A Workshop Site of Primitive Culture at Two-Mile-Bottom, Thetford

Extract

I think all agree that arrow tips would first have been made of (a) hard wood or bone ground to a sharp point (as used to-day in East Africa), later by (b) sharp-pointed unworked splinters or flakes of stone or flint, followed by (c) flakes worked diagonally at one end to a sharp point, and the other end inserted in the arrow shaft.

As the worker's skill improved, these worked flake arrow tips would be superseded by (d) the beautifully flaked barbed and leaf arrows of the Neolithic and Bronze periods.

The whole prehistoric world would obviously not have been at any one time in the same stage of culture. At all periods, and in all districts, tribes would have existed side by side in various stages of culture, the work of the “᾽prentice” hand alongside that of the “master worker.”

It is therefore highly dangerous to assign an age to a worked flint solely by roughness of workmanship.

This communication is to record a prehistoric workshop site at Two-Mile-Bottom Common, near Thetford, Norfolk, containing worked flake tools of a very definite culture.