STONE AGE CRATHES

COLOUR Buchan flint can occur in a variety of colours: yellows, reds and browns predominate at Skelmuir Hill, whereas medium - pale grey flint is dominant at Boddam Den, although this distinction is not sufficient for allocation of a source. The main colours on the Crathes site are brown, yellow, red, orange, grey. However, there was every combination in between! James said to use the Mundol charts, but I soon gave up on this as there were variations in colour in most pieces, and some had different colours e.g brown with a black layer under the cortex. Some very general observations: Whitish tended to be coarser grained and often opaque Orange/brownish orange tended to be finer grained Paler grey flints tended to be more coarse grained, whereas the dark grey/black tended to be finer grained, some very dark/black was very fine grained, yet in thinner areas almost transparent. Yellow: much of the initially yellow flint became much browner over time whereas some, of a richer deeper yellow retained its colour. Red, grey and whitish flint retained its colour Suspect brown/yellowish brownmay become more orange-y over time? In the end, I decided to use T Ballin’s (2014) basic colour classification of brown-yellow-orange, red, grey, with the addtion of black and whitish for this report. Even so, this assessment has to be subjective, rather than objective: eg: deciding whether a flint is brownish grey (ie Grey) or greyish brown (ie Brown) is not always easy. Flints designated as ‘whitish’ tended to be more whitish than pale grey. As heat/burning can change the colour of the flint, only unburnt pieces were asessed.

THE SCATTER Although the scatter (see chart) is continuous there are two major intensive areas, each with possibly associated sub-sites: Nether Mills West: NM 1 extending into NM 2, Nether Mills East: extending well into NM 4 and NM 3; includes the JBK dig site Milton Cottage: less intensive and could well extend into the football pitch area, bordered by the Coy Burn, at the West. It may be a sub-site relating to NMW. Consequently I refer in this report to Nethermills East (NME), Nethermills West (NMW), and Milton Cottage (MC) as being simple and logical, rather than the confusing and misleading array of names in Canmore and SMR. (Nether Mills West: previously Durris Bridge (Canmore) and Crathes Mains (Abdnshire SMR) both referring to the same collection. Although the bridge is officially the Durris Bridge, this collection is from Crathes, not Durris, is at the north edge of the field not near the bridge, and is from Nether Mills Farm not Crathes Mains.) The bulk of the Nether Mills flints were found along the middle river terrace except for those in NM 1 on an ‘island’ of higher ground on the lower terrace. This is close to the SW edge of the middle terrace and seems to extend into the E edge of MC. The material from MC was mostly on the higher areas along the river bank (ie the lower terrace). In general the river braiding is reflected by the scatter concentrations, as they were mostly on the higher ground in all five fields (see Google map below). James Kenworthy’s excavation was situated near the SW corner of NM 4, an extremely small part of NME let alone the whole of the Crathes scatter. The concentration at the major site, NMW, is more intense than that at NME. It must be remembered, however, that approximately 30,000 flints were removed from NME during James’ excavation.

LITHICS The material With the exception of two agate pieces and one anomalous piece, the assemblage was of flint. This siliceous stone was attractive to prehistoric people because it can be worked in a predictable and repeatable way to produce sharp edges and/or to manufacture implements. It is a very hard material, and as it is almost indestructable, the presence of worked flint may be the only remaining indication of prehistoric activity. Flint pebbles do not occur in the River Dee (JBK, Interim Report) and James referred to the flint found at Crathes as Buchan flint. Although there are flint mines in Buchan at Skelmuir Hill and Den of Boddam, associated with the Neolithic, it is thought that Mesolithic people (8000-4000BC) made use of beach pebbles along the coast, and surface pebbles in Buchan (D R Bridgeland 2000)

Five years of fieldwalking revealed a continuous scatter of flints through the five fields: 1.75 km along the river bank and 250m to the north in the widest part, one of the largest Mesolithic sites in the UK (Caroline Wickham-Jones 2016, page 50)

NM 1

NM 2

NM 3

NM 4

NETHERMILLS EAST

MILTON COTTAGE

Milton Cottage (MC) MC CR 2011 Nethermills West (NME) NM 1,1A CR 2008 NM 2 CR 2011 Nethermills East (NMW) NM 3,4 CR 2009

The scatterplot, showing the find-point grid references of lithics collected during the years 2008, 2009 and 2011. Field NM 1A is at the north of NM 1.

The overall percentages of brown and grey flint at Nethermills West and Nethermills East were very similar, with the brown flint comprise much the largest group, and the grey a poor second. Other flint colours were less in evidence. Milton Cottage, however, had almost equal proportions of grey flint, (but see Table GR 3 below). The remaining flint colours were in low numbers.

Colour percentages at each site

(Still to be completed)

Reference D R Bridgeland (2000) Flint-rich gravels in Aberdeenshire, in The Quaternary of the Banffshire Coast & Buchan, Field Guide, edited by J W Merrit, E R Connell & D R Bridgeland. Quaternary Research Association, page 98.

The assemblage During the process of tool-making, many waste pieces are produced. Where large scale flint-knapping has taken place, the resulting debitage can form the bulk of a collection, and this was certainly the case in Crathes. Although much of the material is broken/damaged, all phases of manufacture are present, from the preparation of the raw material to the production of finished tools. Cores, mostly single platform, and a variety of scrapers form part of the collection. The major component is of Mesolithic technology. Finds diagnostic of the Mesolithic include microliths and microburins, with the ‘broad blade’ (possibly earlier) technology represented by large wide-based triangles and oblique points, and the ‘narrow-blade’ (possibly later) technology by crescents and backed bladelets. Three smaller wide-based triangles may be from an intermediate stage. The other component of this site is Neolithic. Our most spectacular find was a very fine Middle to Late Neolithic ground and polished knife. Other Neolithic finds include two small flaked knives, four Early Neolithic leaf- shaped arrowheads (1 almost whole, 3 broken) and 2 small possible Early Neolithic potsherds (Table GR 1).