CHERT USE IN THE MESOLITHIC OF NORTHERN ENGLAND
D. Hind, University of Sheffield
CHERT USE IN THE MESOLITHIC OF NORTHERN ENGLAND
D. Hind, University of Sheffield
INTRODUCTION
This paper is written in the light of ongoing doctoral research into the Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic periods of the Peak District, North Derbyshire. The main tenet of the thesis is that, whilst the transition between these two periods sees considerable change in traditions of making and using stone tools, there are also continuities. One way in which I have approached this idea is through the study of prehistoric exploitation of raw material. This requires a perspective beyond the regional horizon. Flint came into the area, and chert went out. How did this happen and what did it mean? As a consequence of this work I have had to look again at some collections and discussions relating to the Early and Later Mesolithic of the region. This has made me think specifically about the raw material conditions of various areas and how people shaped them.
CHERT: ITS MINERALOGICAL PROPERTIES
Chert, like flint, is a silicate, the essential components of which are silicon and oxygen. Flint and chert are aggregates of microscopic crystals of quartz found in calcareous sedimentary rocks. The British usage of the word 'chert' is different from the American. In British terminology, flint occurs in chalk, and chert occurs in Carboniferous limestone, though chalk is in fact a very pure type of limestone. Chert and flint can be envisaged best as poles on a graded continuum, which Henson (1982) describes thus:
| Chert | Flint |
| Hackly fracture | Conchoidal fracture |
| Resinous lustre | Horny lustre |
| Opaque | Translucent |
| Coarse grain | Fine grain |
| Many impurities | Fewer impurities |
| No cortex | Cortex |
Despite their regular usage, these definitions are somewhat contradictory. Flint, as
defined by its parent material, is occasionally more 'cherty' than some high quality
cherts, which are 'flinty' in their intrinsic properties, especially the potential for a
clean conchoidal fracture. Geological distinctions, then, may sometimes be less
relevant to the archaeologist than appearance and flaking qualities.
The form in which chert occurs is extremely varied, a consequence of the many
different processes which lead to its formation in sedimentary rocks. The main
categories are 'stratified' (or 'bedded') chert, 'nodular' chert, and 'patchy chert'
(where the boundary of the chert body is indistinct), though frequently these types are
difficult to distinguish. The colour and texture of chert also varies both between and
within chert beds or bodies. The main distinction here is between dark 'black chert',
which consists of very fine crystals, and 'white chert' which is made up of coarser
granular quartz (Sargent 1920). Both black and white chert can occur together as
multi-layered, banded beds or concentrically banded nodules. Current research by
Toynton [1] and others suggests that, while an initial supply of silica is vital, the
distribution, colour, and form of chert is affected by post-diagenetic factors (i.e. after
the transformation occurring during the conversion of sedimentation to sedimentary
rock). The quantity of silica varies within different limestones at a local level, and fine-grained black cherts, as well as coarse white cherts, can be found in all the
Carboniferous limestone areas of Northern England (B. Toynton, pers. comm.).
THE POTENTIAL OF CHERT AS RAW MATERIAL IN TOOL MAKING
Chert is generally understood to be of inferior quality to flint for knapping, though
dark, fine-grained chert from the Bakewell area of the Peak District knaps considerably
better than some of the coarse, white Wolds flint of North Yorkshire. Generally,
however, the way in which it fractures is less predictable than flint and tends to be
angular rather than conchoidal. Differences in evidence of core reduction demonstrate
a response to this problem: chert seems most often to have been knapped using the
weathered surface (which had interfaced with the limestone) as the striking platform,
especially on tabular chert from bedded seams. One frequently finds a small proportion
of tertiary flake assemblages from Mesolithic chert-working sites for this reason.
For the same reason, chert seems to have had correspondingly fewer applications. It is
rarely used for cutting tools, though flake knives do occur occasionally -- as at the
multi-period site at Demonsdale, Taddington, Derbyshire (Hind, in prep.). However,
large blanks are frequently retouched to form scrapers and piercing tools, such as awls.
It is often chosen alongside, or in preference to flint, for scrapers with steep retouch,
awls, and fabricators, and it is often an alternative to flint for microliths, especially later
in the Mesolithic. One Neolithic polished chert axe has been recorded from Mount
Pleasant, Derbyshire (Derbyshire Sites and Monuments Record), but this is unusual.
