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46 JACEK LECH

Fig. 73. Flint tools from mines in Polish territories

a — macrolithic sidc-scraper (Sąspów); b — pick (Jcrzmanowice-Dąbrówka); c, e — bihorncd picccs - dwurogacz (Polany Kolonie); d — seraper (Sąspów)

Aficr J.Lcch (a, b, d). R.Schild et alii (c, e)

VIII. THE DATING OF FLINT MINING

Dating flint mines has becn very difficult until quite lately. It is typical that mines, workshops and raw materiał exploitation points all over Europę have very few datable features. Defining the links between mines and settlements utilizing them is usually a separatc problem. Sometimes it is evcn difficult to discover them.

The character of the archaeological matcrials from the mines and the structure of workshop assemblages is a result of their function and for that reason they are the same, even in diflerent cultural traditions. For exam-ple, some semi-finished tools from the Eneolithic or Early Bronze Age are morphologically identical with tools or cores from the Middle Palaeolithic period. Such a State of aflairs is reflected in the history of research on the oldest mining.

The classification of minę shafts madę by A. L. Armstrong was closely connectcd with his views on the age of Grime’s Gravcs. The author used typological argu-ments and agreed with the opinions of H. Breuil, R. Smith and others who thought that many palaeolithic products were madę of mined flint. He pointed out features from the Mousterian industry on the site of High Lodge, and its likeness to the flint from the main cxploitation lcvel at Grime’s Graves (Armstrong 1926, 95). His division of cxploitation units was supposcd to have chronolo-gical value. In this view, he linked the oldest workshops Processing mined flint with the pure LevalIois industry (floor 85c). The latest mining activities, confirmed among others by GreenwelFs shaft were supposed to finish in the Early Neolithic Age, in the “pre-dolmen” period (Armstrong 1926, 121-123). The three shaft types that he distinguished were supposcd to correspond with diflerent mining tools and separatc workshops. The error of such an idea and the need to return to Greenwell’s dating (1871) was pointed out in 1933 by J. G. D. Clark and S. Piggott. ¹⁴C dates (Table 2) prove in the clcarcst way that most of the shafts at Grime’s Graves are of Latc Neolithic and Early Bronze Age datę. In this way the chronological value of A. L. Armstrong’s typology fell into disuse.

A separate archaeological culture — the so-called Campignien culture formed from the Pyrenees to the Urals was distinguished in the prehistory of Europę. As a result of closer studies it is now known that the Cam-pignicn culture consists of many mining sites or sites con-nected with the raw materiał Processing, having no com-