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I'm absolutely thrilled to bring you this podcast with Angela McAllister. Angela talks about stones that speak and tell their stories. Henry Moore, a fantastic ceremonial axe that she found in England but originated in the Italian Alps, and of course, the art of finding a knapped flint.
Angela McAllister:My name's Angela McAllister, and I write for children. I live in Shaftesbury, but I have been living in Martin for the last thirty years. So I'm very local here.
Estelle Phillips:You were just saying that you're a bit tired today.
Angela McAllister:Well, I was just explaining to you that I've been doing some painting and drawing, and I've been painting the soil, the ground beneath my feet, because I do a lot of archaeology, a lot of field walking and a lot of geophysics, lot of surveying with the Avon Valley Archaeological Society that I belong to. So we spend days and days moving pegs and tapes and staring at our feet. And so for me the landscape in microcosm is the landscape I see beneath my feet. So I've been photographing and drawing, yeah, that sort of rich, extraordinary landscape beneath the feet. Lots of flint and shells and feathers and stubble and weeds and yeah.
Angela McAllister:Fascinating to me.
Estelle Phillips:When did you first start looking
Angela McAllister:down? Well, it's curious because I would say, really, I've, you know, I've had a very urban life. I've lived in the city and the town, and it's only since I've moved to the countryside that I've been walking in that way way and looking down. But actually, I remember as a girl, I used to have recurring dreams about, maybe it's from walking to school, about looking down at the the gutter, that that that meeting point between the edge of the road and the edge of the pavement, where there would always be detritus, sweeping and little bits of weed and ring pulls and all sorts of things like that. And in my mind, that was a place of treasure.
Angela McAllister:And I used to always look. I was a shy girl, so I think I always walked with my eyes to the ground. But I would have these long, long dreams, which were just walking miles and miles and miles staring staring at the gutter, hoping to find something magical. And I I just remembered that recently, and it seems like such a premonition of of what I do now, is to very much to focus on the ground beneath my feet. I'm curious, isn't it?
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. It is it is curious, but can you remember when I came over to your house and because we'd been messaging each other about flint and fossils, And you showed me your collection of
Angela McAllister:stone age? Yeah. I've got a lot of yes. A lot of them. I've got a wonderful collection of prehistoric artifacts, stone artifacts, flint flint tools, things that I picked up in the fields when we're working and then when I'm walking as well.
Angela McAllister:One of the lovely things about doing the the archaeology is that we have permission to be, you know, in farmland farmland in the plow so where one wouldn't normally walk. So over the years, I've been lucky enough to to to find and collect all sorts of wonderful things and which I take to school, I share with children, I I share with students on digs. I you know, they they're stones that speak and tell their story. And, eventually, they'll go to the museum if anybody wants wants those that are special. But for now, they they, you know, they they do a job.
Angela McAllister:They've they've come into my hands, and, yeah, they have stories to tell, and so I share them.
Estelle Phillips:But I couldn't believe how many you had. They're all they're all organized in a chest of drawer, which must have how many drawers are there in the chest of drawer? About I've never captured. There must be about a 100. Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:And and each of these 100 drawers is absolutely full of what would you say? Would you say the predominant stone was flint? Oh gosh. Yes. Yeah?
Angela McAllister:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Flint around here, you know, is what people have used for their tools for thousands and thousands of years, and and so the, you know, the ground is layered with that evidence of of people's lives and their work. And if you have an eye for it and you know what you're looking at, I rarely go for a walk without bending down, like you, I know, without bending down and picking up something interesting.
Angela McAllister:It might not be a flint artifact. It might be like your fossil or or or something else interesting, but but, yes, we live in a very well established landscape here.
Estelle Phillips:But you you say this. Right? But the items that you've picked up, they're raw flint, aren't they? Mhmm. Yeah?
Estelle Phillips:Mhmm. And the distinction between them and all the other flints are tiny, really, aren't they? And yet you spot them. Well, there
Angela McAllister:are certain once you understand how how man works with flint, how flint is napped, then there are certain physical characteristics which really stand out. So there'll be you know, the evidence of napping will you'll will catch your eye. And certain also in certain weather and certain light, a frosty morning is a good time to see a natural flint. So I think, you know, like anything, once you've learned to to look although occasionally, I find something I haven't got a clue what it is, but I know that man has, you know, operated upon it. I know that it's been shaped and formed in some way.
