Flint Mining and the Beginning of Farming in Southern England

Holgate, Robin

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Title: Flint Mining and the Beginning of Farming in Southern England

Abstract:

Fieldwork in the mid-1980s at Neolithic flint-mining sites in West Sussex investigated previously unknown flint-working areas at both Long Down and Harrow Hill, showing that axeheads were the main product at both sites. Since then, the revision of radiocarbon dates using Bayesian analysis has revolutionised our understanding of the Neolithic period in Britain, demonstrating that flint mines are amongst the earliest known Neolithic sites in southern England: they appear sometime after mining took place on adjacent parts of the European continent and before causewayed enclosures were first constructed in southern England. Axeheads fabricated at the flint-mining sites were used as votive offerings, part of the interdependent belief system associated with Carinated Bowl pottery and cereal horticulture that was characteristic of the earliest Neolithic ‘horizon’ in southern England. Both were probably introduced by small-scale movements of farmers across the Channel from the European continent

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