologist's inability to recognise as artefacts objects made in such a rock as quartzite. We find also that in areas such as Antrim or western Scotland where flint-bearing chalk reappears, or in Aberdeenshire where there are flint-bearing gravels, there is no corresponding indication of Lower Palaeolithic Man. Undoubtedly the main control over Man's spread was a climatic one, with low-lying south and south-east England having more genial temperatures and less precipitation than the north and west. If the distribution of artefacts appears to be more related to the north-east-south-west Chalk outcrop than to the east-west limit of the major glaciations (roughly from South Wales to the Thames), it is probably because of the geological correlation between open country which gave good hunting and forested areas which did not. It appears that, toward the limit of his distribution, early Palaeolithic Man was hard pushed to find flint good enough for his large hand-axes. All available flint pebbles had been involved in glaciation and were usually full of frost flaws, so that manufacturing failures were probably frequent. Lacaille (1944) has recorded two instances of ovates with natural holes running through them, and I (1960) have noted half an ovate with the same
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feature. In the last case certainly the workman continued shaping the tool when the large hole was only too obvious. The implement is so unbattered that I suspect it broke across the hole before ever it was used. Two of these instances are at Rossington in Yorkshire and Harvington in Worcestershire, and so near the limit of available flint. At or beyond this limit there was a necessity for the scanty population to find other material, and the most acceptable, at least in the Midlands,
()
o
MILES 50 ' , , I 80 KILOMETRES
I
o
"
Fig. 1. Distribution of Lower Palaeolithic artefacts, after D. A. Roe. The small spots represent individual finds or groups of less than ten; the large spots represent ten or over but may in some cases represent thousands. The broken line shows the north-west limit of the Chalk outcrop: the line of crosses is the approximate limit of Pleistocene deposits with flint common
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seems to have been the rounded quartzite pebbles of the Bunter, either from Trias outcrops or derived from gravels and tills. This is difficult material to work, but once a pebble has been firmly split in two, it is amenable to fracture under oblique blows and it can produce magnificent hand-axes of great toughness and durability. I know of about sixteen such implements-three from Hilton and two from Beeston in Nottinghamshire (Posnansky, 1963),one from Saltley, Birmingham (Evans, 1897), two from Baginton, Warwickshire (Shotton, 1934) and eight from Little Alne, Warwickshire (Clifford, 1943). All, except the unique find at Saltley, are accompanied by flint tools. Clearly at the limit of flint availability Palaeolithic Man was willing to use anything suitable that came to hand, but equally certainly he did depend on local material. Hence at Hilton we also find him using a hard sandstone and a glacial erratic of porphyritic andesite (Posnansky, 1963). On the Bristol Avon we have implements of indurated sandstone and of chert, probably Lower Carboniferous (Lacaille, 1954a), and at Pen-y-lan near Cardiff he used Coal Measure ganister to good effect at least once (Lacaille, 1954b).
