Alternatively , it may have been expedient to send women into the mines as they could squeeze into the narrow galleries .
Some archaeologists have suggested that flint extraction was a rite of passage for the more slightly - built juvenile members of Neolithic societies .
Alternatively , it may have been expedient to send women into the mines as they could squeeze into the narrow galleries and some archaeologists have suggested that flint extraction was a rite of passage for the more slightly - built juvenile members of Neolithic societies .