Mesolithic microlith tools from Duston, Northampton on display in Northampton Museum and Art Gallery
This flint is an example of a microlith - a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert, a hard, fine grained sedimentary rock. They are typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. In the early Stone Age, people made simple hand axes out of stone, hammers from bones or antlers, and used sharpened sticks as hunting spears. Later they used flint arrowheads, knives, scrapers and spears topped with microlith flints.
The earliest inhabitants of Northamptonshire were nomadic hunter gatherers living in the Nene Valley during the Stone Age. The Mesolithic period, known as the Middle Stone Age, lasted from 10,150 to 6,500 BCE. These hunter gatherers lived in small camp sites, constructing shelters using wooden stakes covered with animal skins. As well as Duston signs of such habitation have been found at Briar Hill, Kingsthorpe, Brixworth, Honey Hill and Chalk Lane in the centre of Northampton.
Hunter gatherers had to catch or find everything they ate. Deer and boar were popular, along with plants, mushrooms, fruits, nuts and roots. They moved from place to place in search of food as it became available with the changing seasons. Finding food was the focus of everyone’s lives. This only began to change when humans began farming - in the Neolithic or New Stone Age.
Number 8 of the objects selected for the A History of Northamptonshire in 100 Objects Exhibition 2025
This astonishingly well preserved example of a chatelaine (collection of personal grooming objects), is a high-status object made to be seen as much as used.
This unique limestone figure, carved in deep relief, shows a man in a long belted robe with hands held in prayer. Among thousands of Medieval objects excavated from the Deserted Medieval Hamlet of West Cotton, Raunds (1985–89), this one stood out and was affectionately nicknamed ‘Norman Morris’ by the archaeological team.
© NMAG
© NMAG
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Peterborough Museum
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NMAG
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Andy Chapman
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NMAG