File:Chopper (section) (FindID 540852).jpg

English: Incomplete flint chopper, semi-circlular in plan and lozenge-shaped in profile and section. The dorsal and ventral faces are both retouched along the existing margin, at the chopping edge, but the edge is also damaged and fractured so that it has a stepped appearance. The edges of the flake scars are generally smooth and the surface appears to have been water-worn. A patch of cortex remains near the broken edge on the ventral face.

The flint is a mottled grey-buff colour with orange patches on the surface where the flint has been stained from proximity to iron, but the colour and texture of the flint suggest that it is not local to Cornwall. There is another example of a patinated, rolled and iron-stained chert flake from a larger Levallois flake or hand-axe (CORN-3B7A82) found in a neighbouring field, which dates from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic period.

Andrefsky (1998) illustrates several bifacial cores that are similar in plan and profile and could then have been used as tools, on page 147, Fig.7.8, letters a & b, but as potentially more than half of this tool is missing, it is difficult to draw conclusions.

Bond (2004) illustrates similar biface hand-axes on pages 77 & 79, Figs.5.62 & 5.64, Nos.3 & 6, which are dated from the Lower Palaeolithic, and a pick on page 95, Fig.5.81, No.2, which dates from the Mesolithic period.

But the size and shape, the break and the flaking technology used need not indicate a Lower Palaeolithic or Mesolithic date, but could easily fit within a later prehistoric assemblage. The flaking is not precise or detailed and the piece is snapped. The raw material appears to be a heavily patinated or corticated, rolled (red, iron stains of arrises) pebble (I think some cortex was indicated as chalk abraded) source. The 'flesh' of the flint, just showing through the patina in areas, appears to be a green-grey type indicative of flint from the southern central Downlands, but this material can also be re-deposited. The size, flaking technology (expedient), would suggest to me to be a broken knife, but of a later prehistoric date, perhaps Bronze Age, which may be associated with other flint and pottery from this period. Another comparable Later Neolithic to Early Bronze Age assemblage was found during the excavation of the Honiton Bypass by Wessex Archaeology, with some material of this date and the use of Greensand Chert (Clive Bond pers comm).