A New Way to Explore the Collection
I’ve added something new to the Eoliths site that I’m genuinely pleased with, a proper visual database for the artefacts.
You can find it here: https://eoliths.org/gallery.html
It’s a gallery in the simple sense, but it works much harder than that. Think of it as a living catalogue of my Southdowns assemblage, with room for finds from other locations and other people’s finds as well. It’s searchable, filterable, and easy to use. You can look up individual objects, compare examples, or narrow things down by subject and type. For example : Flint tools, Portable Rock Art, Ovates, Elephants, Bears, the lot......
The above find is a lucky 'golden-gravel' find, and goes straight to the core of what I have been banging on about since 2011. An obvious artistic impression of an elephant front half, with an ape like face frontal. This is a world wide combination, and is likely millions of years in age.
If you want to see only the elephant-like figurations, you can. Or maybe you’re interested just in the classic tool forms, choppers, scrapers, ovates, from the Southdowns site. The tag filters make that possible with a click. It’s designed for anyone who wants to dig deeper, from researchers to collectors who simply want to look closely. Click two tags, scraper and elephant for example, and only flint tool scrapers with suspected elephant iconography will be shown.
Many artefacts carry an ID number. If a stone is marked as “0001,” for instance, you can type that into the search box and the database will show every photograph of that piece: five or six views, different angles, different light. The aim is to let you study each object as if you were turning it in your hands.
The system also supports video and GIF formats. The clips are full quality, sharper and more detailed than what you’d normally see on the big video platforms. They show the fine texture, the flake edges, the way the patina catches the light. That sort of detail can be the difference between speculation and real understanding.
For me this is a research tool first and foremost, but it’s also a way to share the material more freely. The plan is to keep adding to it, steadily, until it represents not just my Southdowns work but a much wider record of portable rock art and ancient flint technology from wherever it may appear.
The database will grow with the project, piece by piece. My hope is that it becomes a reliable, searchable record, not just a gallery to browse, but something that helps map how these early forms, and the ideas behind them, are connected.
Take a look and see what you think: https://eoliths.org/gallery.html