River Tweed Lithics

This site contains the database for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the lithic material collected from sites within the River Tweed catchment. The research has been conducted under the auspices of the ‘Uncovering the Tweed’ project that is being led by AOC Archaeology in Edinburgh.

It begins with the material collected largely through fieldwalking assays and the excavations of sondages in the Lower Tweed, in the vicinity of the village of Paxton. As fieldwalking assays are expanded, the lithic material from these will be incorporated into the database; furthermore, older collections will also be studied. This represents a major effort to describe and analyse the lithic material from different periods along the corridor of a major British watercourse.

The nature of fieldwalking assays renders it difficult to discriminate contemporaneous material, so there is little occasion to consider centres of activity and drawn inferences concerning these unless the material is found in association with temporally discrete deposits. This might become possible as excavations proceed, and there is scope within the database to record spatial relationships which might elucidate such patterns.

As the analyses proceed, the summations will be presented on this website, but ultimately, specialist reports will be made available by AOC Archaeology to the public. Moreover, it is our intention to also present the evidence in publications.