Summary

Thousands of years ago, deep underground in what is today Norfolk County, a miner grasped this pick made of deer antler to work at nodules of prized, black flint.
This person worked in a complex active from 2650 BCE that would eventually include more than 430 quarries and shafts and which the English today call 'Grime's Graves'. Male red deer shed their antlers every spring. By removing most of the tines, the miner enjoyed a ready tool - rough on the hands at times, so that some workers applied wet clay the surface to smooth the work - but hefty and proven. It was an object to abandon on rubble when it broke or no longer served, along with the 100 or 150 picks found in each excavated mine.
Superseded by metal technologies, these mines and quarries lay sleeping under rolling green mounds until their rediscovery in 1852. Grime's Graves became the subject of focused excavation from 1914, when Pits I and 2 were explored. This deer-antler pick was found in Gallery IV of Pit I in March 1914.
A brief couple of decades passed and then this object was donated to the Melbourne Museum in 1933 by Major HW Hall. An Australian with English ties, he also boosted marine science by lending his yacht Manihine to British Museum scientists for collecting purposes and the Corella halli sea squirt is named in his honour.

Bibliography
'Discoveries at Grime's Graves', English Heritage website, https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/grimes-graves-prehistoric-flint-mine/history/collection/, accessed 1 October 2025.
'Grime's Graves - Prehistoric Flint Mine', English Heritage website, https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/grimes-graves-prehistoric-flint-mine/, accessed 30 September 2025.
Patricia Kott, 'Corella Halli n.sp., A New Ascidian From the English Channel', Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, Vol. 30 (1), 1951, pp. 33-36.
'Research on Grime's Graves', English Heritage website, https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/grimes-graves-prehistoric-flint-mine/history/research/#a2-grime-r, accessed 30 September 2025.
The Daily News (Perth), 13 February 1933, p. 1.

Acknowledgements
With thanks to Professor Mark Moore of the Museum of Stone Tools, University of New England

Physical Description

A flint-mining pick crafted from red-deer antler.

More Information