THE MESOLITHIC PERIOD
Over the hundreds of thousands of years which comprise the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic we have no evidence that men in Britain treasured particular types of stone to the extent of quarrying or mining it, or even of collecting it, for transport elsewhere. The picture begins to look a little different at the end of the Palaeolithic, in the period of culture which coincides with the Post-Glacial amelioration of climate. This is the Mesolithic period, dated between 7000 and 3200 B.C. on the conventional radiocarbon scale. Some of its people lived in lowland lake areas (Maglemose culture), where they developed many fishing and spearing tools from bone, others lived on the hills. In the latter situations under the moorland peat, which gives an upper dating limit to the finds, may be found many flint tools, including delicately shaped microlithic points which were fixed in numbers into sticks or bones to make composite tools. These flakes were struck from pebbles, or nodules, as the larger ones show plenty of evidence of remaining cortex, and moreover they were manufactured in situ. Thus at Deepcar in Yorkshire (Radley & Mellors, 1964), and indeed at other Mesolithic sites, there was a definite working floor with thousands of fragments. Analysis revealed that 95 per cent of the material was white flint such as is found in the Chalk of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, 1 per cent was a brown translucent flint of unknown provenance and 4 per cent was black chert, presumably from the Carboniferous Limestone. But the Deepcar site is on Coal Measures, with no flint to be found anywhere
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near, and this is true of many other Mesolithic sites-Stump Cross near Grassington, Windy Hill, Lominot and Warcock Hill west of Marsden, on the Maglemose sites of Middlejoy and Shapwick in Somerset or Dozmore in Cornwall. Mesolithic Man therefore collected flint and transported it to his habitation sites for working there. It is the beginning of a behaviour whereby Man selected at one place stone which he valued for its special properties, to transport it and work it elsewhere. A characteristic implement of Mesolithic time was the pebble 'macehead'. Usually the rock was quartzite, most commonly of Bunter Pebble Bed origin secondhand into Pleistocene or Recent gravels but sometimes of sarsen. Occasionally the macehead was 'pecked' into shape, as has been suggested (Rankine, 1949) for a sarsen specimen, but usually a naturally smooth circular or oval bun-shaped pebble was selected with its major diameter between 3 and 5 in. (76-127 mm.). It was then bored from opposite ends of its minor axis to give a biconical or hour-glass perforation and presumably was hafted. One must assume that the drilling was done by a stick or bone rotated by a simple bow-drill and fed with an abrasive sand, and to do this in a Bunter quartzite pebble was a long and tedious business. Although this is a type of implement that is often picked up on a ploughed field without evidence of age, enough have been found in a Mesolithic context (Rankine, 1949; Clark, 1932) to ensure that we can credit the first mechanical perforation of hard stone to this period. One other evidence of Mesolithic Man's geological activities is the frequent finding of lumps of haematite, a mineral which was evidently searched for and collected as red ochre pigment but not at that time, of course, as an iron ore. THE NEOLITHIC PERIOD It is in the Neolithic period that the discrimination in the use of stone reaches its peak, but it is perhaps desirable first to indicate the time-limits of this period and the succeeding metal ages. The figures for this country are, of course, based on radiocarbon assays, which are still given on a C14 half-life of 5570 years, even though 5730 is now considered a more exact figure. Moreover it has been shown by measurements on extremely old wood fixed in the dendrochronological scale (Damon, Long & Grey, 1966), that there has been appreciable fluctuation in the 0 4 content of the atmosphere, so that radiocarbon ages of 4700 years can be an underestimate of true age by as much as 1000 years. This is, of course, an extreme error and figures nearer to the present are not claimed to be in error by the same proportion, but it means that the quoting of dates B.C. gives a false sense of precision, which is incorrect. Nevertheless, the table below has to be based exclusively on radiometric dates. PROC. GEOL. ASS., VOL. 79, PART 4, 1968
31
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Iron Age
A.D . 43- 550 B.C. Late 550- 850 B.C. Bronze Age Middle 850-1400 B.C . Early 1400-1650 B.C.· Neolithic 1650-3200 B.C .
• J. G. D. Clark (Proc.prehist. Soc., 1965, 70), starts the Early Bronze Age around 1500 B.C. The period sometimes referred to as Chalcolithic, and more commonly as Beaker Period, is included in the late Neolithic rather than in the Early Bronze Age.
