Flint Mega-Core from West Kennet near Avebury

3D Model

This mega-core was found at the West Kennet Palisaded Enclosures, a Late Neolithic monument complex, dated to about 2,500 BC, immediately south of Avebury in Wiltshire. It was found in a hedge where it had been thrown by a farmer who was annoyed that it had disrupted his cultivations. The core is exceptional due to its extraordinary size and weight, 16 kg, which makes it undoubtedly the largest piece of worked flint from Wiltshire. There is no flint of comparable size from the area. This forced archaeologists to look further afield, to East Anglia, where objects of similar size, raw material quality and workmanship have been found. It seems likely, therefore, that this core was transported, possibly traded, along the Chalk Ridgeway to the ritual complex at Avebury. The quality of the flaking together with its size and location at a ceremonial monument suggest that it was revered, as it is today, as some form of totemic item, prohibiting its destruction for the manufacture of everyday flint tools.