More common are Neolithic and Beaker Period arrowheads made in the same black
chert (q.v. Leah, et al. 1997: 112; Radley 1965).
INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY AREA
The study area is focused on a plateau of Carboniferous limestone known as the White
Peak. Part of the Peak District National Park (or the Derbyshire Peak), it drains
southward into the upper Trent Valley and is surrounded on the other three sides by
gritstone uplands (see Figure 1). These uplands are the southern extremity of the
Pennine chain, the mountain range which forms the spine of Northern England. There
are two other areas of Carboniferous limestone in Northern Britain. One is at the
northern end of the Pennine Chain, straddling Lancashire and North Yorkshire, and the
other is to the west of the Peak District (beyond the Cheshire Plain) in Flintshire,
North Wales (see Figure 2). Most research on the prehistory of Northern England has
focused on the area to the east of the Pennines, especially the Yorkshire Wolds, an
upland chalk area by the North Sea coast (beyond the Vale of York). Distinctive white
and grey flints were procured from this area until the Bronze Age and used at least as
far away as the Derbyshire Peak and in the Pennines.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL INTERPRETATIONS
The Derbyshire origin for this material is highly likely for the sites from the Southern
Pennines but more problematic for Blubberhouses Moor, some 80 kilometres from the
White Peak and only 5 kilometres from the Yoredale series of North Yorkshire.
Sargent states in no uncertain terms that very dark cherts do occur in these limestones:
While the sourcing of chert remains a problem, we know other materials were
imported across great distances. Ian Brooks has demonstrated fairly convincingly the
distant origins of flint used in the Peak District in this period. At Lismore Fields, near
Buxton (at the western edge of the White Peak) sources on the Wirral (near Liverpool)
were exploited in the Mesolithic and continued to be used into the Neolithic Period
alongside material from the Yorkshire Wolds (1989).
Given these patterns, it is perhaps surprising that there has been little interest since the
early 1980s in how raw materials were transported over such distances. Most studies
involve the unwritten assumption that the knapper procures in every case. There are
problems with this view, to which I will return below.
THE DISTRIBUTION OF DERBYSHIRE CHERT: A SAMPLE
This section takes a fresh look at the use of chert on and off the White Peak, focusing
on the Mesolithic, when chert use was most prevalent. The collections analysed are
mainly surface assemblages from upland erosion patches, as well as systematically
collected plough-zone scatters. Due to the extremely variable nature of the data no in-
depth technological analyses have been performed. The main aim here is merely to
demonstrate the extent of raw material use over time.
Derbyshire chert is represented (though not geochemically identified) on the gritstone
uplands of the South Pennines, as well as in the coal measures and magnesian
limestone of South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire, but it has not been recorded to
the south of the White Peak in the Trent Valley. Archaeologists working in the
Huddersfield area of the Central Pennines believe that at least some of the chert used
there originated in Derbyshire (Spikins 1995; Stonehouse 1986). Manby (1963)
commented on sites on the sandstone outcrop at Alderly Edge, Cheshire, where
Derbyshire black chert was worked (sites SJ 856779 and SJ 860776), but it is only
recently that systematic survey has been done on the Cheshire Plains. The chert used in
this area (Leah, et al. 1997: 23, 112, 127) is mostly found nearer to the Flintshire
series than the Derbyshire series and has been omitted here [3].
I have examined archaeological material from six areas: White Peak, East Moors,
Southern Pennines, Central Pennines, South Yorkshire coal measures, and North
Derbyshire coal measures [4]. Absolute and relative (percentage) quantities of chert
were recorded against those made from other raw materials. Percentages of retouched
artefacts in relation to waste were recorded, in order to give a rough idea of the types
of stone working going on. Where possible a chronological framework was developed
to distinguish between the Early and Later Mesolithic. Only securely dated, single-
period sites have been used for final analyses. It should be noted that this survey has
been limited by access to specific collections and is only as complete as circumstances
have allowed.
