Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/106

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CHIPPED OR ROUGH-HEWN CELTS.
[CHAP. IV.

found, as well as a small bronze awl; but it is doubtful to which of the bodies this belonged.

It will subsequently be seen that perforated axes similar to that in this barrow are frequently associated with bronze daggers, so that we seem to have, in this instance, evidence of the contemporaneous use of unground, polished, and perforated stone axes at a period when bronze was at all events not unknown in this country.

If the chipped celt is to be regarded as unfinished, it may be that the survivors, in burying it, together with the grinding and polishing stones, in company with the original occupant of the barrow, entertained a belief that in some future state of existence he might be at leisure to complete the process of polishing.

Very roughly-chipped pieces of flint, apparently blocked-out celts, are occasionally found in barrows. Two such, 8 inches by 31/2, and 7 by 31/2, from a barrow near Alfriston, Sussex, examined by Dr. Mantell, are in the British Museum. They may have been deposited under a similar belief, or as votive offerings. Possibly this custom of placing roughly-chipped implements, like, for instance, Fig. 16, in graves, may be a "survival" from the times when warriors or hunters were buried with the arms or weapons they had worn when living, and the burials which they accompany may belong to a late part of the stone period. It is worthy of notice that in the cemetery of Hallstatt, which belongs to a date when iron was just coming into use, many of the ornaments appear to have been manufactured expressly for funereal purposes, being like the gold wreaths in Etruscan tombs, almost too light and fragile to be worn by the living. In Denmark, however, the weapons of flint which accompanied interments seem usually to have been highly finished and perfect.

Celts, merely chipped into form and unground, occur also in other kinds of stone. They are, however, much rarer than thoso of flint. One of iron-stone, from Sussex, 8 inches long and 31/4 wide at the broad end, is in the Blackmore Museum. A very fine specimen from Anglesey, formed of felstone, is preserved in the Museum of Economic Geology, in Jermyn Street. I have a fragment of one in greenstone, found by Mr. R. D. Darbishire, F.G.S., at Dwygyfylchi, Carnarvonshire, and another of felstone, extremely rude, found by him on Pen-maen-mawr. Some rough celts of greenstone, found in barrows near St. Just, Cornwall, are in the Truro Museum.

In Ireland, where flint celts are comparatively rare, those in