Scottish Gravers of Flint and Other Stones by A D Lacaille

Santa gave me this extract for Christmas, but have only just had the chance to get a good look at it. It's a reprinted pamphlet from the 'Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Session 1937-38.

Although not exactly light reading, it is a good insight into flint knapping and the availability of flint in Scotland. As you would expect, tools made in flint cosists mainly of micro-flint, with limited working.

I am happy to scan this pamphlet, and its illustrations, but will need to check whether I will be infringing any copyright or data protection (unless it's already out there on the Interweb).

An interesting paper just checked it out. With the lack of decent flint in many parts of Scotland it was interesting to see what they were using instead. The pebble tool is a new one on me, jaspilite, checked it out on wiki, apparently it's a form of chert with a high iron content. Put the name into google images and check it out, stunning stone, pity I'll never see the original pebble tool.

Thanks for the offer of scanning it, I have it on PDF, so if anyone wants a copy.

It has given more hope of finding something in Scotland which is knappable, even if it's just to see how it's done.

Found the pdf on the web, so many thanks Grendel, well spotted. Was going to upload it just now, but apparently file type is not allowed.

This might be of some use to you then if your looking for flint from Scotland. I am at the top of the indent just below the shaded part showing the boddam flint fields on page 3. This is an older paper and the area has been excavated since then which showed it was very well worked in neolithic times.

I cant post the link but if you google, it gives the paper from ADS.

The procurement and use of stone for flaked tools
in prehistoric Scotland
Caroline R Wickham-Jones*

Very interesting paper, have you come across any workable flint in your area?

I have found one piece of what seems to be a worked bloodstone in a field I detect in West Lothian. I would love to gather some bloodstone, chert and pitchstone together from around Scotland and try knapping it.

It is interesting that the use of these tools doesn't seem to have been looked at in detail in Scotland. I suppose it's because, as it says in the paper, there is so little/no flint in Scotland.

pictish wrote:

I cant post the link but if you google, it gives the paper from ADS.

Thanks for the article.

When you say you can't post the link, do you mean this forum isn't letting you?

If so I find out why.

cheers

Hi there,

there is a 7 day ban on posting links as an anti spam measure.

The article is an old one the person that wrote it is one of the main people now for the prehistory era in scotlands north including the uderwater stuff off orkney. There has been alot more work done in the last 20 years including an excavation on the boddam site. There is alot of finds for flint tools upto axehead size so there is certainly workable flint in the area and work sites have been found. Now I all I need to do is to learn how to identify it.

There has been a fair amount of work done on stone tools such as the decorative axes and also the results of what they were used for such as carved stone balls but there are several issues when trying to find sites in scotland.

The soil is very acidic meaning all that is left is often stone tools making sites very hard to find, up north even on the east coast there is simply no people to find stuff and getting to places on the west coast is very hard. Not to mention the rise in sea levels and a few rather large tidal waves wiping out the east coast in earlier prehistory years.

Once I get a bit more knowledge on suitable working flint ect I will post some finds as I am at the edge of the buchan fields only a few miles away on the coast.

Thanks for that, think I'll leave the anti spam measures in place.

pitchstone seems to be a great alternative to flint in Scotland.

http://www.sair.org.uk/sair38/sair38.pdf
http://www.biggararchaeology.org.uk/pdf_reports/SR_PITCHSTONE_REP_08.pdf
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~drus105/LithicsPDFs/Lithics%2027/Lithics_27_2006_Ballin_12_32.pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0305440384900396