The Excavation of a Neolithic Stone Implement Factory on Mynydd Rhiw in Caernarvonshire

Abstract

The true character of the site described in this paper was first suggested by Mr A. H. A. Hogg, after a visit paid in the course of fieldwork for the Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments in Wales. Examination of photographic prints of the national air cover had revealed a line of three approximately circular hollows on a gently sloping hillside: these were at first thought to be the remains of round huts whose ruined walls were hidden by the vigorous growth of dwarf gorse covering almost the whole of this part of Mynydd Rhiw. Mr Hogg's visit happened to coincide with a periodical burning off of the gorse which made the banks of the ‘huts’ plainly visible (pl. VII, a). The banks were seen to be of earth and small stones; and the latter were observed to be, not the coarse-grained igneous variety represented on the surrounding hillside in general, but a fine-grained flinty rock bearing abundant signs of artificial working. Closer examination showed that this represented the debris of stone axe manufacture.The source of the axe material was not immediately apparent. Search of the whole hilltop for outcrops met with no success, but other occurrences of this, or similar, stone were noted as small boulders or fragments. It was at first concluded that some erratic boulders of fine-grained rocks had been brought from Snowdonia, or farther away, by glaciation, and that a particularly large one had been completely broken up and worked out on or near the site of these huts.