elevated conical mark, is produced. This serves to distinguish flints which have been fashioned by human agencies from those which have been split merely by the action of frost and the weather. The bulb is evidence of a direct blow, probably intentionally made, and is a point of some importance to archaeologists investigating Palaeolithic implements. With skill and experience a mass of flint can be worked to any simple shape by well directed strokes, and further trimming can be effected with pressure by a pointed stone in a direction slightly across the edge of the weapon. The purest flints have the most perfect conchoidal fracture, and prehistoric man is known to have quarried or mined certain bands of flint which were specially suitable for his purposes.
Silica forms nearly the whole substance of flint; calcite and dolomite may occur in it in small amounts, and analysis has also detected minute quantities of volatile ingredients, organic compounds, &c., to which the dark colour is ascribed by some authorities. These are dispelled by heat and the flint becomes white and duller in lustre. Microscopic sections show that flint is very finely crystalline and consists of quartz or chalcedonic silica; colloidal or amorphous silica may also be present but cannot form any considerable part of the rock. Spicules of sponges and fragments of other organisms, such as molluscs, polyzoa, foraminifera and brachiopods, often occur in flint, and may be partly or wholly silicified with retention of their original structure. Nodules of flint when removed from the chalk which encloses them have a white dull rough surface, and exposure to the weather produces much the same appearance on broken flints. At first they acquire a bright and very smooth surface, but this is subsequently replaced by a dull crust, resembling white or yellowish porcelain. It has been suggested that this change is due to the removal of the colloidal silica in solution, leaving behind the fibres and grains of more crystalline structure. This process must be a very slow one as, from its chemical composition, flint is a material of great durability. Its great hardness also enables it to resist attrition. Hence on beaches and in rivers, such as those of the south-east of England, flint pebbles exist in vast numbers. Their surfaces often show minute crescentic or rounded cracks which are the edges of small conchoidal fractures produced by the impact of one pebble on another during storms or floods.
Flint occurs primarily as concretions, veins and tabular masses in the white chalk of such localities as the south of England (see Chalk). It is generally nodular, and forms rounded or highly irregular masses which may be several feet in diameter. Although the flint nodules often lie in bands which closely follow the bedding, they were not deposited simultaneously with the chalk; very often the flint bands cut across the beds of the limestone and may traverse them at right angles. Evidently the flint has accumulated along fissures, such as bedding planes, joints and other cracks, after the chalk had to some extent consolidated. The silica was derived from the tests of radiolaria and the spicular skeletons of sponges. It has passed into solution, filtered through the porous matrix, and has been again precipitated when the conditions were suitable. Its formation is consequently the result of “concretionary action.” Where the flints lie the chalk must have been dissolved away; we have in fact a kind of metasomatic replacement in which a siliceous rock has slowly replaced a calcareous one. The process has been very gradual and the organisms of the original chalk often have their outlines preserved in the flint. Shells may become completely silicified, or may have their cavities occupied by flint with every detail of the interior of the shell preserved in the outer surface of the cast. Objects of this kind are familiar to all collectors of fossils in chalk districts.
Chert is a coarser and less perfectly homogeneous substance of the same nature and composition as flint. It is grey, black or brown, and commonly occurs in limestone (e.g. the Carboniferous Limestone) in the same way as flint occurs in chalk. Some cherts contain tests of radiolaria, and correspond fairly closely to the siliceous radiolarian oozes which are gathering at the present day at the bottom of some of the deepest parts of the oceans. Brownish cherts are found in the English Greensand; these often contain remains of sponges.