Angela McAllister:And I was very, very lucky one day to pick up a piece of green stone. I knew from the shape of it that it had been shaped and polished, but it was a broken chunk of something, and it certainly wasn't flint. I went home, and I've got various books of geology, and I looked up. I tried to find this, you know, any reference to this beautiful mossy green stone, and I couldn't. I brought it to Martian Green at Down Farm, who looks at everything that I find and and has been such an amazing tutor really over the years and taught me so much, and he knew exactly what it was.
Angela McAllister:And it was it was jadatite, which is a form of jade, and it's mined in the Italian Alps, comes from the Italian Alps. And this little piece of stone, which is about, I don't know, maybe five centimetres square, if you with a beautiful lens profile. And it has come all the way from the Italian Alps, and was probably already hundreds and hundreds of years old before it was brought over to Britain. And it's a very special object. It's a sort of ceremonial axe, if you like.
Angela McAllister:It's it's a part of a of an axe, which was never made to be used, but was a very special object. And the the effort to go up into the mountains and and source this rock would have been part of maybe some sort of initiation ceremony. It would have been only a few people would have been chosen to go up into the mountains. You would have to go into the liminal zone above the cloud line to and also, they only had fire and stone to to use to access, to break the rock. They would have brought some some small amount of rock, this jaded type rock, down from the mountain.
Angela McAllister:Even though it was freely available in as boulders in the river valleys, they didn't take that. Part of sourcing the the the the stone was the journey, was the spiritual and physical journey up into the mountain, which would have been dangerous, risky only, possible to do so many days of the year. So the the there would have been a huge amount of significance in being chosen to make that journey to to source and fetch the rock, and then to bring it down from the mountain and to shape it and to create these beautiful axes, and then to polish them so that they shine like glass, that they are utterly beautiful, beautiful objects, various different shades of green. And there are some other other types of stone that they used as well, and hundreds of hours to make to polish with grit or sand and water. And then these axes would have had huge significance and value.
Angela McAllister:Somebody said to me once that you know, they would have had history, a name. You know, they were very highly prized objects and maybe exchanged in, you know, in sort of for marriage or or or in some sort of, you know, arrangements between clans and families. And slowly, they were disseminated across Europe. Slowly over hundreds of years, these axes were traded and moved, and slowly they moved across Europe. And some of them made their way to Northern France where they were remodeled.
Angela McAllister:And you can see images of them and carvings. And some of them, a very few of them, made the journey over to Britain with those very early first farmers, the first Neolithic farm farmers that came over. And I like to think that my little fragment of acts maybe would have been significant for a family or a group hoping that it would keep them safe on that journey to the unknown. You know? In a world where there are all sorts of unknown dangers and fears, and and maybe that they would have put their trust in this beautiful ancient object.
Angela McAllister:And what makes it particularly interesting is the way that it's broken, because it has lost its gloss. It has its beautiful mossy green colour, fabulous colour, but it has been broken in quite a particular way, showing that it was deliberately broken. The stone doesn't break in this way by you know, if it's just accidentally broken. So it has been decommissioned as an as an an object in the way that in the Neolithic often they would bury objects in pits, skulls, all sorts of objects, and also they would decommission things and return them to the earth. And so this has been ritually broken to and it's been burnt, which is why it doesn't have its gloss, and it has tiny black hairline fractures in it from the from the heat of the fire.
Angela McAllister:And so I love it more for that because it tells me more about the story its story. It tells me I know about its beginning and and its end, and it seemed to want to be found the day that I picked it up. So, again, I like to tell its story. I like to put it in people's hands so they can they can really feel that and that tangible power of that stone and and to share it. Now I've shared it with you.
Estelle Phillips:There's so much in what you've just said. It's quite emotional, isn't it? But there are two things that I'm really curious about. The first one was when you were talking about the journey of the person getting that particular type of stone. And that made me think of landscape connection really because there's some connection there.
Estelle Phillips:And then you said the stone wanted to be found.
Angela McAllister:Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah? Of yes. You can't help but feel that.
Angela McAllister:And and I know, you know, you feel the same when you find extraordinary fossils that are the chance of of of somebody bending down and picking up, you know, some of the things you've shown me is a bazillion to what it is. There's no other way of understanding it, really. That's there is a moment in time where an object offers itself to your hand, and it just feels right.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. I really think that, and I think that we should try and explain how remote the chances are of finding something. Can you give an example of something you found recently that justifies this concept of wanting to be found?
