Access Cambridge Archaeology
Southwold and Reydon, Suffolk (SAR/14)
Lawrence Billington
The Flint
1
2
3
1
1
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
2
1
4
1
1
4
7
unworked burnt
flint weight (g)
unworked burnt
flint no.
6.3
3
2
3.9
1.6
1
3
22.5
10.3
2
5.8
2
1
1
1
3
3
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
3
1
2
2
1
11
3.3
6.5
17.6
24.5
15.5
3.7
0.8
2.4
8.8
7.9
1.3
11.2
7.4
16.9
4.3
3.1
8.1
40
204.7
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
total worked
blade
tertiary flake
secondary flake
Context
2
4
2
6
8
3
4
5
6
2
4
8
1
2
4
2
3
1
2
2
1
2
3
2
3
2
3
4
5
1
3
totals
primary flake
TP
1
1
2
4
4
5
5
5
5
7
7
7
9
9
9
10
10
11
11
12
14
14
14
15
15
16
16
16
16
17
17
irregular waste
A small assemblage of 18 worked flints and 40 (204.7g) unworked burnt flints were recovered during
the programme of test pitting (table 1). The flint was thinly distributed with no more than three
worked or burnt flints recovered from any individual test pit.
2
1
1
18
Table 1. Basic quantification of the flint assemblage.
The worked flint is made up entirely of unretouched removals, no cores or retouched pieces are
present in the assemblage. The majority of the worked flints show moderate edge damage
consistent with having derived from a secondary/disturbed context. The raw materials appear to be
made up exclusively of flint derived from secondary deposits, probably glacio-fluvial terrace or
outwash gravels. Technologically the assemblage is dominated by relatively squat/broad hard
hammer struck secondary and tertiary flakes. This material is not strongly chronologically diagnostic
but is typical of material dating to later prehistory, from the Late Neolithic through to the Early Iron
Age (c. 3000-500 BC). There are two blades in the assemblage; these systematically produced pieces
are more likely to relate to Mesolithic or Earlier Neolithic activity (c. 9000-3000 BC). A fine tertiary
flake from Test Pit 5 is likely to be of Neolithic date and appears to bear traces of utilisation,
although the presence of edge damage makes this difficult to confirm.
The burnt flint is dominated by small, heavily burnt and fractured fragments (mean weight = 5.1g)
with occasional larger pieces (max weight 22.5g). In Eastern England accumulations of deliberately
burnt flint are generally associated with Early Bronze Age activity (see e.g. Edmonds et al 1999)
although burnt flint is found in lithic assemblages from all periods of prehistory from the Mesolithic
to the Iron Age. Burnt flint also often occurs in small quantities in later periods where it has
presumably been inadvertently caught up in hearths or other fire settings. In this case it seems likely
that much of the burnt flint from the site is associated with the prehistoric activity represented by
the worked flint assemblage.
Reference
Edmonds, M., Evans, C. and Gibson, D. 1999. Assembly and Collection – Lithic Complexes in the
Cambridgeshire Fenlands. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 65, 47-82