NHER 39499 (Find Spot record) - Unprovenanced Palaeolithic worked flints, Carrow (Norwich, poorly located)

This record details several Palaeolithic worked flints known to have been recovered in the Carrow area of Norwich, but with little additional information regarding provenance.

FINDS IN MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

Birmingham City Museum.
The Birmingham City Museum hold three worked flints described as "Palaeolithic flakes/blades" (1928A16.44). Information from (S1). These were most likely recovered at Carrow Works (the former Colman factory), where a number of Palaeolithic handaxes and flakes were recovered during construction work in the 1920s (NHER 473). It is noted by Wymer (S2) that a number of the flints found at this site were "flake-blades" and potentially "Mousterian of Acheulian Tradition…if not Upper Palaeolithic". It is therefore possible that the flints held by the Birmingham Museum are Upper Palaeolithic in date.

Norwich Castle Museum.
The Norwich Castle Museum now holds a range of objects that it acquired following the dispersal of the Colman Museum in 1996, including a number of archaeological finds recovered over the years on the Carrow Works site. These objects included two Upper Palaeolithic flint blades that were recovered close to Carrow Abbey in 1963 (NHER 474). R. Jacobi also identified a third blade from Carrow in this collection as being potentially Upper Palaeolithic (NWHCM : 1997.91.3), although the exact provenance of this piece is unknown. This broken blade is described in (S3) but is not amongst the Late Upper Palaeolithic flints listed in (S4).

The Norwich Castle Museum Fitch Collection includes an Upper Palaeolithic flint blade core (recorded as found between "Thorpe Station and Trowse") that was probably recovered in the Carrow area. See NHER 59552 for further details.


P. Watkins (HES), 22 July 2014.