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Hamal-Nandrin and Fraipont then turned their expertise to determining the presence of signs of intentional work on the sub-Crag flints: “A certain number of the pieces collected from below the Red Crag, and now found in the collections of Mr. Reid Moir and the Ipswich Museum, present, in our opinion, the characteristics that distinguish worked flints: a striking platform, clear bulb of percussion, and edges with series of small flakes removed, indicating intentional retouching and utilization as a tool. If you were to find these in strata of the Mousterian period, you would not hesitate to say that they are tools showing intentional work and utilization. . . . In our present state of knowledge, we cannot see that anything other than intelligent action could be capable of producing such effects. . . . At Thorington Hall, the rarity of stones and their dispersal does not permit us to suppose that the flints have been naturally retouched by impact or pressure. One can observe that in the level where the specimens are found one does not find any worn and fractured flints other than the ones appearing to be the result of intentional work. The worked flints are not only rare, but extremely rare, according to prehistorians who have studied the strata” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 58).

After studying several of the collections of flints previously mentioned, Hamal-Nandrin and Fraipont declared themselves in favor of Moir’s view that the sub-Crag flints were implements of human manufacture. They further stated: “The chipped edges of the flints collected by Mr. Warren from the Eocene Bullhead beds, along with those produced artificially by him, are very different from the edges of those belonging to the detritus beds below the Crag at Ipswich” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 58).

Capitan’s report also supported Moir’s position, both on the sub-Crag finds and those from the Cromer Forest Bed and related formations on the Norfolk coast. Capitan noted that the Pleistocene Boulder Clay had yielded to Moir and others some rare specimens of Mousterian type. But the middle glacial gravels below the Boulder Clay, according to Capitan, contained an enormous number of flints modified by glacial action. The flakes and their pseudoretouching from purely natural causes became an object of special study and consideration, for the precise purpose of comparison with the flints recovered from below the Red Crag. Certain pieces from the glacial gravels did, however, appear to be clearly worked, resembling the Chellean and preChellean types of tools. They were chipped in simple fashion and had a bright characteristic patina (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 59).

Capitan described the Red Crag as a sandy clay, colored red by oxides of iron, containing isolated siliceous stones, phosphate concretions of round small size, fragments of shells, rare shark teeth and even more rare whale bones, and also relatively small pieces of fractured flint. These elements, he noted, were concentrated in a layer at the base of the Crag. Capitan stated: “This is the detritus bed. It is here exclusively (except at Foxhall where there is a second bed almost the same as this) that one finds, only after great trouble, isolated in the midst of the sands, and never in contact with other flints, some flakes and pieces of broken flint, and even more rarely the typical Red Crag specimens” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 60).

Members of the commission carried out four excavations into the detritus bed over the course of four days and found five or six typical specimens. Capitan stated: “I will not neglect to say that the flints were absolutely in place in compact terrain; two reposed at Thorington Hall on the underlying clay. . . . at Thorington Hall you have a detritus bed covered by marine sands. So everything there is from either before or contemporaneous with the sea that deposited the Crag” (Lohest et al. 1923, p. 60).

Studying the specimens of Moir and those at the Ipswich Museum, Capitan categorized them as doubtful, probable, and definite. About half the total specimens were in the