Auction house provenance, previously private collection. The previous owner had catalogued these peices as being from Grimes Graves. Some stones are marked individually. These Flint tools were collected from the Grimes Graves Neolithic Flint Mine Site, one of the largest flint mines in the world. It was worked between c. 2600 and c. 2300 BC, although production may have continued through the Bronze and Iron Ages and later, owing to the low cost of flint compared with metals. The scheduled monument extends over an area of some 91 acres and consists of at least 433 shafts dug into the natural chalk to reach seams of flint. The largest shafts are more than 14 m (46 ft) deep and 12 m (39 ft) in diameter The miners used picks fashioned from the antler of red deer. Once they had reached the floorstone flint, the miners dug lateral galleries outwards from the bottom, following the flint seam. The medium-depth shafts yielded as much as 60 tons of flint nodules, which were brought to the surface and roughly worked into shape on site. These pieces were struck on site, possibly as detritus in the creation of axe blanks. They include blades and scrapers, and have a distinctive white patina of flint from the Grimes Graves area develops over thousands of years. Shipped royal mail tracked