Lower Medway Archaeology Group (LMAG) flint finds

It's #FindsFriday or should I say #FlintFriday!

At the beginning of this week longstanding Maidstone Museums volunteer Angela joined me at our offices in Marsham Street to look over a box of Lower Medway Archaeology Group (LMAG) finds labelled hand axes.

Now #palaeolithic flints are not my strong suit so I was extremely grateful to have Angela's keen eye and wealth of knowledge to look through the items, which on my limited view appeared to be mostly natural - oh boy was I wrong!

In just two boxes we had:

13 Lower Palaeolithic (half to a quarter of a million years old) hand-axes and proto-hand axes

46 tools including scrapers, burins, a possible pick, blades, arrowhead and knives ranging from the Lower Palaeolithic through to the Mesolithic.

27 flakes and nodules showing definite working from the Lower Palaeolithic, middle Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods.

Angela has very kindly taken up the task of cataloguing the KAS' lithic collection. This will allow us to involve more specialist researchers in analysing an important collection from the Medway area as well as design handling collections for use in our out reach and education.

I hope to be able to share more discoveries from this project as we make them! ~ Andy, Curator

#palaeolithic #flint #workedflint #archaeology #findsprocessing #stonetools #prehistoric #Neanderthal #earlyhumans