Romano-British Land Surface—Flint Flakes Replaced

Abstract

IN the early spring of the present year, whilst passing a newly-opened excavation near Caddington Church, three miles southeast of Dunstable, I noticed a very thin horizontal line of sharp flint flakes, embedded a foot deep from the surface-line of an old pasture. I could see at once that the line represented an old living surface, so I took a few of the flints away. In removing the stones from the soil, one or two little fragments of Romano-British pottery came away with them. The flakes were lustrous. chiefly black and brown-grey, and as sharp as when first struck. On looking over the flints in the evening, I was able to replace five on to each other. This fact, and the occurrence of the pottery fragments, proved the old surface to have remained intact from Romano-British times.