An Extensive Late Upper Palaeolithic Flint Scatter at Farndon Fields, Near Newark, Nottinghamshire

In 1991, nine Late Upper Palaeolithic flint artefacts were recovered by fieldwalking in advance of the proposed upgrading of the A46 Fosse Way; subsequent detailed fieldwalking and test-pitting have recovered over three hundred broadly contemporary struck items scattered over an area of some 15 ha. This flint was initially identifiable from other (later) prehistoric flintwork by its large size and cortication (i.e. white-blue surface), also by its technological and morphological traits distinctive of the earlier part of the Late Upper Palaeolithic, dated in south-western cave sites to the Lateglacial Interstadial, with radiocarbon determinations in the mid-thirteenth millennium BP. As at contemporary sites, raw materials seem to have been utilized from non-local sources (trace-element analysis suggests southern England), though the comparatively large number of flakes and blades with cortex suggests that preparation of raw materials was not as extensive as on some cave sites, even though the same flint so...