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
Carved with typically Anglo-Scandinavian interlace, this stone was found reused in the Norman church of St Peters and may indicate an earlier 10th century church.
This is a rare type of medieval ceramic roof tile, replaced in the 13th century by standard rectangular ceramic or nib tiles used until the 20th century. The rarity of these roof tiles and their association with buildings of high status in Northampton, both religious and secular, is of historical and archaeological significance.
© NMAG
© NMAG
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NMAG
©
NMAG
©
Andy Chapman
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NMAG