240 
PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 
1920 
and all I have seen are unworn, show no signs of decompo- 
sition, flaking, or pitting, and are such as could be used in 
the manufacture of arrow-heads and other implements. 
During Glacial times the flints were probably near enough 
to the surface to experience all the changes of temperature, 
but were protected to some extent from the effects of moisture 
by the clay in which they were enveloped. The area forms a 
part of the watershed of the Rivers Stour and Evenlode, and 
has been very little denuded since the Glacial period. The 
black flints appear to offer greater resistance to decomposition 
than other varieties. 
Various explanations of the flaking and pitting have been 
offered. Parallel and alveolar flakings are considered by Dr. G. 
Schweinfurth to have been due to rapid deprivation of quarry 
water or water of impregnation, and not to the action of frost 
(“ Steinzeitliche Forschiingen in Ober iFgypten,” Zeitschrijt 
fur Ethnologie, Berlin, 1903). A. Rutot says that the cause of 
the “ desagregation alveolaire ” is unknown, that the 
phenomenon occurs more frequently in hot than in temperate 
regions and is largely found in Egypt, that it chiefly affects 
flints exposed to the air and often seems to have preceded 
parallel flaking, but that the most frequent form is due mainly 
to rapid desiccation in the open air (paper read before 
the Anthropological Society of Brussels in 1904. See also 
Rutot, La Prehistoire (1918), p. 129). In a paper read before 
the Geological Society of London on May 26th, 1909, Mr. 
Cecil Carus-Wilson observes that some pitted flints obtained 
by him from a deposit overlying the sands and ironstones of 
the Folkestone beds near Folkestone were much decomposed 
and had been rendered porous and absorbent. Experiments 
on these and other flints led him to the conclusion that the 
polygonal pittings were produced in some way by mechanical 
action, but not by blows or as the result of heath-fires or 
collisions on a sea beach. The process of pitting, he considers, 
takes a considerable time, and is produced from within by the 
action of ice. 
Among the causes assigned for both pitting and flaking 
we thus have rapid desiccation, great heat, and intense cold. 
