58
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
This description applies exceedingly well to the specimens
from the Cam Valley, but to these implements we may add an
abundance of prismatic cores of from one to three inches long,
and a form of implement allied to the grattoir tarte. These
may have originated from the use of the prismatic core, but in
many cases the flakes struck from them would be useless and
the signs of wear and retouching on their edge points to their
use as a small plane for smoothing wood or bone. As in Nor-
folk, a large percentage of specimens are formed from nodules,
and are thicker than those of the later industry and have often
a portion of the original crust remaining. A large number
of them have the mottled blue patina, but many of them are
unpatinated and with a high polish upon the worked surfaces.
It should be noted that on certain sites worked flakes are abund-
ant, but that they are usually of small size and often of imperfect
workmanship.
Although found upon Boulder Clay sub-soil in Norfolk this
type usually occurs upon the lighter soil of the Chalk slopes
and gravel terraces in N.W. Essex.
The crudity of the specimens and the rarity of polished im-
plements and arrow heads point to the culture of a primitive
folk, perhaps not antecedent in time to the more cultured
peoples of the Brecklands and East Essex, but of a lower grade
of civilisation.
As a provisional hypothesis the writer would suggest that
Neolithic man in the Cam Valley and on the Norfolk uplands
was a primitive race linking up the early Neolithic culture of
the Cissbury type with the later Neolithic culture of the early
series of East Essex and the Brecklands.
RECORD OF SITES.
I. Ickleton. Coploe Hill. Essex Sheet II., S.E.
Longitude 0° 10' 39", latitude 52° 3' 33". Elevation 230 ft.
O.D., 115 ft. above valley bottom. On the west of the road from
Ickleton to Strethall, about 3/4 mile south of the church. Situ-
ated on a spur of the escarpment, running north from Strethall,
and dividing a dry valley on the west from the main Cam Valley
on the east. The site is on the brow and steep west slope of the
ridge; it is bare of trees and exposed to wind from all quarters.