Grimes Graves

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The oldest known Neolithic flint mine in England, in Norfolk, with the remains of around 350 mine shafts. The high-quality flint had three banks: floorstone, wallstone, and topstone. The products, mainly ax blades, were roughly chipped to shape at the site and were then traded in semi-finished condition. The miners used flint tools, deer's antlers as picks or wedges, and animal shoulder blades as spades. Excavation was probably by wooden shovel (a product of the polished ax and chisel) or possibly the shoulder blades of oxen. It is estimated that 50,000 picks made of red-deer antler were used during the 600 years of activity in the mine, which began about 2300 BC. In one shaft, the miners made a chalk statuette of a fat pregnant woman and a phallus of chalk; this practice, a fertility cult, was used to bring fruitful results in further mining. There are differing dates for the use of the mine shafts.

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Group of flint mines in Norfolk, eastern England, with almost 350 mine shafts up to 9 metres deep and with radiating galleries. Radiocarbon dates suggest that the main period of use was in the Late Neolithic, c2000 be (c2500 bc). The mines were mainly supplying material for the manufacture of flint axes and many rough-outs for such axes were found in the mines, as well as tools such as so-called ‘antler picks’, almost certainly used not as picks but as wedges. A ritual deposit was found in one shaft: a figurine of a pregnant woman, a phallus and several balls, all carved in chalk. Grivac. A large open site of the StarCevo and early VinCa periods, situated on a tributary of the Zapadna Morava River in central Serbia, Yugoslavia. Magnetometer survey of the site indicated rectangular house floors arranged in regular rows across the hillside; through excavation these houses have been dated to the Vinca period, c4375-3980 be. The slighter architectural remains of the Starcevo occupation are dated c5300 be, the earliest radiocarbon date yet known from the Serbian Neolithic.

The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied

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