Although chipped cutting, scraping and piercing tools are predominant in the Neolithic, the speciality tool is the polished stone axe (or more rarely, adze), used with its blunted end mounted in a wooden staff, not only for cutting and shaping wood but also probably in a variety of agricultural operations. To make it, a suitably sized rough-out had to be prepared by flaking (if the stone was fine-textured) or by general battering or 'pecking' (if the stone was coarse grained), and then laboriously ground and polished to shape with suitable abrasive on a shaping stone. Very quickly Neolithic Man attached importance to certain rocks which acquired such a reputation that they were worked on quite a large scale, and their products traded throughout the length and breadth of the country and even shipped to or from Ireland . At the factory site or mine it is unusual to go beyond the stage of rough-outs, with grinding being done elsewhere, probably in the village, so that the characteristic of a factory is an abundance of flakes knocked off in preparing the rough-outs, together with a few of the latter that were either unsuitable in shape, or broken. When the rough-out was formed by pecking, the waste products become very difficult to recognise. Hence it is not surprising that at all the working factories which have been exactly located, the flaking technique of roughing-out was in vogue. None of the other type of site has been found, though in a number of localities we can indicate closely the rock outcrop that provided the raw material. It seems likely that serious axe-factoring began in Cornwall around the beginning of the Third Millenium B.C. (Piggott, in Evens, Grinsell, Piggott & Wallis, 1962). Associated with some of the earliest of Neolithic sites in the south-west (such as Cam Brea, Cornwall; Hembury Fort, Devon and Maiden Castle, Dorset) are axes of various sorts of basic igneous rock, often metamorphosed. Many of these have been put into petrological groups in the survey of British stone axes, others are still ungrouped, but all are suggestive of a Cornubian origin. Yet although several groups have been matched exactly with outcrops (e.g. Group III), no factory site has been found. The most abundant type, Group I, a uralitised gabbro, has not even been matched at outcrop although more than a hundred have been found in the south-west counties alone with a great concentration around
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Land's End. It has been suggested that this factory was drowned by the Neolithic submergence, but inability to locate the others may only be due to the working sites being uncluttered with waste flakes, since this type of igneous rock would almost certainly be roughed out by pecking. The Group I products were mainly slender, beautifully shaped little axes with almost circular conical butts that were handsome when new and polished, though now it is rare to find them not coarsely pitted by weathering of the feldspar. They achieved some repute, for they have been recognised as far from Land's End as Staines in Middlesex, Clacton in Essex, Irchester in Northants, Bridlington in Yorkshire, Cardiganshire, Anglesey and north Derbyshire, and this certainly means trade. It was a few hundred years later that there began the greatest period of the axe trade. It is usually dated about 2600 B.C. and it went on for 700years. There is no reason to think that Cornwall went out of business but it became overshadowed by several great factories in the Lake District, North Wales and Antrim, and later by the flint mines of southern and eastern England. In the Lake District, within about eight square miles (20 kms), including the highest peaks of the Borrowdale Volcanic Series, there are factories at Langdale Pikes, Scafell Pike and Glaramara (Bunch & Fell, 1949; Fell, 1964). All worked selected ash bands but Langdale stands out for the magnitude of its operations. The rock (Petrological Group VI) is a finegrained epidotised andesitic ash, soft green, often banded, and producing polished axes which are both beautiful and functional. It is not surprising that this product was traded into central Scotland and eastern and southern England. It was also shipped to the Isle of Man, traded along the west Scottish coast, and its occurrence on or close to the Welsh coasts of Flintshire, Pembrokeshire and Glamorgan suggests that it was also brought there by sea. It does not appear to have penetrated into the heart of Wales. It is characteristic of this great factory that quite a limited thickness of ash was chosen and rarely was any other type of stone worked . The outcrop is high, around 1750 ft. (533 m.) D.D., but from the crags of Pike of Stickle three great screes descend into Great Langdale, and it was these that provided the raw material , apart from a few other minor working sites. No quarrying was done , and since the rock breaks with a semiconchoidal fracture on being given a blow, the screes are rich with thousands of waste flakes and the occasional discarded rough-out. Apparently the roughly shaped axes were taken to more sheltered sites for grinding and polishing. At Ehenside Tarn in Eskdale, rough-outs, polished axes and grinding stones of red sandstone (? Penrith) were found together, and records from Low Furness and Cartmel suggest that these also were finishing sites. Another famous factory (or more strictly, series of factories) is at Graig