Angela McAllister:Oh, golly. You've put me on the spot. Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:I mean, I while you think about that, I'll just say about this this big bit of flint here, which we were looking at earlier, that's got a fossilized plant in it, and the fossilized plant's all stubby, isn't it? Yeah. Very much so. Yes. It's
Angela McAllister:and how many million years old could it be?
Estelle Phillips:Think it's about 60. Yeah. 60,000,000 years old. But so what going back to what we're talking about, like, wanting to be found. So this was in an agricultural field in Wiltshire.
Estelle Phillips:Mhmm. And I was walking along, and it was really, really wet. And because it was wet, the pattern was easier to see. Pattern. And it's what you're talking about, things standing out because you're looking for it.
Estelle Phillips:You know? So you're you're expert as a archaeologically speaking, so you notice how people have worked on the stones, and I'm not at all. But I always notice a a kind of foreign body in the
Angela McAllister:stone. Was just going to say Yeah. It's noticing what shouldn't be there. Yes. Yeah.
Angela McAllister:Sometimes even if you don't know what it is, you know it's not an a normal feature of that rock, and so you stop. And that's what catches your eye, isn't
Estelle Phillips:it, sometimes? But but these are in vast fields. It is. They're in vast fields of I mean, how many hundreds and thousands of square feet the fields are. Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. They're they're they're massive, aren't they? And there's oh, I don't know how many thousands, maybe even millions of stones there are. And then somehow the eye is caught.
Angela McAllister:And I I like to think that's always been the case. And sometimes you find a flint tool that has a very distinctive band of color, or there's a very famous hand axe, which has a beautiful fossil shell right in the center of it. And, you know, this there can seems to be no question that the person who created that axe was drawn to the aesthetic quality of the stone with the fossil in the center of it. So, you know, it's lovely. These notions, they link us in time with with what persists with that human and, you know, some of these things, I mean, with the the hand axes, you know, we're not talking about Homo sapiens.
Angela McAllister:We're talking about, you know, Neanderthal or pre Neanderthal people. So the the, you know, this delight, this sort of aesthetic delight in in in fashioning an object because of its of its beauty, of of particular feature it contains, a fossil or whatever it might be. I I love that. It's it's how we, yeah, how we feel grounded in in our ancestors, I think, what we share.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. And it's quite a it's quite a profound connection, isn't it?
Angela McAllister:It is.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. It's
Angela McAllister:very profound. And I think that's why, you know, when you're out in the field, out in in the in in in in the landscape for whatever reason, if you take the time to really understand where you are, what's beneath your feet, the geology comes into play. It's so powerful. Everything that we see above ground is there because of what's beneath our feet. So more and more understanding the geology, it it links you back into, you know, really into the deep past.
Angela McAllister:So I find that very comforting. It puts me in my place. It makes me think, do you know anything that I'm fretting and worrying about now is in the blink of an eye is of no significance really in the significance really in the scheme of things. And if you can take a moment to ground yourself in deep time, it steadies you. It doesn't stop you from having to deal with the challenges of life, but it it steadies you and roots you in something which is is it builds your sort of resilience, I think.
Angela McAllister:It it strengthens you. I I believe so anyway.
Estelle Phillips:I I I really I really, really agree with that. You know that that grounding that you're talking about, it has within it the beauty of of of that fossil in the flint that was so beautiful to people thousands of year or thousands of years ago and is still beautiful to us today. Yeah?
Angela McAllister:Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:Everything that has happened since might just as well not have happened because we still think the same thing is utterly beautiful.
Angela McAllister:Well, and also, you know, that flint axe will fall to the ground at some point. You know, everything that we're striving for now, the the stone will persist. And and that is I find that quite comforting too.
Estelle Phillips:Me too. Yeah. Can I ask you about about flint as well, Angela? Yes. Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:Because we were talking about it earlier, and I was showing you some of the flints that my mom gave me for my birthday. And she brought these from our previous home and she lugged them around and kept them on her allotment. And they're big chunky pieces as well. Yeah. Was really embarrassed when she took them out of the car because they were heavy and it seemed wrong that she was, you know anyway, but she and I are both very emotional about flint, and and you were mentioning about that as well, and I was wondering what your feelings were about flint.
