Museum Collection: Neolithic Flint Implements
Bradford on Avon Museum, Wiltshire
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The Neolithic Period (New Stone Age, roughly from 4000 to 2500 BC) was marked by the first introduction of farming, both in growing crops and keeping domesticated animals. Large areas of the country were cleared of ancient woodland to make fields, but hunting and gathering still went on. Metal tools were not yet available and the Neolithic people made tools from flint and polished stone axes were traded widely.
Parts of Neolithic polished axe heads have been found around Monkton Farleigh and Conkwell, in Winsley. A near complete polished greenstone axe head has also been found in Winsley and a polished flint axe in Westwood. All these are in the collection of the Wiltshire Museum at Devizes.
No settlement sites or burials have yet been found in the Bradford Hundred area, but small flint implements and the cores from which they have been struck are not uncommon.
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A scraper made from a flake from a flint core. It was found on the Llewellen Palmer allotment gardens, Sladesbrook, Bradford.
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This is a small flint core from which several long narrow blades have been struck. it was found behind Tory, Bradford, just below the plateau of Budbury, which could have made a good camp site for a Neolithic hunting expedition.
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Neolithic arrowheads show great skill in flaking flint. These were found on the Iford estate, Westwood.
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Possibly an unfinished Neolithic arrowhead which was found in a field near Monkton in Broughton Gifford. It was made from a flake that has been struck from a flint nodule; the three breaks on this side are where the previous flakes had been struck from the same core.
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