Jeffrey Radley was the first archaeologist to pay close attention to the prehistoric use
of chert in the Pennine chain (Radley 1968). He distinguished five different types of
chert by texture and colour, basing his analysis on archaeological samples and
suggested source areas for these types. There has been some confusion ever since
about the exclusivity of these sites. Andrew Myers, for instance (1986: 298),
developed a model of the procurement and use of raw material based on the idea that
black chert originates solely in the White Peak. He concluded that increased use of
chert in the Late Mesolithic was linked to a change in hunting practices which
'remained generalist and encounter-based throughout the year' (ibid.: 376). These
properties required more complex, reliable, and maintainable technology and therefore
a move away from logistical strategies toward smaller residential groups covering the
greater part of the regional landscape. At the same time, he suggested, the move to
smaller blades and microliths in the later period could have been an adjustment to the
variability of raw materials encountered during the course of these frequent residential
moves.
The colour varies from white to dark grey, brown, black and blue.... Not infrequently,
especially in the Undersett Cherts, the individual beds have a core of translucent, black
chert within upper and lower layers of a hybrid chert containing a considerable amount
of calcium carbonate. A similar feature has been noted in the North Flintshire Cherts
[2] (Sargent 1929: 405).
While this does not affect other aspects of Myers's model, it has implications for the
scale of mobility in the Mesolithic period which cannot be supported purely on the
basis of visual characterization of lithics. The (raw) material conditions under which
Pennine communities were living were not altogether as previously imagined. In this
paper, distinction by colour has been abandoned, and it is accepted that significant
amounts of chert might have been introduced to sites in the Central Pennines from
either end of the mountain chain.
| EARLY MESOLITHIC | LATE MESOLITHIC | |||
| No. of sites | Av. % chert | No. of sites | Av. % chert | |
| Central Pennines | 4 | 20 | 16 | 30 |
| South Pennines | 4 | 6 | 5 | 61 |
| South Yorkshire | 2 | 25 | 1 | 15 |
| North Derbyshire | 2 | 7 | 1 | 3 |
| East Moors | 0 | - | 5 | 50 |
| White Peak | 2 | 37 | 9 | 15 |
It is obvious that there is no 'fall-off' in chert use for either period with distance from
the White Peak. Use of chert in the Central Pennines is probably more frequent than in
the lowland areas to the east of the Peak which are nearer to it. Further, this trend
appears to go directly against any notion of a 'path of least resistance'. Chert is
rarely, if ever, found in the Trent Valley into which the White Peak drains (Manby
1963), but it is frequently found in upland areas to the north, over the most
mountainous terrain in England. That this may be a reflection of survey and collection
traditions does not detract from the fact that large amounts of chert, often in
unmodified form, found their way into these areas (i.e. as unworked tablets or nodules;
q.v. Poole 1986; Spikins 1995).
The comment repeated by Hart (1981), Henson (1982), and Myers (1986) that chert
was more favoured in the Later Mesolithic than in the Early Mesolithic can be
supported for the South and Central Pennines. What little evidence we have suggests
that for the White Peak, as well as for the lowlands of South Yorkshire and North
Derbyshire, the reverse was true. It is certainly the case that more sites have been
found with chert from the Later Mesolithic, but in any case, there are significantly
more sites from this period in England. This may be a reflection of population growth,
the fact that the Later Mesolithic is three times as long as the Early Mesolithic, or a
combination of both (Spikins 1998). However, maximum percentages of chert on
Early Mesolithic sites in any region are low compared with the relatively frequent
counts of 90-100 percent in Later Mesolithic sites which Myers recognised (1986:
368). It may have been used as frequently but not in such relative quantity as later in
the period. On Early Mesolithic sites for which we have data, the average percentage
of retouched pieces which are chert is 10 percent. On Later Mesolithic sites, this figure
rises to 26 percent. It could be argued then, that there was a change in the way chert is
worked from the Early to the Later Mesolithic sub-periods, and that chert was
increasingly used for retouched artefact types. Myers also commented on the division of Later Mesolithic chert-use sites into two
groups: those with less than 40 percent and those with more than 90 percent chert. Out
of 38 chert-use sites dated firmly to the Later Mesolithic, 8 did not adhere to this rule,
and the assertion could only be upheld in three areas: South Yorkshire, North
Derbyshire, and the White Peak.
All I have really demonstrated here is that chert was moving over long distances with
great regularity and in a number of different forms, including finished artefacts and
unmodified tablets. However, these patterns alone raise possibilities aside from those
usually discussed. The distance over which raw material travels is often interpreted as
an index of the scale of movement during the course of the annual subsistence round.
