Some of my Stone age tools and arrowheads

[launditch1]

Inspired by Pango's thread i thought i'd show some of my flint tools and arrows that i've found.All of these have been within one mile of my house on ploughed fields.One of my hobbies is metal detecting and fieldwalking which you can do at the same time.I'm always looking out for pottery sherds, fossils, ect..and flints!There are literally thousands of them where i walk but most are undateable flakes.Every now and again i find things like these:

All of these i have chanced upon whilst fieldwalking.

My favorite.A beautiful barbed and tanged arrowhead from the Beaker period in the Bronze age.I had just dug up a cartridge bottom and has i bent down to pick it up i spotted this.Two things, same purpose, seperated by the millennia.Lovely workmanship on it, the pressure flaking is superb.

And now two axes.The left hand one is made from flint with a ground and polished edge.Lovely milky white patination.On the right is a handaxe made from stone that originated from the Great Langdale axe factories in Cumbria(maybe Pike-o-Sickle?who knows..).Both Neolithic.
Thanks for looking and if any of you have any i'd love to see them.

 

[Silverhill]

Amazing stuff. Thanks for sharing!
I'm always envious of metal detecting and field walking finds. I mean to do more here, but permission for it is harder than for camping.

 

[Dannytsg]

Very nice finds. It's always good to see some of the artifacts that people find whilst out an about

 

[robin wood]

fantastic, what an amazing feeling to pick something off the ground that was made by someones skilled hand work so very long ago. Thanks for sharing.

 

[launditch1]

Thanks all.Yes, it is an amazing feeling thinking that where im standing was probably a Neolithic and Bronze age settlement or hunting camp?, and the axe from Cumbria probably traded all the way to Norfolk! The flints do turn up everywhere but there is definitely concentrations.I have also found many scrapers, in fact they are the most common things after struck flakes.Also large concentrations of pot boilers which are flints that have been heated then dropped into water to boil it.They have a crazed surface.
Thought i'd better mention that the arrow im holding is about 2inch long.

Yes, i agree that permission is hard to find.The farmers seem to think that you know something they dont and that you are digging up gold everywhere!!If only!

 

[titanius anglesmith]

I would love to find something like that. You are very lucky to find them.Nice finds.In our local museum there is a viking sword that sombody found at the bottom of a limestone cliff. About 7 or 8 miles away from where i live.Now that would be a find.
Regards Chris.

 

[Everything Mac]

Very cool. I really fancy making/procuring a flint knife. I'm really interested in how well they work and how different they would be.

Great arrowheads you have there!

All the best
Andy

 

[sandbender]

Amazing, great pics, thanks for posting.

 

[Ex Member - Sidney Bounty]

that is one skill that is just beyond me well done!

 

[Toddy]

Skill is skill is skill, even if it's thousands of years old
Wonder what will be left of ours?
That's a superb barbed and tanged arrowhead
Never found an arrowhead, found loads of microliths though, but then, we don't have much flint here.
Those axes are brilliant too it's a quiet delight when you do find something like that when fieldwalking

Thanks for the photos

cheers,
M

 

[Dartmoor navigator]

I am soooooo jealous I am surrounded by Neolithic / bronze age sites but we have no flint at all, people brought it here with them. I remarked the other evening, while pootling about on a settlement site, that a microlith would be a fantastic find.

Well done, that arrow head is just sweet.

 

[dwardo]

Would be great to see one of them fly again. Maybe not your best ones but another. Flying once again after thousands of years in the soil

 

[treadlightly]

Superb finds.You've inspired me to look that bit harder when I'm out walking in the Chilterns which is thick with flint.

 

[launditch1]

Thanks for the comments.
I can honestly say if i went out specifically to flint arrowheads i would come home empty handed!They have all been chance finds.The only tips i can offer is to try fieldwalking on a field that has been ploughed and sown after a shower, also look for straight lines as there are not many in nature.After years of doing this i just the eye for them and they stand out from all the other unworked or broken flint.I have also found Pagan saxon and Iron age glass beads.
@Dartmoor navigator, have a look on molehills and any other disturbed soil.You might just get lucky.

 

[launditch1]

Superb finds.You've inspired me to look that bit harder when I'm out walking in the Chilterns which is thick with flint.

Worked flint has a few Characteristics so once you know them it is easy to tell them apart.If get time ill explain with pictures...

 

[pango]

Hi Launditch1, you're a lucky man to have aquired such knowledge by observation, and on your doorstep. Do I imagine it, or is there some sort of charismatic residue left on these objects that compels me to stare in wonder at them for hours on end... and some ask if it's art!

I quite often come across flint cores and flakes and once a fragment of an axehead on the beach, although never having found such fine examples as yours since that one childhood wonder of a barbed and tanged arrowhead. And yet those who know better say there's no flint here??? I think some of them need to take a walk before expounding their Pearls of Wisdom, because the beach of Largo Bay is scattered with naturally occurring flint from broken chips to 6" diameter nodes, probably carried from who knows where down the local river running through a post-glacial furrow a mile wide.

Last week, I picked up a flint core from a mound of stoned emerging from the sand dunes, and right next to it was a piece of what I think is limestone, with a bluish vitrification on one face, and a piece of iron slag. There may well have been iron working there in the not too distant past, so I need to check the Statistical Accounts which would take me back to around 1800, but my suspicion is that it's much older despite the reservation of how long iron slag would last in sand dunes on a salt sprayed beach.

Fine arts and crafts aside, I was visiting a site of rock art about 2 years ago and on scouting around the place, shoved my hand down a rabbit burrow 10 yards away and came out with a handful of charcoal and flint shards. The hill is of old red sandstone! I got down and felt as far as my arm would go and produced what I think is a well used tool, of a metamorphic sand/limestone with a ring when tapped. It has scraper like ends, coming to one fairly fine scraping edge, with a diagonal rubbing edge at the other end and curves along the body as though used for rubbing or working fibre/fabric/leather over someone's knee. It's roughly 8" x 1.5" and fits the hand very neatly. Unfortunately, the Regional Archaeology Dept, probably due to its being of an unexciting or unorthodox material, dismissed it out of hand, sight unseen, over the phone.

I still believe I have a fairly unique tool and keep threatening to take it into the National Museum.

Beautiful tools mate, and thanks for the photos.

Cheers,

Pango.

 

[Hatchet]

Those are amazing, launditch1!

 

[Paul W]

This one is better than most points in museums.

Also it's interesting you found a Langdale axe. Goes to show what prestige pieces they were that people would import them to Norfolk where local one would be so cheap and easy to get.

 

[merc350]

some great finds, Fascinating

 

[Mafro]

Great finds there mate, I would love to find an arrow head

Has anyone else found anything? Would love to see more pictures