Stone celt that must not be passed over, inasmuch as at first sight they tend to raise a presumption of celts having remained in use even during the period of the Roman occupation of this country. I will shortly recapitulate the principal facts to which I allude.
In excavating a Roman building at Ickleton,[1] Cambs., the late Lord Braybrooke found a greenstone celt; and another is said to have been found with Roman remains at Alchester, Oxfordshire.[2] A flint celt is also described as having been found with Roman antiquities at Eastbourne.[3]
Among the relics discovered by Samuel Lysons, F.R.S., in the Roman villa at Great Witcombe,[4] Gloucestershire, is described "a British hatchet of flint." Another flint celt was found close by a Roman villa at Titsey.[5] Flint celts and scrapers were found in the Romano-British village in Woodcuts Common,[6] Dorset, by General Pitt Rivers.
A stone celt, like Fig. 70, has been engraved by Artis[7] as a polishing stone used in the manufactory of Roman earthen vessels, but no evidence is given as to the cause of its being thus regarded.
At Leicester, a fragment of a flint celt was found at a depth of twelve feet from the surface on an old "ground line," and accompanied by bone objects which Sir Wollaston Franks assigned to a late Roman or even possibly to an early Saxon period.[8]
In the Saxon burial-place at Ash, in Kent, were found a polished flint celt, "a circular flint stone," and a Roman fibula.[9]
In 1868, a fibrolite hatchet was found within a building at Mont Beuvray, the ancient Bibracte,[10] with three Gaulish coins of the time of Augustus.
Others of flint were found in a Merovingian cemetery at Labruyère, in the Côte d'Or.[11]
The occurrence at Gonsenheim, near Mainz, of a series of thin polished celts with remains presumably Roman, has already been mentioned. In two, if not more, instances in Denmark,[12] fragments of iron have been found in tumuli, and apparently in association with polished hatchets and other instruments of flint and stone. It seems doubtful, however, whether in these cases the iron was not subsequently introduced.
The association of these stone implements with Roman, and even Post-Roman, remains in so many different places, would at first sight appear to argue their contemporaneity; but in the case of the celts being found on the sites of Roman villas, two things are to be remarked—First, that sites once occupied may, and constantly do, continue in occupation for an indefinite length of time, so that the imperishable relics of one age, such as those in
- ↑ Arch. Journ., vol. vi. p. 17; xvii. 170.
- ↑ Arch. Assoc. Journ., vol. xii. p. 177.
- ↑ Sussex Arch. Coll., vol. ii. p. 258.
- ↑ Arch., vol. xix. p. 183.
- ↑ Surrey Arch. Coll., 1868, pl. iii. 6.
- ↑ "Exc. on Cranborne Chase," vol. i. pl. lvii.
- ↑ "Durobrivæ," pl. xxix. 4.
- ↑ Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd S., vol. i. p. 249.
- ↑ Douglas, "Nænia," p. 92.
- ↑ Rev. Arch., vol. xx. p. 322.
- ↑ Rev. Arch., vol. iv. p. 484.
- ↑ Ann. for Nordisk Oldkynd., 1838-9, p. 176.
