flint implement

Weapon or tool made from flint nodules which, when chipped, produce a sharp cutting edge. Flint implements, along with others of similar tough fine-grained stone, belong to the Stone Age period of technological development. Stone tools are the earliest relics of human activity, in East Africa 2.5 million years old, although Stone Age cultures survived in the Americas, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Australia until the 19th and 20th centuries.

The various cultures to which flint implements belong are named after the site of discovery or a site where types of implement are well represented. More than 40 such type-sites are now recorded.

Discovery The first flint identified as a piece worked by humans was found in a gravel pit in London, England, about 1690 (British Museum, London). The English archaeologist John Frere found worked flints 3.5 m/12 ft below the surface in a brick-earth pit at Hoxne, Suffolk, 1790, and recognized these as belonging to a period before the use of metals.

The 19th century saw great advances in the study of flint implements. The French geologist Jacques Boucher de Crèvecoeur de Perthes found Palaeolithic hand-axes in the Somme, northern France, 1845 which suggested that the human species was older than previously believed, and the English archaeologist John Evans collected and classified flint implements.

Old Stone Age or Palaeolithic The earliest stone tools are simple, made by striking one against another. They are frequently difficult to identify, and sceptics often argued that such implements had been formed by natural processes. In England eoliths, or ‘dawn-stones’, from the plateau gravels of northern Kent and the ‘sub-crag’ implements from East Anglia are no longer generally accepted as of human origin, but pebble tools of lava and quartz found in East Africa are evidence of human activity over 1 million years ago.

Palaeolithic flint implements fall into several distinctive cultures, although there are great differences between their representations in Africa, Asia, and Europe. The Lower Palaeolithic is characterized by hand-axes, general-purpose tools used for cutting and scraping, and by coarsely flaked tools, some of which were struck from tortoise cores using the cerallois technique. Flakes of a predetermined size were struck off the core after the top and sides had been trimmed. This is seen in preparation scars, and indicates that the process had been thought through to make best use of the material. Cultures include the Abbevillian, Acheulean, early Levalloisian, and Clactonian.

The Middle Palaeolithic is distinguished by flake tools and points with finely retouched edges, scrapers, and hand-axes probably used for skinning animals. Cultures recognized are the Chattelperronian, Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian. The knives and points of these cultures were often well finished by pressure flaking - using another material, such as bone, wood, or stone, to retouch and finish a primary flake - and show complete control and mastery of process and material. Fine flakes are particularly associated with the Solutrean culture of France.

Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic In Europe flint tools include scrapers and borers, gravers, untrimmed flakes used as tools, and very small flints known as microliths which, when mounted to form composite tools, were used as arrowheads, saws, and barbs for fish spears. A dominant culture was the Mousterian.

New Stone Age or Neolithic The expertly chipped and formed tools of the Neolithic period are often ground or polished. This technological advance, new to prehistory, first gave the age its name. Neolithic tools often employed floorstone, a shiny black flint that occurs deep within the chalk. It was excavated at flint mines such as Grimes Graves in Norfolk, England. Axeheads, arrowheads, daggers, and sickle blades of flint were in use, and some were widely traded from their centre of manufacture. Some tools of flint such as barbed and tanged arrowheads, disc-shaped and plano-convex knives, and copies of bronze daggers were in use in the Bronze Age.