Further Solutré Implements from Suffolk

Abstract

Recently, Mr. Roger Notcutt of Woodbridge showed me a beautiful flint implement (figs, 1, 1 a, and 1 b), and it is through his kindness that I am able to describe it. The specimen was found when spreading out a large mass of material carted to the seaplane station at Felixstowe for making a football ground, and this material was derived from the making of a new road in the eastern part of the town. The flint blade contains in its interstices, on both faces, remains of an easily recognizable reddish sandy loam, and this loam is present over a wide area beneath the thin surface humus in the district of Felixstowe where Looe Road is situated. I have visited the site of this highway, and have compared the loam there exposed with that attached to the implement. This comparison shows that the deposits are, so far as an examination with a high-power lens is concerned, identical. The flint blade has attached to its surfaces small patches of what appears to be manganese, and the sandy loam present at Looe Road contains similar small inclusions. There cannot therefore remain much doubt that the implement was derived from the sandy loam. This deposit represents, probably, the upper part of the Red Crag, relaid by wind action. The loam rests upon the latter bed, and the site of the find is on a low plateau bordering the North Sea and lying at a height of about 50 ft. above O.D.