Sites

Great quantities of mostly quite weathered stone artefacts are in evidence across the study site, particularly in open patches where
vegetation is sparse. They are preponderantly made on hornfels (indurated shale). In places they exceed 5 per m2. A high proportion of those that were observed were heavily patinated and judged, on typological grounds, to be of Pleistocene age, probably mainly
Middle Stone Age – although one small biface was found suggesting late Acheulian/cf Fauresmith affinity. Strewn across these surfaces are large quantities of amorphous weathered chunks of hornfels, some bearing flake scars. This landscape was clearly a source or ‘quarry’ area for hornfels, a metamorphic rock occurring in the contact zone between intrusive magma (dolerite) and shale beds. Impressive as the spreads of artefacts appear to be, they lack typological and contextual integrity: there is no preservation of organic traces (e.g. bone), and artefacts could have been displaced both vertically and spatially through many millennia of erosion and other natural processes. In these terms the vast numbers of stone tools to be seen at this site are considered, as an occurrence, to be of relatively low significance.