Grime's Graves Dating

English Heritage summaries. 2007/2008

Aims

The eventual aim is to date flint extraction and working at Grimes Graves as precisely as possible, by applying radiocarbon dating and the Bayesian analysis of the results to available archives in order to answer questions such as the following:

• What was the timespan of flint mining at the site?
• Was there a difference in periods if use between the area of deep mines and the West Field, where the floorstone is closer to the surface?
• Was there any variation in knapping techniques and products over time?
• What was the probable labour input at any one time?
• How did the emergence of a focus of production of high-quality, ‘prestige’ lithic artefacts relate to the introduction of metal-working?
• Do the human burials recovered from shafts early in the twentieth century relate to the late Neolithic use of the site (at a time when formal burials were rare) or are they later insertions, like a first millennium cal BC burial in the shaft excavated in 1971 (Mercer 1981, 16–18).

The current project assesses the feasibility of this by
• assessing and modelling the existing dates and their accompanying stratigraphic information
• determining what further suitable samples are available
• incorporating simulated dates for these potential samples and their accompanying stratigraphic information into various models with the existing dates to determine what extra precision might be gained and which and how samples would be needed to gain it.

The page was published on 24/01/2008