This movement has been explained in terms of direct procurement, embedded or
otherwise. This is certainly one structuring principle in recent theories of forager
systems of acquiring raw material, but by itself it does not necessarily account for other
issues.
Another possibility is that this material comes to where it has been found through
exchange. In the literature on the Mesolithic of Northern England, exchange is rarely,
if ever, mentioned, leading one to suppose that it is either taken as read or assumed not
to be an issue. Is the unwritten supposition that the knapper (or someone in his or her
'band') always procures the raw material? This is certainly not a constant in
ethnographically documented small-scale societies. We should not assume a priori that
it was.
RAW MATERIAL: LANDSCAPE, MATERIALITY AND IDENTITY
Discussion remains of the mechanisms by which chert came to be worked so far from its
sources. Don Henson's (1982) study of the area east of the Pennines suggested a
'supply-and-demand' trade network in raw materials which is perhaps more
appropriate to a market economy than to a non-capitalist society. Henson does at least
acknowledge the possibility of interaction and exchange between groups in different
regions. Can raw material really give us a handle on scales of movement or trade
patterns in prehistory? The assumption that the knapper procures is rarely
demonstrable and is indeed unlikely in many cases. Equally, it is unwise to rely
exclusively upon simple explanations based on modern economic theory of the
cost/benefit type to explain patterns in prehistory. The concluding section of this paper
outlines some ways in which we can better interpret phenomena of this kind with a
sensitivity to recent trends in anthropology which deal with issues of landscape and
technology.
Most small-scale forest societies of recent times have been characterised by high
individual mobility and seasonal group movement. Many archaeologists are familiar
with the huge annual round traversed by the Nunamiut band subject to study by Binford
(1978). Even this would barely account for the distances over which Henson
and Brooks reported flint to have been travelling, and hunter-gatherers in forest
environments frequently have much smaller ranges (see, for instance, <http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Sonja/RF/Ukpr/Report135.htm> on
Central Africa).
Such groups are linked by a variety of relationships. They meet up periodically for
collective ceremonies, hunting expeditions, or other procurement expeditions.
Conjugal families visit their relations in other camps and involve themselves with daily
tasks there for weeks. Such practices make for constant fluctuation in a camp's
composition, and are one mechanism through which objects and materials may be
moved around.
Land is generally owned, even when it looks deserted, and complex ownership
traditions and rights of access may restrict the use of quarries (McBryde 1984).
Outside the community, there are exchange networks with neighbouring groups which
provide goods unavailable within one's own range. The goods used for these
exchanges and the value attached to them vary from one range to the next and can
include unmodified raw materials. However, exchanges of material things are not
always driven by demand for those things, and exchanges will still take place when
there is no simple economic need. All exchange is symbolic, but, the goal of trying to
identify a particular exchange mechanism may not be a particularly useful one, as there
is a multitude of different agendas which can be worked through a transaction,.
Objects can even be made for an exchange beyond which they have no purpose, their
value being as a medium for information exchange (Paton 1994: 184-5).
Aspects of materiality too are socially defined. Part of their definition involves
'presencing' the raw material itself with ideas, as Paul Taçon (1991) has described.
Certain Australian peoples express an attatchment to the land and knowledge of it
through their dream stories. Quarries are amongst the nodes on the pathways followed
in the journeys narrated. The qualities and values attributed to the stone depend on a
mythological understanding of its origin. This informs how it is used and by whom.
The status of a raw material may be determined by whether the resource is 'on the
track' or 'off the track' (Fullagar and Head, in press).
Technology, like exchange, is a total social phenomenon. The creation of certain
artefacts in prehistory would have reminded knapper and onlooker alike of the tasks to
which they were to be applied, as well as the place and meanings of those tasks in the
social landscape. We generally apply these ideas to objects into which great labour has
instilled an overt kind of value, but these ideas can also be realised in relatively
everyday objects. It is their very 'everyday-ness' which can reinforce those views
taken for granted of how to behave and who should perform what activities in a
community. Raw material is a kind of backdrop for this theatre. It provides a context, a
history, and a geography with which all the players are intimate through stories and
other types of exchange. Learning both where stone tablets could be found and the
special ways in which they had to be worked contributed to the construction of
identity. As individuals found their way through technical acts and landscapes, they
were socialized: they could act knowledgably and, in turn, pass on conventional
understandings of how to proceed in different situations (Mauss 1979: 120; Tilley
1996: 162).