The principal uses to which flint has been put are the fabrication of weapons in Palaeolithic and Neolithic times. Other materials have been employed where flint was not available, e.g. obsidian, chert, chalcedony, agate and quartzite, but to prehistoric man (see Flint Implements below) flint must have been of great value and served many of the uses to which steel is put at the present day. Flint gravels are widely employed for dressing walks and roads, and for rough-cast work in architecture. For road-mending flint, though very hard, is not regarded with favour, as it is brittle and pulverizes readily; binds badly, yielding a surface which breaks up with heavy traffic and in bad weather; and its fine sharp-edged chips do much damage to tires of motors and cycles. Seasoned flints from the land, having been long exposed to the atmosphere, are preferred to flints freshly dug from the chalk pits. Formerly flint and steel were everywhere employed for striking a light; and gun flints were required for fire-arms. A special industry in the shaping of gun flints long existed at Brandon in Suffolk. In 1870 about thirty men were employed. Since then the trade has become almost extinct as gun flints are in demand only in semi-savage countries where modern fire-arms are not obtainable. Powdered flint was formerly used in the manufacture of glass, and is still one of the ingredients of many of the finer varieties of pottery. (J. S. F.)
FLINT IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS. The excavation of
these remains of the prehistoric races of the globe in river-drift
gravel-beds has marked a revolution in the study of Man’s
history (see Archaeology). Until almost the middle of the 19th
century no suspicion had arisen in the minds of British and
European archaeologists that the momentous results of the
excavations then proceeding in Egypt and Assyria would be
dwarfed by discoveries at home which revolutionized all previous
ideas of Man’s antiquity. It was in 1841 that Boucher de Perthes
observed in some sand containing mammalian remains, at
Menchecourt near Abbeville, a flint, roughly worked into a cutting
implement. This “find” was rapidly followed by others, and
Boucher de Perthes published his first work on the subject,
Antiquités celtiques et antédiluviennes: mémoire sur l’industrie
primitive et les arts à leur origin (1847), in which he proclaimed
his discovery of human weapons in beds unmistakably belonging
to the age of the Drift. It was not until 1859 that the French
archaeologist convinced the scientific world. An English mission
then visited his collection and testified to the great importance
of his discoveries. The “finds” at Abbeville were followed
by others in many places in England, and in fact in every
country where siliceous stones which are capable of being flaked
and fashioned into implements are to be found. The implements
occurred in beds of rivers and lakes, in the tumuli and ancient
burial-mounds; on the sites of settlements of prehistoric man in
nearly every land, such as the shell-heaps and lake-dwellings;
but especially embedded in the high-level gravels of England
and France which have been deposited by river-floods and long
left high and dry above the present course of the stream. These
gravels represent the Drift or Palaeolithic period when man
shared Europe with the mammoth and woolly-haired rhinoceros.
The worked flints of this age are, however, unevenly distributed;
for while the river-gravels of south-eastern England yield them
abundantly, none has been found in Scotland or the northern
English counties. On the continent the same partial distribution
is observable: while they occur plentifully in the north-western
area of France, they are not discovered in Sweden, Norway or
Denmark. The association of these flints, fashioned for use by
chipping only, with the bones of animals either extinct or no
longer indigenous, has justified their reference to the earlier
period of the Stone Age, generally called Palaeolithic. Those flint
implements, which show signs of polishing and in many cases
remarkably fine workmanship, and are found in tumuli, peat-bogs
and lake-dwellings mixed with the bones of common domestic
animals, are assigned to the Neolithic or later Stone Age. The
Palaeolithic flints are hammers, flakes, scrapers, implements
worked to a cutting edge at one side, implements which resemble
rude axes, flat ovoid implements worked to an edge all round,
and a great quantity of spear and arrow heads. None of these
is ground or polished. The Neolithic flints, on the other hand,
exhibit more variety of design, are carefully finished, and the
particular use of each weapon can be easily detected. Man has
reached the stage of culture when he could socket a stone into
a wooden handle, and fix a flaked flint as a handled dagger or
knife. The workmanship is superior to that shown in any of the
stone utensils made by savage tribes of historic times. The
manner of making flint implements appears to have been in all
ages much the same. Flint from its mode of fracture is the only
kind of stone which can be chipped or flaked into almost any
shape, and thus forms the principal material of these earliest
weapons. The blows must be carefully aimed or the flakes
