CORE

Part of a larger assemblage of flint recovered from the same field over the course of two months. The bulk of the assemblage is made up of debitage (SOM-4CE686), much of which is highly fragmentary but appears broadly to have been made up of fairly crude blade-like flakes. A high proportion of flakes still had cortex remaining on the dorsal face (6/30 primary, 14/30 secondary). In additon to this debitage are two flakes on which retouch is present but damage obscures the overall form, as well as a likely scraper, but where damage obscures clear evidence of retouch (SOM-3BCF3E). The assemblage contains three core fragments, two retain large areas of cortex on their surface, with one in particular showing crude removals, the third is more finely worked but exhibits evidence of removals from multiple directions, with two flakes struck from the scar of another. Conversely however, this same core fragment may have been removed deliberately, perhaps to create a new platform (SOM-60EE42,SOM-55EB5D,SOM-517227). The assemblage contains a number of simple scrapers of both flint (SOM-3C3EAA) and chert (SOM-3B6A0A), as well as a single characteristically early Bronze Age thumbnail scraper (SOM-3AED1D). Many of these scrapers retain a large area of cortex on the unworked lateral edge or dorsal face. Four large pieces of burnt flint were also found (SOM-51433E). Based on the above evidence a Late Neolithic to Early Bronze age date range seems likely for this assemblage, however there does also appear to be a scatter of earlier flint mixed in, the clearest evidence for which being four well formed blades (SOM-3A5D3A) all of which have a pale grey/white patina.