Angela McAllister:Well, I love to have it around me. Now I'm off the chalk. I still surround myself with, you know, with I can't help but put a piece of flint in my pocket when when I'm walking. And, you know, you think about people like Henry Moore who who's who used the the the form of flint in his work. I didn't know that.
Angela McAllister:Oh, gosh. Yes. How? His in his studio, you'll see lots of maquettes. So he would pick up a piece of flint when he was walking, especially with a rounded, you know, rounded forms.
Angela McAllister:As we know, they've got also one of his knobbly rounded forms, and he would take them back if they suggested some sort of form to him, and he might add then plaster to to suggest maybe a human form, or he would compile them in other ways. So actually, when you look at a lot of his sculptures, you can see the way that flint often has a hole through it, but these lovely soft rounded forms. Can and and lots of wonderful sketches and drawings as well. So he was hugely responsive to to flint forms. They're so sculptural, and I think maybe that is why we like to pick them up, hold them in our hands.
Angela McAllister:They have a weight. They have a a wonderful, you know, texture. This where they've been broken, they have these beautiful smooth surfaces, and then you've got the pattern there. The the colors are extraordinary. I always think, you know, looking in a piece of broken flint where you'll have this white sort of rind where it's dried out.
Angela McAllister:And then inside, as you say, when it's wet, but the colors are sharper. And very often, the blacks and blues will have these milky milky white sort of fugitive shapes floating in them and like little universes, I think. They're they're they're they're very evocative, extraordinary things. And, yeah, I I I so tactile. I I think it's wonderful.
Angela McAllister:It's amazing how it's such a comfort. Curious, isn't it?
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. It is curious because it's really as you say, the nodules, they're very voluptuous, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:But when you work it or nap it,
Angela McAllister:it's sharp. Oh gosh. Yes. And it was it's so sharp. I think until the nineteen seventies, flint was used in eye operations.
Angela McAllister:Yeah. It's so hard and so sharp. What's wonderful about it is you can predict how it will break. That's what makes it so useful for for tool making is that you can control the way that it fractures and breaks. So, you know, if it was flying if bits were flying off in a random fashion, it would be useless.
Angela McAllister:But, you know, you can from the angle and the the the, you know, the the type of blow, a skilled mapper can can really well, as you see, you see extraordinary, beautifully faceted arrowheads and some, you know, very fine work. So, yes, it it's got extraordinary qualities.
Estelle Phillips:What's the thing that you found in flint that you're most fond of?
Angela McAllister:Oh gosh. I think it's not an individual stone. It's individual stone. It's it's the ability to connect. It's not I mean, I I will I I've got a little shelf unit on my desk, which is my own little gallery, and I change the exhibition of flints whenever I want.
Angela McAllister:And so I, you know, I've got little cubby holes. At the moment, I think I've got some fabricators in there, which are tools that are used to make tools and all sorts of of lovely things. And so when I'm sitting at my desk, I will just reach out and take one off the shelf and hold it in my hand and study it again, look in look at it again, and and then I'll change those over time as well. But yes. I mean, individual stones give me pleasure, but it is that moment of knowing, especially when you first pick something up, there's this fantastic charge that you know that the last person to hold that piece of flint may have lived half a million years ago.
Angela McAllister:But, you know, I've got Paleolithic flint, which goes back possibly that far. It's difficult to explain when you it's it's such a it is. It's like an electric shock. It it and it it makes it makes you feel makes me feel that my my that I was already sort of preordained to hold that piece of stone, that that when the person who made that tool picked picked the nodule up and worked it and made that, I was already written into the story of that stone as are the people who will interact with it in the future that I can't can't imagine. That that inherent in that piece of stone was my interaction with it.
Angela McAllister:It's it's a very profound feeling of of belonging. It's a it's a material belonging. This probably sounds ridiculous, but I I can't push it any other way, really. I think you feel the same.
Estelle Phillips:I do. I do feel the same. But it's really lovely to have you describe it because it's very difficult to describe.
Angela McAllister:It is.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. Thank you, Angela. You've been absolutely brilliant.
Angela McAllister:It's a
Estelle Phillips:pleasure to share it. You so much. Subscribe to Nature Talks With Humans for more true stories of people communicating with animals, birds and landscape. Follow me on Instagram at Estelle underscore writer forty four and TikTok at Estelle Phillips. Bye.
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