By Clover Little, Inventory Assistant, National Museum of Ireland 

Copyright © 2023 Clover Little

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When I’m walking through the National Museum of Ireland - Archaeology, members of the public often see my work ID and ask me where to find things. Usually the bathroom. Sometimes the bog bodies. The Ardagh Chalice, once.  

I’ve never been asked where to find collections of flint. 

There are hundreds of thousands of flint objects registered in the NMI’s databases; many are broken, and more still are mere waste (termed debitage) left over during the production of tools. The few that make it to the display cases often represent the clearest and most visually impressive examples of lithic technologies. Even still, it is rare that anybody asks after them. One might begin to wonder if the archaeological value of debitage is being overstated. 

However, this assessment couldn’t be further from the truth. Expansive collections of debitage have allowed archaeologists to completely reconstruct how prehistoric people created their tools. Without these collections of unassuming little flint flecks, we might not understand how the “best” tools, the ones most likely to be on display, were made. 

Recently the Irish Antiquities Inventory Team has started describing and adding to the database a collection of several thousand such flints from in and around the townland of Farrankelly in Co. Wicklow. Most are debitage, and further still, they have been rolled in water over many years and this process has smoothed the sharp edges and markings that help us identify them.  

But they still have inherent value, and not just because they’re from oh-so long ago. The collector of these flints divided and subdivided the fields he collected them from into grids, meaning we now have a detailed record of lithic production in the area. This allows for in-depth comparison to other collections of lithics, including techniques used, the spread of debitage across a wide area, and the type and quality of flint being used. From a large-scale perspective, this collection is creating a new data point for comparative study of flint production. 

The fact that the flints have been heavily water-rolled isn’t necessarily a drawback either. As an archaeologist, when you’re still learning how to identify and describe flint tools and debitage, the reduction in detail is definitely challenging. If you can identify a diagnostic feature on a flint tool that’s in poor condition, then it’s that much easier to describe a better-surviving example when you come across it. 

That’s not where their educational value ends. Many flints just don’t fit into the categories that experts have developed, and we’ve encountered countless tools that were atypical. For example, while we’re taught that there are, for argument’s sake, five consecutive steps in toolmaking, some toolmakers started at step 1, skipped ahead to steps 5, 3, and 4, and finished with step 2. It’s easy to imagine a parent teaching this skill to their child – followed by several creative liberties on the child’s part – or an enterprising individual testing new experimental methods. A collection that inspires that sort of conjecture, imaginative yet grounded in the archaeological record, is worth preserving. 

It may be the most extensively worked and visually striking flints that catch one’s eye, but “pretty” is just the tip of the iceberg. Museum collections that are unextraordinary at first glance might still have a lot to teach us, so it’s important that we keep an open mind and listen. There are lots of flint tools and debitage on display in the Prehistoric Ireland exhibition, in the National Musem of Ireland – Archaeology - take a closer look next time you visit.