Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

Chipping floor; Mesolithic flint working site.

Monument Types

• LITHIC WORKING SITE (FLINT WORKING SITE, Mesolithic - 10000 BC to 4001 BC)
• SITE (Early Mesolithic to Late Neolithic - 10000 BC to 2351 BC? (at some time))

Full description

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[TQ 86736857: sited from map.] A mesolithic flint factory site excavated from beneath c.6' of marsh deposits. It occupied some 100' x 60' and comprised a series of circular patches of blackened earth and colcined flints 3-4 ft wide and sunk 3 - 4 ins into the surface of the clay: the implements and flint working debris occured mainly in the patches. Some 1,100 artifacts were recovered and include flakes, chisel-ended flakes, blades, cores, core scrapers, points, scrapers (disc, end, side and hollow), borers, discs, Thames picks, tranchet picks, burins and a hammerstone (a circular sarsen pebble with countersunk surfaces and opposing ends bruised). This is the Lower Halstow "northern floor". See AO/58/59/1. (1)

The Lower Halstow industry must have flourished at about the same period as the kitchen-midden culture of Denmark and may be placed in the later half of our Mesolithic. The industry is characterised by axes and picks sharpened by tranchet blows and microlithic points of non-geometric type. (2)

Add refs. (3)(4)

Finds in British and Maidstone Museums. (5)

Add ref. (6)

This site has been destroyed by erosion; it now lies below high water mark. (7)

Area TQ 860670: 357 Mesolithic flint implements from excavations at Lower Halstow by JPT Burchell (see authority 1) are now in the British Museum and the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. (8)

The Lower Halstow 'norther floor' and 'southern floor' (TQ 86 NE 11) became prominent in early literature and Lower Halstow gave its name to a culture dated to the Atlantic, confined to the south-east of England. The culture was characterized by a supposed presence of 'gravers tranchet' flake axes, 'true Thames picks', and a predominance of the macro - over micro - lithic element. In fact no flake axes can be identified within the assemblage, the core adzes are not markedly different from those found on other sites in south-east England and the predominance of adzes over microliths can be accounted for by the fact that the assemblage was excavated from sticky clay with no attempt to find particularly small artefacts. (9).

Identified as Neolithic in (10,11).

Site identified during 2002 survey where a shingle bank displays no obvious signs of worked flint (12).

<01> PPSEA 5 1925-7 73-8 217-23 288-96 Illus 6" map (JPT Burchell) (OS Card Reference). SKE48637.

<02> The Mesolithic Age in Brit 1932 63-5 95 175 Illus (JGD Clark) (OS Card Reference). SKE50430.

<03> The Stone Age in Scot 1954 119-21 175 Illus (AD Lacaille) (OS Card Reference). SKE50519.

<04> Ant 1 1927 105 (JPT Burchell) (OS Card Reference). SKE33104.

<05> Arch of Kent 1930 41 258 (RF Jessup) (OS Card Reference). SKE36914.

<06> Arch NL 6 1957 90 (JPT Burchell) (OS Card Reference). SKE36801.

<07> F1 AC 20-AUG-63 (OS Card Reference). SKE41818.

<08> CBA Res Rpt 20 Gaz Me sites in Eng and Wales 1977 153 (Ed J J Wymer) (OS Card Reference). SKE38908.

<09> CBA RR 48 1982 - Archaeol in Kent to AD 1550 16 (P Leach) (OS Card Reference). SKE38932.

<10> Field report for monument TQ 86 NE 8 - August, 1963 (Bibliographic reference). SKE4530.

<11> Department of Archaeology, University of Reading, 1994, Inter-tidal archaeology in Kent (Unpublished document). SWX9353.

<12> Wessex Archaeology, 2002, North Kent Coast Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Survey Phase II: Field Assessment (Pilot) (Bibliographic reference). SWX11840.

Sources and further reading