Har Karkom HK86b 'Surrey-style' Flints - (a) flints,

Comment: These flints have white cortex, black patina where flaked. These in photo were deposited by archaeologists in a pile at the edge of the 'Palaeolithic sanctuary,' HK86b.

What they interpret as 'we felt like placing these stones there' is, I believe, evidence of an unconscious act of ritual reverence springing from a middle palaeolithic deep strata of the human unconscious. Most archaeologists would, of course, vehemently deny this.

Leaving this reflection aside, I am stunned by the correpondence between the flaking style of these naturalistically zoomorphic flint nodules and that in the collections of Ron Williams from Warlingham, Surrey, England, which are taken to be Middle Paleolithic (see MP galleries elsewhere on this site).

Is it coincidence?

Photo © James Harrod