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Lwyd in Caemarvonshire. Historically it is notable as the first Neolithic
axe factory to be discovered in Britain, by one of your past presidents and the second recipient of the Stopes Medal, Hazzledine Warren (1919, 1921). The rock is a porphyritic microgranodiorite (Group VII) from the neck intrusions of that area, and, just as in Langdale, the working sites are on screes. It is not quite such an ideal medium as Group VI, but it was still worked on a great scale by the same methods and over much the same period of time. Its axes are scattered widely over Britain though not in quite the abundance of the Borrowdale ashes. It made some penetration into mid-Wales and even into north-east Ireland. Axes of Group VI and VII have often been found associated, indicating the contemporaneity of their working. The third of the known large-scale sites for axe manufacture is in Antrim (Jope, 1953), and it exemplifiesthe selectivity of Neolithic Man in his choice of raw material, and even suggests he was quite a good field petrologist. The tops of the Tertiary basalts of Antrim have been affected by lateritic weathering, with one particular soil, the inter-basaltic layer, several feet thick. At the hill of Tievebulliagh near Cushendall, a dolerite neck through the lava flows has metamorphosed this lateritic bole, close to the contact, to a hard, fine-textured porcellanite, excellent for axemaking. Mineralogically it consists of patches of haematite in a microcrystalline matrix of sillimannite with some quartz (Morey & Sabine, 1953),and is a most distinctive rock which has been placed in a Group IX. As expected, the raw material was selected from screes near to which tools were roughed out but not polished. What is of considerable interest is that the very special geological circumstances which produced the porcellanite at Tievebulliagh might be expected to repeat themselves at other necks. Neolithic Man discovered this at Brockley on Rathlin Island and there set up another factory. We do not know which of these two sites is the earlier, nor, indeed, whether there are others which have not yet been found; we do know that their products cannot be separately distinguished. Axes of this type concentrate in north-east Ireland, but two have been found near Limerick and, more significantly, they were carried across the sea, because they are known in (amongst other places) North Uist, Aberdeenshire, the Thames estuary, Dorset, Walney Island and central England sites in Warwickshire and Shropshire. There is another factory known at Mynydd Rhiw in the Lleyn Peninsula of Caemarvonshire (Houlder, 1961). The rock, Group XXI, is a bedded tuff indurated by intrusive dolerite sills. The factory is of small significance compared with those mentioned above, but it is interesting because the source rock was quarried. There are many other rock types used in Neolithic axes. One of these, the well-known spotted dolerite of the Prescelly Mountains in Pembroke-
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shire, came into limited use in late Neolithic times and continued into the Bronze Age, but the exact site of the factory has not been found. Another rock, Group XX, is an epidotised quartz-feldspar ash which points strongly to Charnwood Forest (Shotton, 1959), but it too is unlocated despite the fact that it gave rise to many flakes at the working site. No doubt these, and others, will one day be found. So far, Scotland has yielded little evidence of factory location. However, P. R. Ritchie (1955) has reported a site with chips and rough-outs of a green banded hornfels on the slope of Creag na Caillich, north of Killin, Perthshire. Presumably this site was small, since no finished tools referrable to it have yet been recognised. Only after the big western axe factories had been in production for several hundred years did a new type of activity begin to flourish on the Chalk of southern and eastern England. This was the mining of flint, for Neolithic people had discovered what the Brandon flint-knappers will tell you today, that flint with its 'quarry