The excavation in 1959 of a disturbed cairn, possibly a ring cairn, produced a total of 103 beads of Yorkshire jet, together with fragments of Food Vessel pottery of 'Yorkshire Vase' type and five flint artefacts including a barbed and tanged arrowhead, scrapers and a plano-convex knife (Fletcher 1985). The flint artefacts were, on the basis of colour, all made from presumed Yorkshire chalk flint. No artefacts of Irish Sea beach pebble flint were found.
A plano-convex chalk flint knife was found 1.5km to the north-east of the cairn. (Cherry 1987). The stone circle complex of Brat's Moss, Eskdale, lies 5km to the east (Burl 1976).
This assemblage is suggestive. All the artefacts carry links with Yorkshire. The chalk flint may well have been recognised as having a Yorkshire origin, and to have been regarded as distinctive for that reason. Chalk flint was rare in the extensive Neolithic and Early Bronze Age lithic scatters at Eskmeals, some 12km to the south-west (Cherry 1963; 1969; Cherry and Cherry 1986).
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Last updated: Wed May 27 2009