This is the fifth in a series of fasicules publishing tne British Museum's programme of research excavations at Grimes Graves, Norfolk. It provides an account of the exploration of the deep mine sites which formed one component of a reassesment of how the mine field itself developed. A reapraisal of some previously examined pits is incorporated, along with a catalogue of other shafts known to have been excavated or partisally explored, including hitherto unpublished data. A final section assesses the original mining methods used and the quantity of flints likely to have been excavated.

This is last in a series of fascicules publishing the British Museum's programme of research excavations at Grimes Graves, Norfolk. Research into flint mines such as Grimes Graves, one of the largest Neolithic flint mine complexes in Europe, offers a fascinating glimpse into the practical knowledge and skills of humans at that time. This fascicule considers the miners' methods as well as their motivation and the uses to which the finished products were put. Ian Longworth was formerly Keeper of Prehistoric and Romano-British Antiquities at the British Museum, Gillian Varndell is a curator of Prehistory and Europe at the British Museum and Jacek Lech has a professorship at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw.

This volume offers a review of major flint mines dating from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. The 18 articles were contributed by archaeologists from Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden, using the same framework to propose a uniform view of the mining phenomenon.