Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (258 page)

A hard brittle siliceous rock with conchoidal fracturing properties that is highly suitable for the manufacture of edged tools by flaking or knapping. Found as nodules or tablets in chalk and limestone (in the latter case as chert), or redeposited as pebbles in clay and gravels. Usually black, grey, or brown in colour.

 
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A place where natural outcrops or seams of underground flint were worked to obtain blocks of raw material for knapping and making into tools. The mining techniques vary a little between mining areas but mines basically consist of pits or shafts. Pits are generally used where the flint is shallow and relatively large and rather irregular holes can be opened to get it. Shafts involve considerably more effort, and examples more than 15m deep are known. The shafts themselves are steep-sided and cylindrical in form, although most originally have had fixtures and fittings to allow the miners to get in and out, and to allow soil and water to be removed. When the desired band of flint is reached it is followed outwards from the shaft as a series of galleries that optimize the extractable flint by leaving only small pillars to support the roof. Most flint mines are of Neolithic date, and examples are known in many parts of Europe including Poland, Holland, Belgium, and southern and eastern England.

 
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North American later Palaeo-Indian hunter-gatherer communities living in the area of north Virginia in the period 9500–8000 bc>, characterized by gradually developing projectile points.

 
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A general term applied to collections of worked flint, stone, debitage, and associated raw material gathered up from the surface of ploughed fields or disturbed ground. Such collections range in size from a few dozen through to many thousands of pieces, and may have been collected from areas of any size from a few metres across to several hectares. As such they do not represent distinct kinds of archaeological site but rather the archaeological manifestation of many different kinds of activity; their unity is a product of the way material has been recovered rather than the processes by which it was created in the first place. Much work has been devoted to characterizing flint scatters in terms of what they represent. It is now clear that some are caused by the erosion of underlying features and deposits which relate to a vast range of activities including settlements, stoneworking sites, and middens. In other cases the scatters reflect episodes of activity in the past that involved little more than the deposition of material on the contemporary ground surface which has subsequently become incorporated into the topsoil through natural and anthropogenic formation processes. See also
SURFACE SCATTERS
.

 
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A method of extracting carbonized plant remains, shells, small bones, and insect remains from ancient soils and sediments. The process involves stirring the sediment into a large barrel of water so that the lighter material floats and can be scooped off or floated over a weir and into a fine-meshed sieve. More sophisticated floatation machines have a water supply inside the barrel, thus forcing water upwards through the descending sediment, so helping to push light material to the surface. Various chemicals can be added to prepare the samples by breaking the sediments down or by creating froth in the floatation machine so that organic residues get trapped in air bubbles and are taken to the surface more easily.

 
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A sequence of chronometrically dated material, for example tree-rings or varves, that is internally consistent but tied to precise dates.