CLEAVER

Handaxe, of Cleaver form (Wymer's type H) with the primary cutting-edge profile of type E (straight), the other edge can be regarded as a type F (reverse "S" twist), though this is largely due to a natural hollow and awkward knapping angles towards the butt on this side, rather than production from a large struck flake blank, Hollows and cortex are present to both faces suggesting this Cleaver was produced from an amoebic nodule, or natural fractures thereof. All flake removals are semi-hard hammer struck, invasive, and where platform angles allow, overlap the centre-line. The broad tip is sharpened by a well performed tranchet flake removal to the dorsal face, this, and all edges and flake ridges are blunted by being rolled both by glacial outwash action and recent damage is noted by the action of the sea, these small chips are paler in colour, as are the coarse inclusions and cortex, and although the main body of the cleaver is patinated orange from exposure to iron oxides from sands and gravels, the original mottled grey flint is evident in these small, damaged areas on the edges. This is the first cleaver this writer has recorded from Happisburgh or the surrounding beaches, and although small, and made from a rather "lumpen" piece of flint, it is of good workmanship, with very few flakes terminating in hinges, in fact there are very few cleavers recovered from Norfolk. A few examples are NHER 2780, Beetley, NHER 4142, Swaffham, NHER 6052, Brettenham, and as a quantification of lack of cleavers to other artefacts, the site excavated by J. E. Sainty and H. H. Halls at Kirby Bedon, NHER 9663, near the sewerage plant just outside of Norwich in 1926-7 yielded approximately 550 Palaeolithic implements, only one was a cleaver (made from a large struck flake as a "blank" as opposed to starting with a flat nodule). As an aside, one trench did not have its section recorded at this site due to a flood of "foul water and talus from the sewerage works" (Sainty, J. E. and Boswell, P. G. H. 1927. An Acheulean Palaeolithic Workshop Site at Whitlingham, near Norwich. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia. Vol V Pt II (for 1926).