Interpreting hidden chalk art in southern British Neolithic flint mines

Digital imaging and prehistoric imagery: a new analysis of the Folkton Drums

“…The new motifs on the base of drum 1 are suggestive of experimentation, with a number of designs intercutting each other. The repetitive incisions that appear on this surface are redolent of the kind of repetitive and intercutting incisions that occur on Late Neolithic chalk plaques and the walls of flint mines (Harding 1988; Varndell 1999; Barber et al 1999; Teather 2011).…”

Urban Lithics: The Role of Stone Tools in the Indus Civilization and at Harappa

“…Within sedentary societies, extensive variability exists in the ways raw material sources were managed. In many Egyptian, Greco-Roman, and Inka contexts, quarry areas for building materials and tool construction, and the resultant products, were under some degree of imperial control (Cantarutti 2013;Degryse et al 2009;Harrell and Storemyr 2009;Jennings et al 2013;Kelany et al 2009;Lollet et al 2008;McCallum 2009;Ogburn 2011Ogburn , 2013Peacock and Maxfield 2007;Teather 2011;Torrence 1984;Contreras 2011, 2013;Weisberber 1983). Evidence for such control takes the form of (1) organized work areas, including storage facilities (Cantarutti 2013;Harrell and Storemyr 2009;Storemyr et al 2010); (2) transportation routes (Harrell and Storemyr 2009;Heldal 2009;Kelany et al 2009;Ogburn 2013;Storemyr et al 2010); (3) the scale and organization of production (Heldal 2009;Salazar et al 2013); (4) widespread distribution of finished products (McCallum 2009); (5) organized villages for workers (Harrell and Storemyr 2009;Peacock and Maxfield 2007); and (6) state-sponsored ritual in and around work areas (Vaughn et al 2013).…”

Learning by Experience: The Flint Mines of Southern England and Their Continental Origins

“…Further notable finds at Cissbury include three fully articulated skeletons, buried possibly as a result of accidents or, in the case of one adult male, as a deliberate deposition (Lane Fox ; Pull ). Also found were deliberate scratches, known as ‘tally marks’, etched by the miners onto the shafts and galleries (Russell ; Teather ). The burials and the tally marks hint at the possible ‘ritualistic’ use of the mines and of their wider importance to local Neolithic communities (Topping and Lynott ).…”

“…These arguments led to research focusing on the wider social meaning of mining, with studies on the aesthetic value of flint (Edmonds ; Whittle ; Borkowski and Budziszewski ), the symbolic function of mines (Edmonds ; Topping 2004; 2011a; 2011b; Barber ), and the ritualistic nature of mining (Barber et al . ; Teather ).…”