water' is even more amenable to controlled shaping than it is as a pebble. It now seems clear that this discovery, and the technique of mining, did not occur until the beginning of the Late Neolithic, i.e. about 2000 B.C. A mine was a wide shaft, perhaps 20 ft. (6.0 m.) deep and often widening downward, until it met the desired bed of tabular flint, possibly only 6 or 8 in. (150-200 mm.) thick, which was removed. The seam of flint would then be followed sideways in galleries of the smallest possible height, often communicating with passages from an adjacent bell-pit, until the mining area was a tortuous maze of open and filled-in holes connectedby a network of galleries. Mining was done principally with onesided picks made from the stem and brow tine of red deer antlers, and was dangerous, as the occasional skeleton testifies; but beautifully finished polished axes resulted, to be traded westward as the later products of the big scree factories in the west came across to the east. There may have been many flint mines, but two centres are outstanding in their scale of activity -Grimes Graves, near Thetford, on the Norfolk-Suffolk border, and Cissbury in Sussex. Finally, no account of the stone-axe trade would be complete without reference to the considerable scale of imports from overseas. Almost certainly some came in from Brittany, but the most interesting and widespread foreign type, namely jade, which was once attributed to Brittany, is no longer accepted as matched in that region. Campbell Smith (1963,1965) has recognised seventy-three examples in Britain, sixty-nine of jade or jadeite and four of nephrite. They have been found in Ireland, in Scotland frequently and as far north as Caithness, in north and central England, East Anglia, the south-west and a great concentration around the coast of Hampshire, which probably included the ports of entry. Where the axes
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came from is, however, still a mystery. Campbell Smith has suggested Switzerland or the Italian Piedmont. Stone was not, of course, used only for tools. Grinding mills or querns were necessary as cereals became cultivated, and we find rough sandstones and quartzite being used to make them. Those of quartzite at Mildenhall, Suffolk (Clark, Higgs & Longworth, 1960), had certainly been brought some distance, for quartzite naturally at Hurst Fen is not conceivable. It is in the very late Neolithic, also, that we first meet, as a medium for grinding, that well-known stone from the Eifel, commonly called Niedermendig lava, though the quem factories were actually at Mayen (Crawford, others 1955; Smith, 1965; Cannington, 1931). This stone was to achieve a supreme reputation equal to that of the Millstone Grit, and its importation reached a peak in Roman times and continued right into the Middle Ages. For purely ornamental purposes, jet began to be used in the late Neolithic, and presumably it was bartered. For his more massive monumentschambered cairns, alignments and stone circles (those that were truly Neolithic and not later) Man typically used local material-slabs of Jurassic limestone and sarsen stone in the south, slates and igneous rocks in Cornwall and Devon, Palaeozoic rocks and glacial erratics in Wales, in the north of England and Scotland sometimes New Red Sandstone but more usually Palaeozoic and Pre-Cambrian rocks which often were the largest local glacial erratics. The striking exception to local origin, which is probably late Neolithic in date, is the inner horseshoe ring of Stonehenge, made of the Prescelly spotted dolerite (Atkinson, 1956, 82). It is not known why this rock, the same as used for making axes, had mystic significance, but there is no doubt that the transport of the heavy blocks was done by Man. A journey of at least 160 miles (258 km.) was involved, probably in successive stages of roller, raft and again roller transport. In general the stones of megalithic monuments are unshaped or, at most, crudely roughhewn. THE BRONZE AGE With the incoming of copper and then bronze, the making of stone axes declined. This is understandable, since a simple bronze axe was better suited than stone for purposes such as cutting and splitting wood or bone and even for hoeing the ground. However, small chipped stone tools, almost exclusively of flint, continued to be made mainly from pebbles that were to hand. Some of these were extremely sophisticated, such as the daggers, barbed points and barbed-and-tanged arrow-heads and probably the finestwere made from mined flint, for the mines of the South Downs and East Anglia were active at the beginning of the Bronze Age. Some were imported in a fully manufactured state, for example a special type of barbed-and-tanged arrow-head from Brittany (Grinsell, 1964).
