That big lump of flint....

 

This is a fabulous 3D rotating image from Sketchfab.  Thanks to Tony for drawing attention to it.

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/flint-mega-core-from-west-kennet-near-avebury-7b838af9a1cc48c98474f278e1f3aac0?

Text from the web site:

This mega-core was found at the West Kennet Palisaded Enclosures, a Late Neolithic monument complex, dated to about 2,500 BC, immediately south of Avebury in Wiltshire. It was found in a hedge where it had been thrown by a farmer who was annoyed that it had disrupted his cultivations. The core is exceptional due to its extraordinary size and weight, 16 kg, which makes it undoubtedly the largest piece of worked flint from Wiltshire. There is no flint of comparable size from the area. This forced archaeologists to look further afield, to East Anglia, where objects of similar size, raw material quality and workmanship have been found. It seems likely, therefore, that this core was transported, possibly traded, along the Chalk Ridgeway to the ritual complex at Avebury. The quality of the flaking together with its size and location at a ceremonial monument suggest that it was revered, as it is today, as some form of totemic item, prohibiting its destruction for the manufacture of everyday flint tools.

There is this article, unfortunately behind a paywall:

THOUGHTS ON MASSIVE FLINT CORES FROM WILTSHIRE AND EAST ANGLIA, THE MOVEMENT OF FLINT AND ITS ROLE IN LATE NEOLITHIC BRITAIN
Phil Harding, John Lord
Antiquaries Journal Vol 97, Sept 2017, pp. 49-63

Abstract

This paper describes the discovery of a massive, fan-shaped flint core from West Kennett Farm, near Avebury in Wiltshire, a site that is noted for two Late Neolithic palisaded enclosures. The discovery of the core has renewed focus on three similar artefacts from East Anglia, the importance of which has been overlooked. These cores arguably constitute some of the largest individual pieces of systematically worked flint from Britain. The paper considers the implications of the discovery at West Kennett Farm, where nodules of this size are absent, with the movement of flint across Britain, and concludes by discussing the role of these ‘mega-cores’ with current thinking on the function of stone in Neolithic Britain.

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Without looking at the paper, it's difficult to say how sensible the idea may be that the big lump really did come from East Anglia.

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PS

I have now managed to take a look at this article, and I am not impressed.  In the detailed discussion of how and why this lump of flint travelled from its place of origin to West Kennet there is a brief discussion of the possibility that it might have originated somewhere nearby, in a chalk formation that has now been removed following many millions of years of erosion and landscape change.  That is ruled out, not very convincingly, because if the sarsens can be deemed to be relics or residuals from long-gone chalk layers, why not some big lumps of flint as well?  The conclusion is that the flint boulder probably originated around 200 km away,  in the chalklands of East Anglia, somewhere near the other flint boulders described.

It's also suggested that it might have been transported by our Palaeolithic or Neolithic friends because it was regarded as a sacred object in its own right, not just as a handy source for the knocking off of flint implements. Hmmm.  Moving swiftly on, the most extraordinary thing about this paper is that there is not a single mention of ice, glaciation or till.  As Olwen Williams-Thorpe and colleagues have demonstrated long since,  and as many other glacial geomorphologists have agreed, glacier ice did at one time flow in from the NE, moving SW more or less parallel with the chalk outcrop of the Chiltern Hills.  The evidence is difficult to interpret, since there were many changes in ice movement directions, and the chalky till was certainly recycled (or at least, some of it was) as older glacial deposits were overrun in later glacial episodes.  Here is a summary of "glacial opinions"!!  The grey arrows are thought to represent the later stages of the Anglian Glaciation of MIS12, as the powerful stream of ice driven from the Scandinavian Ice Sheet overwhelmed and displaced ice originating in the uplands of Britain.

See this:

LEE, J R, ROSE, J, HAMBLIN, R J, MOORLOCK, B S, RIDING, J B, PHILLIPS, E, BARENDREGT, R W, AND CANDY, I. 2011. The Glacial History of the British Isles during the Early and Middle Pleistocene: Implications for the long-term development of the British Ice Sheet. 59-74 in Quaternary Glaciations–Extent and Chronology, A Closer look. Developments in Quaternary Science. EHLERS, J, GIBBARD, P L, AND HUGHES, P D (editors). 15. (Amsterdam: Elsevier.)

Extract:

The most extensive glaciation to affect the British Isles was the Anglian Glaciation of the late Middle Pleistocene (MIS 12). Evidence for this consists of tills, outwash deposits and widespread glacial erosion surfaces throughout both the terrestrial and offshore records (Perrin et al., 1979; Cameron et al., 1992; Fish and Whiteman, 2001; Hamblin et al., 2005). This glaciation also represents the first ‘shelf-edge’ expansion of the BIS along the northwest European margin (Stoker et al., 1994). The history and extent of the BIS during other late Middle Pleistocene cold stages is vague and open to several different interpretations from the same evidence. Current debate surrounds attempts at trying to establish a reliable chronology for glacial deposits within this part of the stratigraphical record, and whether there are just two Middle Pleistocene glaciations during MIS 12 and 6 four separate glacier expansions during MIS 16, 12, 10 and 6.

In short, it is perfectly feasible that the West Kennet flint boulder is a glacial erratic, carried either the whole way from its source or part of the way.  It is careless in the extreme for Harding and Lord to have completely ignored this possibility, and they should have studied this article and cited it.

"Geochemical provenancing of igneous glacial erratics from Southern Britain, and implications for prehistoric stone implement distributions" by Olwen Williams-Thorpe, Don Aldiss, Ian J. Rigby, Richard S. Thorpe, 22 FEB 1999, Geoarchaeology, Volume 14, Issue 3, pages 209–246, March 1999

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291520-6548%28199903%2914:3%3C209::AID-GEA1%3E3.0.CO;2-7/abstract