Petrological Identification of Stone Implements from Derbyshire and Leicestershire

Abstract

The petrological examination of stone implements from Leicestershire commenced in 1947, when Mr W. A. Seaby of Birmingham Museum, assisted by Mr F. W. Cottrill of Leicester Museum, started to record the implements from the county. The work of thin-sectioning was undertaken by Professor F. W. Shotton of Birmingham University. In 1955, Mr J. Bartlett, then Deputy Director of Sheffield Museum, began a similar study in Derbyshire, and he also called on Professor Shotton for the petrological identifications. Within a few years, all the stone implements in Leicester, Sheffield, Derby and Buxton Museums had been sectioned, as well as those in Mr J. P. Heathcote's private museum at Birchover and a number of smaller private collections. By 1958, about 200 implements had been sectioned, 170 from Derbyshire and 30 from Leicestershire, and Professor Shotton had handed over the petrological work on the Derbyshire implements to his colleague, Dr G. R. Coope. During the last few years, while mainly concerned with Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire (Cummins and Moore, 1973), we (the authors) have also examined a number of implements from Derbyshire and Leicestershire. Then, at the Implement Petrology Meeting at Birmingham in May 1972, we were invited to complete this work and prepare it for publication. Professor Shotton and Dr Coope very generously handed over their Derbyshire sections and the Leicestershire sections were kindly loaned by Leicester Museum.

Prehistoric Settlement in the Peak District during the Third and Second Millennia bc: A Preliminary Analysis in the Light of Recent Fieldwork

“…A rather similar pattern is suggested by the finds of stone axes, which are dominated by examples made in the Lake District, North Wales and Charnwood Forest (Moore and Cummins 1974). The latter source is not very far from the Trent valley, but again the distribution of its products is dominated by finds from the Derbyshire limestone.…”

Alternative Sources in Regional Exchange Systems: A Gravity Model Approach.

“…This information was obtained from published regional petrology reports (Celoria 1974;Clough and Green 1972;Cummins and Moore 1973;Evens etal. 1962;Evens et al 1972;Keen and Radley 1971;Moore and Cummins 1974;Stanley 1976) and unpublished regional petrology lists available up to mid-1980. As the distance measure, straight line distance between each source and the center of each 50 km grid square was used.…”