Flint and related materials are very durable, frequently being the only remains of human activity surviving over many millennia. The chemical and structural properties are useful to scientific examination, i.e., for provenance studies and thermoluminescence dating. The geological formation of flint is described. Atomic absorption spectroscopy, neutron activation analysis, and inductively coupled plasma spectrophotometry are useful in this research; discriminant analysis is then used to treat this data fro provenancing; thermoluminescence and electron spin resonance are used for dating. Exposure of sample to light may lead to bleaching of thermoluminescence which leads to an underestimation of age.