Discovery of a New Phase of Early Flint Mining at Grimes' Graves, Norfolk

Abstract

The discovery of Floor 85, in 1920, with its definite three period stratification, for the first time demonstrated what some people had long suspected, viz., that the Grimes' Graves industry was not confined to any one period exclusively, but was the outcome of a practically continuous local development from an early stage in the pre-historic period down to the end of Neolithic times, and the exploration of this Floor established three important facts:—(1) That an early industry had existed on the site characterised by the practice of naturalistic engraving on flint crust and the production of flint implements of certain distinctive types from mined flint of the variety known as Floor-stone.(2) That that industry was the earliest so far recognised at Grimes' Graves and was clearly not contemporary with any of the 366 visible mine shafts on the site, but ante-dated them so considerably that the implements of the lowest level, F.85c, had become patinated and buried beneath accumulations of humus, etc., before mining operations commenced at that place.

A New Survey of Grime's Graves—First Report

“…Elsewhere the map was based on the presumed distribution of flint, which was thought to occur in a nearly horizontal band, cut off by the surface contours, as the site slopes down from a high point in the SE corner into a dry valley running along the N boundary and a similar feature to the w. Within these presumed boundaries, Armstrong was only able to locate the outer margin of the mined area by both geological trenches and selected pit excavation, and no attempt could be made to examine the detail of mine shafts in the fields. Outside this margin, the traces of flint working sites mapped w and N of this line (Armstrong 1926) appear also to have been conjectural. No excavations reveal their existence; the surface contours are smoothed by cultivation, which can be shown to have taken place until late in the 1920s, so that sites of this sort are unlikely to have been visible and any workshop debris recovered from the fields could have been moved down-slope by natural causes.…”

“…The first survey was on the SE margin of the known group of mine shafts, in an area close to and perhaps including the Late Bronze Age 'black-hole' deposits recorded by Armstrong (1926). Here the depth of the soil was considerable and it seemed likely that buried features would be preserved from damage by modern activities.…”

“…Charcoal 2320 ± 150 be BM-88 Antler 2100 ± 150 be While no reliance can be placed on such a few dates, they do form a very interesting pattern in relation to the study of mining operations at Grime's Graves. Reid Moir and Armstrong (1926) suggested that mining activities commenced in the lowest part of the slope to the N of the site with semi-opencast work, followed by small vertical shafts (the 'primitive' pits), and that the deep shafts near the top of the slope are the latest in date. The present radiocarbon chronology concerns the w rather than the N slope of the minefield and here at least it is possible that the sequence was reversed and that the deep shafts such as Pit 12 and Pit 15 may be earlier than more shallow mining operations.…”

Prehistoric exploitation and workshop area at Brno – Stránská skála

“…However, the study of prehistoric exploitation of stone raw materials became more established only during the 1920s and 1930s, when a number of hitherto unknown prehistoric quarries were published (e.g. Krukowski 1920;Armstrong 1923;Radwan 1926;Szmit 1926;Stelmachowska 1927;Żurowski 1929;Bayer 1930, etc.). Graham Clark and Stuart Piggott's The Age of the British Flint Mines was a seminal work that provided the first overview of prehistoric 'mines' for the extraction of stone raw materials from a broader area of Europe 2 (Clark, Piggott 1933).…”

When and Why? The Chronology and Context of Flint Mining at Grime’s Graves, Norfolk, England

“…The inter-war period saw continued excavations, mainly by A.L. (Leslie) Armstrong, published in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia (eg, Armstrong 1923; 1924; 1927). Work resumed in the 1970s, when a deep shaft and its surrounding surface area were excavated by Roger Mercer (1981) for the Department of the Environment in 1971–72; and a major research project led by Ian Longworth and Gale Sieveking for the British Museum was conducted in 1972–76, its interim results being published in this journal (Sieveking et al 1973).…”