A Flint Factory Site at Little Somborne, Hants

Extract

This site lies in the parish of Little Somborne, Hants, to the west of Turnpike Copse and just south of the Stockbridge-Winchester road. The ground rises steeply from the road to form a ridge about 300 O.D. and then gradually sinks towards Fox Heath Copse. Just below the crest of this ridge, the plough brings to the surface many large blocks of flint where a stratum outcrops. These blocks are the raw material from which the tools were made and the picks found were probably used to extract them. Large rough flakes are very numerous. Many of them show trimmed butts. This site extends for about 2 acres, and in this area are found picks, choppers, large cores, hammer stones, anvil stones, borers, end scrapers, and rarely a large horseshoe scraper, but no arrow heads or polished axes. The tools are patinated a blue-white or blue-grey; but the quality of the flint is so bad, there are so many quartz, chertz and calcedonic inclusions, that the patination is often patchy and unequal and sometimes varies in colour in different parts of the same flake scar. There is not much lustre. Iron staining and at times iron incrustation, found chiefly on the aretes, is very marked and there are numerous quicksilver spots of polish. The edges of these tools are sharp and show very little signs of use. What signs there are may be due to accidental damage by the plough.