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With the decline of stone axes, a different kind of stone tool was devised. This is the perforated axe-hammer, fundamentall y like a large geological hammer with a vertical blade. It was bored for hafting and the hole is not nearly so waisted as in the earlier pebble mace-heads. Sometimes it can approach to a cylindrical form, when it is possible that drilling was done by sand fed down the inside of a metal tube. Axe-hammers vary immensely in their standard of manufacture. The crudest are naturally wedge-shaped joint blocks which have been perforated , the finest are perfectly shaped and balanced. There is a development, smaller in size, where the blade flares out ('single-expanded battle-axe') and the most perfect implement has an expanded blade at each end ('double-expanded battle-axe'). These ' battle-axes' probably were weapons, for they are often found with the grave goods of males. For axe-hammers, a stone with properties different from that of the famous axe factories was demanded. It had to be very tough (flint or Langdale ash would have flaked under heavy blows), it had to be capable of being drilled, but the sharpness of the cutting edge was of secondary importance. The rocks that were selected were therefore, for example, greywacke or sub-greywacke, ashy grit, dolerite, picrite, camptonite or other primary igneous rock of moderately coarse texture. Of the Neolithic sites, Cornwall and notably Group I continued in a minor fashion and for a short time to manufacture axe-hammers, and so did Prescelly (Group XIII), but on the whole new factories carne into use. The most favoured rocks were picrite (Group XII), micaceous sub-graywacke (XV) and Whin Sill quartz-dolerite (XVIII) with carnptonite (XIV), and Cornish granite less widely used. In addition there is no doubt that a wide variety of local rocks-e-greywackes, sandstones, gabbros, dolerites-i-were utilised more or less on the spur of the moment, and sometimes the raw material is clearly a glacial erratic. It will be noted that favoured rocks rather than factory sites have been mentioned. It is significant that no axe-hammer workshop has yet been located, and this is because shaping was done by pecking, which leaves little trace of its presence. Group XII picrite, which is disseminated widely over Britain, can be identified as coming from one or both of two small outcrops near Comdon on the Shropshire-Montgomery border (Shotton, Chitty & Seaby, 1951), but even with this close location, no working site is known. It will be seen that on the distribution map of sites (Fig. 2) most of the axe-hammer factories have to be left rather vaguely defined-Group XVIII certainly comes from the Whin Sill, whose extensive outcrop is well known, and we can imagine many working sites below the crags of Northumberland or the Pennine escarpment or in Teesdale, but none has yet been located. Group XV is even vaguer-the rock is closely matched by the Silurian Coniston Grit of the southern Lake District, but this
F. W. SHOTTON
488
outcrop is very large and there is also the possibility of its being paralleled in the Southern Uplands (Shotton, 1959).Moreover, I am quite sure that a few of the examples found in the north Midlands were made from boulders in the Irish Sea Drift. Early Bronze Age man still had a good geological eye. Group XIV can be exactly matched with the thickest of the camptonite
D
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NOT YET FOUND
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Fig. 2. Axe factories and flint-mining centres in relation to the broad geological pattern of Britain
PREHISTORIC MAN'S USE OF STONE
489
sills in the Cambrian near Nuneaton, but no factory is known . I doubt if it ever will be found , for I believe its site is now obliterated by a modern quarry (Shotton, 1959). Th is site exemplifies the selection of good material occurring in limited quantity in the vast useless expanse of Coal Measures, Trias and Jurassic of the Midlands. Its products have a wide if not very numerous distribution-for example, once we get away from a cluster of about ten finds near to the source of XIV, we have a record at Northampton, two in Wiltshire and now (unpublished) one in Hampshire. With bronze axes and blades now coming into regular use, whetstones became necessary, and they are a feature of Bronze Age and succeeding periods. They are simple objects-usually natural rod-shaped pieces of stone, sometimes deliberately squared and occasionally perforated at one end . Expediency dictated a careful choice of stone and the most favoured is a closely cemented fine sandstone, though fine quartzose schists were also used. These probably were traded along with metal tools, for they often occur in areas where such rocks would