For some people, the procurement of chert may have involved days or weeks away
from their range and maybe some of their kin, as has been suggested for the use of axe
factories later in prehistory (Edmonds 1995: 59-61). For groups living on or near the
limestone, it could easily have been done on the move, within the other suites of
procurement making up the 'seasonal round'. The exploitation of similar resources,
then, can have greatly different social settings, which are culturally specific in their
interpretation but still affect our archaeological narratives. What may be crucial in
understanding the patterns of movement of stone blocks and tools is the biographies
they acquired through exchanges.
Outside the range in which such resources are present, different values may be ascribed
to them. Many tablets of chert probably entered the Central Pennines through
exchange networks between groups. Such connections were not constant but were
built up and later collapsed throughout the Mesolithic. If this is accepted, it is also
likely that this material was considered in some way exotic by the groups who used it
alongside the Wolds flint which could have been found nearer to hand. That we
identify chert's physical properties as generally inferior to flint would not prevent any
mythological associations making it desirable to people distant from the source. I am
not suggesting trade was not organised at any time, just that it was one of a range of reasons
for exchange. This exchange fulfilled a need for workable stone where it was absent
and bound distant communities together. When used in remote territories it would
have been evocative of other places and special relationships.
The purpose of this short paper is merely to encourage an awareness of the material
conditions under which procurement models operate. The picture of Mesolithic
Northern England which emerges is one in which materials are transported between
areas which have very different conditions of raw material availability. Given that the
distances involved are often beyond the annual range of modern hunter-gatherers who
live even in extreme conditions, I have suggested that there are more mechanisms at
play than direct procurement, whether embedded or logistical. Although we will never
know if this is movement between people or with people, the distinction is crucial in
terms of the value placed on the material. The intention has not been to re-create
modern anthropological stories in the past, which is exactly what the narrow focus on
direct procurement has done. Rather, it has been to demonstrate how the material
informs us of social variablility.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thank Mark Edmonds, Willy Kitchen, and Bill Bevan for reading the text at various
stages, Jamie Spiers and Dave Farrell for their assistance with the research, Ken Smith,
John Barnatt, and Angie Johnson at the Peak District National Park for their help and
hospitality, the following SMR officers -- Andy Myers (Derbyshire), Sarah Whiteley
(South Yorkshire), Jenny Marriott (West Yorkshire), Gill Collins (Cheshire) and
Norman Redhead (Greater Manchester). I am also grateful to Bob Toynton for advice
on the geology, to all who came to the TAG session, to Ron Cowell for bringing his
rocks over, to mum, dad and Helen for being who they are. Needless to say, the
responsibility for any shortcomings in the text lie exclusively with the author.
Copyright © D. Hind 1998
Natural outcrops of chert occur in the gorges, dry valleys, and peripheral mudstones of
the White Peak. The fine-grain black material mentioned by Radley is found where
dark facies in the Monsal Dale series of limestone occur. Most of these outcrops
cluster around Bakewell near the Wye Valley, but fine grained black chert is found as
far north as Bradwell Dale which is within a day's walk of most of the Mesolithic sites
Radley studied. None of these outcrops is a demonstrable prehistoric quarry, but some
of them, especially in the Bakewell area, are very close to rock shelter sites where
large quantities of chert nodules were reduced in the Mesolithic (Hind, in prep.; Radley
1968).
In the Mesolithic, the Derbyshire Peak was inhabited by groups of hunter-gatherers
who knew where to quarry this stone and how to work it. I believe we can take it for
granted that these people had an intimate knowledge of their surroundings, embodied in
stories linked to various natural features, and it is on the ridges of the Peak that most
of these features would have been visible. The environmental evidence suggests that
the river valleys and ravines of the Peak were densely forested in these times (Hicks
1971, 1972; Wiltshire and Edwards 1993). Communication may have hinged on the
rivers themselves, as well as the edges of the high moors, where tree cover was less
dense or absent. What is uncertain is how far these groups may have travelled in
different circumstances.
Copyright © assemblage 1998