SOME GEOLOGICAL AND PREHISTORIC RECORDS. 275
the Reading Beds. On the uphill (north-eastern) side of the pit
it is capped by Chalky (non-Jurassic) Boulder Clay, consisting
of loam and chalk rubble, with flints and boulders of hard chalk.
Within the limited available exposure I have found no far-
travelled erratics.1 On the lower side of the pit (nearest to
Elsenham Cross) there are irregular patches and pockets of
earthy gravel, or stony loam, yielding two flint industries :—
1. Lower Palaeolithic flakes, deeply ochreous and corroded
by chemical action, but not water-worn, and carrying minor
scratching of soil-creep type. These were evidently gathered
from the soil or sub-soil, after prolonged weathering, at the time
when the unstratified stony loam was accumulated.
2. A Late Levallois group in mint condition, contemporary
with the accumulation of the stony loam.
Over a number of years I have obtained a good many cores
and flakes, typical of the later Levallois technique, but there is
not at present any evidence of a really important occupation site.
3. Next in ascending order of date (and far more recent
than the stony loam) there is a fairly numerous group of Mesolithic
implements. These occur in the sandy sub-soil, below the reach
of ordinary cultivation, and surprisingly little can be found on
the immediately overlying ploughland. There have also been
two pit-dwellings of the same period. The industry is of the
earlier Mesolithic type, like that of Broxbourne, without geo-
metrical pygmies. The chief Microlithic form is the small,
narrow flake pointed at one end by high-angle chipping ; there
is also the micro-graver, the true graver, and many cores, flakes
and scrapers. One specimen is of special interest ; it is typical
of the form of the Mesolithic chipped axe with tranchet-edge
(produced by transverse flaking), but of diminutive size.
Travellers have recorded that modern savages make small copies
of their implements for their children ; and this charmingly
human touch is probably the explanation of the puzzling
implements found on prehistoric sites that seem too small of
their kind for practical use.
4. The next stage is represented by a pit-dwelling with an
entirely different group of relics, namely, crude, hand-made
pottery of Neolithic A, or Windmill Hill, type ; together with
flint work which includes a flake struck from a polished flint-axe.
There is also the broken point of a flake arrow-head, and six
finely serrated, or saw-edged, flakes, together with cores, flakes,
and a scraper.
1 This refers to the Boulder Clay: Northern erratics occur in the Glacial Sand.