NHER 7893 (Monument record) - Neolithic flint working site and possible flint mine

Pre 1930. Stray Find.
"Flint sites over this area" found by F. H. Watson. Information from (S1) - site also marked on (S2).

Flints from this site were subsequently donated to the Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 1930.183). These finds were examined by F. Healy and described in (S3). It is noted that this collection also includes material from another of English's sites in Drayton (NHER 7890). The information recorded in the museum's records does however suggest that the bulk of the material was probably from this site. The flint tools in this collection are listed by (S4) as including:
1 Early Neolithic leaf-shaped arrowhead, 1 laurel leaf and 1 laurel leaf roughout.
1 Neolithic triangular roughout, 3 long-pointed awls, 11 long-pointed awls, 1 polished-edge knife, 1 fragmentary single-piece sickle, 12 notches, 1 tranchet tool, 2 fragmentary flaked flint axes, 3 fragmentary polished flint axes and 7 fragmentary flaked flint adzes.
The collection also includes 2 picks and an "exceptionally high proportion of cores". It is noted that the assemblage resembles those from "industrial sites", with some of the debitage of the large size found on flint mine sites.

It is likely that this site (or NHER 7984) was the source of the "…re-chipped, re-polished axe found at Drayton..." that was exhibited by English at a meeting of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia in April 1920 (S4).

Although the bulk of the English finds held by the NCM are clearly Neolithic, a small core adze and a "cigar-like axe" (both with tranchet scars) were identified as Mesolithic by R. Jacobi and listed as such in (S5). Although the accession numbers listed by Jacobi suggest these objects are from another of English's Drayton sites (NWHCM : 1933.38; NHER 7894), it seem quite likely that this is an error. None of the records relating to NHER 7894 make any reference to core tools and the collection (which is listed in the museum's records simply as "undated prehistoric worked flint implements") was not included in (S3). It therefore seems much more likely that these potentially Mesolithic implements are amongst the many core tools listed by Healy.

This site is also one of the possible sources of the flint "pygmies" that are listed in (S6) as having been found in Drayton by English in 1916. See NHER 7844 for further information on these and other poorly provenanced finds from Drayton.

Amended by P. Watkins (HES), 22 May 2014.