29/07/2026
Flintknapping at Grimes Graves!
We'll soon be back at the Neolithic mines for a special English Heritage members event for flintknapping workshops and visits down pit 15. This week we are celebrating this amazing site with some Grimes Graves themed posts in the build up to the event weekend on the 1st and 2nd of August. You can find more info about the weekend on the GG specific page on the English Heritage website....
Though people had been using flint to make their tools for tens of thousands of years before the Neolithic, it was usually only opportunistically collected. With the arrival of the first farmers around 6000 years ago, there was a need for tools that would be used to clear the Mesolithic forest once used by hunter-gatherers. The tool for the job was the ground stone axe, fitted into a wooden handle. To make axe heads requires a large, ideally flat nodule of flint. These can occasionally be found in river banks or from cliff falls. However when demand outstrips natural supply of good quality, undamaged flint, the alternate solution to opportunistic collection was digging down using antler picks through the layers of chalk to reach the bands of large, untouched flint nodules.
The mining pits created were around 7 metres wide and 12m deep, and extended into galleries radiating out as miners chased the flint band underground. Mining areas were not places of constant work, they were used sporadically. This may have been on a seasonal basis or when a local community felt the need to open another pit. It has been estimated it would take 20 people 100 days to dig a mine pit, then a further 40 days to remove the flint from the galleries. Antler picks make ideal tools for hacking chalk and levering flint blocks. Some antler picks from Grimes Graves were found with Neolithic miner's fingerprints on the chalky coating. Its likely that hundreds of antlers were needed to dig a mine pit.
The Neolithic's first impact on the landscape was not the building of stone circles or tombs, it was the digging of flint mines to produce the stone that would be used to shape a new landscape.
📷 Prehistoric Jewellery
