The whetstone blanks from the Forum gutter at Roman Wroxeter: the case for provinance.

The hand-specimen appearance, petrography, detrital mineralogy and palynology of this exceptional assemblage of whetstones strongly point to their origin in the early Cretaceous Weald Clay Formation of the western/northwestern Weald of southeast England, and not in the Middle Jurassic or Kentish rag source as previously suggested. Whetstones of a similar character are widely distributed at a variety of mid and late Roman sites in central-southern and southeastern England, plausibly supporting Atkinson’s proposal that a substantial geomaterials industry making hones existed at this time in Roman Britain.