Field-walking with Daisy

You know how it's always people walking their dogs who discover dead bodies? Well, I don't walk my dog early enough in the morning for that. And I can't imagine anyone disposing of a recently- or not so recently- murdered victim in the field behind our house. Anyway, I still get to find stuff when running after the dog. Mostly it's barbecue waste and not-very-exciting pottery. But yesterday, while walking in a freshly ploughed field, I stumbled upon a lovely little flint blade, with a plump percussion bulb, compression rings and maybe even some retouches. I'm a little bit excited about it because apart from a pair of bronze bracelets and a possible Bronze Age barrow, I couldn't find any mentions of prehistoric activity or of lithic finds in Malpas (Cheshire) anywhere. Anything pre-Roman is really quite rare here, as far as we know, although you don't have to go very far out of the parish of Malpas to find possible Neolithic occupations and Iron Age hillforts.

So here's a picture of our little friend. It's just under 4 centimeters long, with a bit of cortex left on the distal end and a few negatives of previously knapped-off bits on the dorsal face. Given the form of the bulb, I'd say it was probably made with a hard hammer. It has an eraillure on the bulb, and it's triangular in section.

You tell me what this little guy was arrested for. Nice mugshot.

We also got a few other bits of flint, one of them largely covered in cortex and exhibiting what looks like part of a striking platform and the negative of compression rings.

Edit 14/05/12: We found another blade today, in a different field not very far away from the one in which we found the first blade. It's very different though, with the bulb and compression rings much more diffuse, possibly suggesting soft-hammer percussion. There are very extensive retouches on the dorsal face, my guess being that they were made using pressure-flaking. This is a really lovely little tool.

Unless there's a hobbyist in the neighbourhood who keeps dropping worked flint everywhere in order to confuse us, Malpas was occupied earlier than we thought.

While walking in the fields, we were quite surprised to see that there were a lot of pebbles everywhere, so we thought we might be in an post-glacial valley. It turns out, as pointed out in a 2003 archaeological assessment of Malpas by the Cheshire County Council, that "at Domesday the town [Malpas] was called Depenbech which means ‘at the deep valley with a stream in it’". I thought that the local substrate, red sandstone, could tell us a little bit more about the geology of the area, as it forms in specific conditions. According to this website, the Sandstone Ridge, made of layers of sandstone and pebble beds, formed in the Triassic era in semi-arid desertic conditions (who would have thought?). Forward to the last glaciation and the region was under a huge ice-sheet which depressed the surface of the earth and, while receding at the end of the Ice Age, dropped loads of boulders and ice-worn pebbles picked up in northern Britain while it was moving southward. Now, the pebbles make perfect sense.

I'm also posting a picture of my dog, because it's totally relevant to this article.

Daisy McWooferson, treasure hunter.