not be expected to occur . The grosser use of stone in building foundations and megalithic monuments is still characterised by the absence of any elaborate examples of the stone-mason's craft, with the exception of the great trilithons of Stonehenge. Not only are the uprights and capstones beautifully squared from great blocks of sarsen, but they are locked together by peg-and-socket joints. We know that this stage of Stonehenge dates from the Early Bronze Age (Atkinson, 1956) and there are outlines of metal axes scored on some of the stones which strongly suggest the influence of Minoans in the construction. It seems impossible to ascribe the whole of the shaping to metal tools, however, when one compares the hardness of bronze with that of the near-quartzite of sarsen , and one must assume that the smoothing of the surface was done by stone or sand on stone. After all, the Aztecs, with no knowledge of metal, shaped basalt not only into perfectly squared building blocks but also into intricate sculptures. Stone used for personal adornment during the Bronze Age includes amber as well as jet. Amber could be picked up on British beaches but its abundance in necklaces and bangles suggests more than this, i.e. cultural and commercial ties with the Baltic regions. It is perhaps permissible to mention here also the wonderful gold ornaments of the later part of the Bronze Age, since native gold is a mineral. The sources of gold are partly from Europe and partly from Ireland and it is pleasant to think of our forerunners, three thousand or so years ago, panning the gravels in the streams coming down from the Mourne Mountains. THE IRON AGE The serious use of stone for tools virtually ceased at the end of the Lower Bronze Age apart from chipped flints. There is no doubt that Iron
490
F. W. SHOTTON
Age people still continued to shape points and scrapers from pebbles right up to the advent of the Romans, but polished stone tools are uncommon. When they do occur, they are usually small and beautifully made-for example, cylindrical hammers, with a strictly parallel-sided perforation, which clearly were suited for some specialised purpose like metal-beating or leather work. Hones for the numerous forms of iron blade were also in demand. Stones for pure adornment may include quartz crystals in their various colour forms. One of the most interesting developments of this time, also, is the use of the oil-shale of Kimmeridge for carving into rings, spindle whorls, counters, buttons and so on. It is so common in British Iron Age sites that it must have been the basis of quite an important industry. Any geologist who has demonstrated to his students that a fresh oil-shale will peel with a knife, will not be surprised that its unique properties were recognised. Last of all I would mention a most unusual industry which has turned up in west Shropshire in the form of a dozen or so examples, all so far without dating context and therefore not indubitably prehistoric. They are certainly not earlier than the metal ages. Calcareous nodules from Lower Ludlow Shales (and this we know from the occasional simple Monograptus and Cardiola interruptus were picked up after being eroded out of their outcrop and partly decalcified in their interior. The core has been scraped out, the edge levelled and excellent small bowls up to as much as 7 in. (18 em.) diameter have been made (Plate 12). Occasionally they carry a pouring groove and sometimes they are ornamented by scratch patterns round the edge. It would be interesting to learn when, and by whom, they were fashioned. REFERENCES ATKINSON, R. J. C. 1956. Stonehenge. London. BUNCH, B. & C. 1. FELL, 1949. A Stone Axe Factory at Pike of Stickle, Great Langdale, Westmorland. Proc, prehist. Soc. N.S., XV, 1-20. CANNINGTON, M. E.1931. The Sanctuary on Overton Hill near Avebury. Wilts. archaeol. Nat. Hist. Mag., 45, 332. CLARK. J. G. D. 1932. The Mesolithic Age in Britain. Cambridge. - - - , E. S. HIGGS & I. H. LONGWORTH, 1960. Excavations at the Neolithic Site at Hurst Fen, Mildenhall, Suffolk, 1954, 1957 and 1958. Proc cprehist, Soc. N.S., XXVI, 202-45. CLIFFORD, E. M. 1943. Palaeolithic Implements from Little Alne, Alcester, Warwickshire. Proc. prehist . Soc., IX, 52-4. CRAWFORD, O. G. S. 1955, in discussion of J. Roche & others. The Quem Factories of Mayen in the Eifel. Antiquity, 29, 68-76. DAMON, P. E., A. LONG & D. C. GREY. 1966. Fluctuation of Atmospheric C14 during the last Six Millenia. J. geophys, Res., 71, 1055-63. EVANS, J. 1897. Ancient Stone Implements. 2nd ed. London. EVENS, E. D., 1.. V. GRINSELL, S. PIGGOTT & F. S. WALLIS. 1962. Fourth report of the Sub-Committee of the South-Western Group of Museums and Art Galleries (England) on the Petrological Identification of Stone Axes. Proc. prehist . Soc. N.S., XXVIII, 209-66.
