A Newly Discovered Source of ‘Banded Flint’ in the Polish Lowlands

Rescue excavations at an artefact manufacturing site at Pęgów, Poddębice district, dated to the modern period, have produced several dozens of lumps of flint. The flint exhibits greyish and brownish bands and is macroscopically similar to the well-known banded flint occurring in the area of Krzemionki Opatowskie, Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski district. Artefacts made from this tentatively named ‘Pęgów flint’ have been identified in archaeological assemblages of different chronological age in the Koło Basin. To verify whether macroscopically similar nodules and artefacts come from the same outcrop and if the artefacts made of banded flint are made of the Krzemionki Opatowskie flint, instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) was conducted on samples of Pęgów flint and banded raw material from Krzemionki Opatowskie. Although most of the obtained results fall below INAA detection limits the compostion of chromium content in each sample may reflect common origin of all the analysed pieces from Pęgów. INAA data suggest that the artifacts made of banded flint were mot made from Krzemionki Opatowskie material