Palaeolithic tools have survived for hundreds of thousands of years, enduring repeated Ice Ages and being washed down rivers, but we can still pick them up, see how were made and say things about their makers. Stone tools play a privileged role in archaeology as they are extremely durable and they survive through most circumstances.Flint nodules continue to be knapped for decorative building stone and flint knapping remains a popular recreational pastime. They still continued to be made for specialist purposes as strike-a-alights, for working shale and more recently as gunflints. Regular stone tool use continued thereafter until the Iron Age, around 2,000 years ago.
Stone tools first appear in Africa around 3 million years ago and the earliest so far recognised in Britain, from Happisburgh in Norfolk, are nearly 1 million years old. Stone tools provide some of the earliest evidence for what we might consider human behaviour and have been made more or less continuously since the first human-like ancestors appeared.Studying the technology of making tools allows us to better understand ourselves and others. Humans are the only animals to regularly make tools and the way they do it varies across cultures.The aim of this guide is to help in recognising flint tools and in distinguishing deliberately modified from naturally occurring rocks.
RECORDING FLINTO SERIES
This beginner’s guide to identification of knapped flints and stone tools has been written by Barry Bishop and is one of a series of introductory guides published by the community archaeology network, Jigsaw.
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