English: A patinated blade point projectile of Early Upper Palaeolithic date. It is struck from a grey flint that is patinated dark yellow/orange to brown, particularly at the proximal(?) end. The blade is triangular in cross section, with parallel blade scars on the dorsal face and a hinge fracture at the distal(?) end. Both edges have limited flake removal that is perhaps the result of use wear or damage rather than deliberate retouch. At the proximal(?) end the dorsal face has invasive and low angled parallel flake removal, while the ventral face has extensive covering and scaled retouch. It measures 197mm in length, 40.82mm in width, 14.85mm in thickness, and 111.92g in weight.

This is a complete blade point projectile of Early Upper Palaeolithic date, discovered approximately 25-30 years ago during gravel extraction at what is now the Lackford Lakes nature reserve complex. It finds parallels in projectile points from Palaeolithic assemblages belonging to the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician (LRJ) techno-complex (pers. comm. N. Ashton, British Museum), such as those from Beedings, West Sussex (e.g. Pope, M. 'Early Upper Palaeolithic archaeology at Beedings, West Sussex: new contexts for Pleistocene archaeology' in Archaeology International 11, 2007: 33-36; Pope et al. 'A Middle Palaeolithic to Early Upper Palaeolithic succession from an open air site at Beedings, West Sussex' in Quaternary International 316, 2013: 14-26). This suggests a potential date range for the current object in the early stages of the Upper Palaeolithic, perhaps c.40,000-36,000 BC.