SHARP Lecture: Lithics, Lithic Scatters and Landscape

Stone tools have been the primary, most numerous and most robust type of human evidence for millennia. But, to understand past prehistoric societies, we must consider their landscape, the way people lived, where they hunted, fished, camped, slept and where funeral or ceremonial rights were carried out. Beyond monuments, barrows, cursus and henges, the landscape was settled. Yet, this continues to be an overlooked archaeology of peoples’ everyday lives. This presentation will discuss the importance of stone tools, cores and the waste from knapping, and why this an important and an undervalued type of heritage asset. Lithics across the Globe remain the oldest and most numerous of all types of heritage!

Dr. Clive Jonathon Bond, Chairperson of the West Norfolk and King’s Lynn Archaeological Society and Visiting Fellow in Archaeology, Department of History and Archaeology, The University of Winchester. Clive’s a lithic specialist, prehistorian and landscape archaeologist. He’s been a consultant for the Portable Antiquities Scheme at the British Museum, English Heritage/Historic England and various local authorities and museum services. Clive has led a number of community archaeological outreach projects over the past decade in West Norfolk and publishes on lithic, lithic scatters, British prehistory and landscape archaeology.