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[To face p. 490
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FELL, C. I. 1964. The Cumbrian Type of Polished Stone Axe and its Distribution in Britain. Proc. prehist, Soc. N.S., XXX, 39-55. GRINSELL, L. V. 1964. Settlement in Prehistoric and Roman Times. A Survey of Southampton and its Region. Brit. Assoc. Adv. Sci., Southampton. HOULDER, C. H. 1961. The Excavation of a Neolithic Stone Implement Factory on Mynydd Rhiw in Caernarvonshire. Proc. prehist . Soc. NoS., XXVII, 108-143. JOPE, E. M. 1953. Porcellanite Axes from Factories in North-East Ireland: Tievebulliagh and Rathlin. Ulster J. Arch., 15, 31-55. LACAILLE, A. D. 1944. Palaeolithic Implements Manufactured in Naturally Holed Flints from Rossington, Yorks. and Dartford, Kent. Ant. J., XXIV, 144-6. - - - - . 1954a. Palaeoliths from the Lower Reaches of the Bristol Avon. Ant. J., XXXIV, 1-27. - - - . 1954b. A Handaxe from Pen-y-Ian, Cardiff. Ant. J., XXXIV, 64-7. MOREY, J. E. & P. A. SABINE. 1953. A Petrological Review of the Porcellanite Axes of North-East Ireland. Ulster J. Arch., 15, 56--60. POSNANSKY, M. 1963. The Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Industries of the English East Midlands. Proc. prehist. Soc. N.S., XXIX, 357-94. RADLEY, J. & P. MELLORS. 1964. A Mesolithic Structure at Deepcar, Yorkshire, England, and the Affinities of its Associated Flint Industries. Proc. prehist, Soc. N.S., XXX, 1-24. RANKINE, W. F. 1949. Stone 'Maceheads' with Mesolithic Associations from SouthEastern England. Proc. prehist: Soc. N.S., XV, 70-6. RITCHIE, P. R. 1955. Discovery and Excavation, Scotland. Report Scottish Reg. Gp. C.B.A., 35. ROE,D. A.1964. The British Lower and Middle Palaeolithic: Some Problems, Methods of Study and Preliminary Results. Proc. prehist. Soc. N.S., XXX, 245-67. SHOTTON, F. W. 1934. Stone Implements of Warwickshire. Trans. Birm, Arch. Soc., LVIII, 37-53. - - - - . 1959. New Petrological Groups based on Axes from the West Midlands. Proc. prehist. Soc. N.S., XXV, 135-43. - - - - . 1960. Two Acheulian Implements from the Warwickshire-Worcestershire Avon. Proc. Coventry Distr, nat. Hist. Scient. Soc., III (4), 110-12. - - - , L. F. Chitty & W. A. Seaby. 1951. A New Centre of Stone Axe Dispersal on the Welsh Border. Proc. prehist . Soc. NoS., XVII, 159-67. SMITH, I. K. 1965. Windmill Hill and Avebury, Excavations by A. Keiller. Oxford. SMITH, W. Campbell. 1963. Jade Axes from Sites in the British Isles. Proc. prehist, Soc. N.S., XXIX, 133-72. - - - - . 1965. The Distribution of Jade Axes in Europe with a Supplement to the Catalogue of those from the British Isles. Proc. prehist: Soc. N.S., XXXI, 25-33. WARREN, S. Hazzledine. 1919. A Stone-Axe Factory at Graig Lwyd, Penmaenmawr. J! R. anthrop. Inst., XLIX, 342-65. - - - - . 1921. Excavations at the Stone-Axe Factory of Graig Lwyd, Penmaenmawr, J/ R. anthrop, Inst., LI, 165-98.
F. W. Shotton Department of Geology The University Edgbaston, Birmingham 15