I don’t know if there was some sort of settlement up here or whether the area was used for seasonal camps or what. But the amount of flint I found milling about the fields on the common for a hour suggest something was going on here.
The fields are ploughed regularly each year and have been well manured in the past judging by the amount of ‘blue and white’ pottery and bits of clay pipe that are also to be found here.
Minninglow’s trees are visible on southern horizon; only a stones throw away really.
And Aleck Low is constantly visible whereas you lose sight of Minninglow at certain points.
This is true......and the fields below Aleck Low have also recently been ploughed, trip for weekend.
Happy hunting!
You have to be careful of flint that's just been knapped by the plough though, look out for the tiny little knaps that only people can do, because the plough couldn't do them! some pieces certainly looked like known flint tools and i can see a little human knapping on Emma A's but stubob's was a bit far out to see properly [without the tiny knapping it's hard to know the plough didn't make them], the good thing about finding knapped flint on say sandstone or granite is you know someone brought it there, in lincolnshire the fields are full of broken flint knapped by the plough, the only bits we used to keep was flint with tiny knapping [we've found whole arrowheads, and parts of arrowheads and even the main part of a spearhead, and loads of scrapers, a little perfect hand axe- picture on the Zennor quoit site], at the end of the day it's really hard to tell on limestone or places with natural flint [without the tiny knapping] that the plough didn't make them, i bet stubob's back was sore.
Hi Bladup,
I don't know anything about geology but I have been told (possibly wrongly) that flint doesn't occur naturally round here so it must have been imported from elsewhere. Anyway, I don't know if my little bit is actually human-knapped - I just picked it up because it is vaguely arrow-head shaped and I like to pretend I'm an archaeologist!
All flint found in the Peak District has been bought in by human hand, you're right it doesn't occur naturally only chert does......usually comes from Yorkshire Wolds, Lincolnshire and the Trent gravels.
Good to know - thanks!