Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/170

But though we cannot fix the range in time of these implements, it will be well to notice some of the circumstances under which they have been found, if only as illustrative of the habits and customs of the ancient people who used them. Of course the most instructive cases are those in which they have occurred with interments, and some of these I have already incidentally mentioned; as, for instance, the discovery in a barrow on Upton Lovel Down of a roughly chipped celt, with others polished at the edge, and other objects; and that of two very roughly chipped flint celts found by Dr. Mantell, in a barrow at Alfriston, Sussex.

A celt of greenstone, ground at the edge only, was found in a barrow with a burnt body on Seamer Moor, Yorkshire, by the Rev. F. Porter; and in another^[1] barrow on the same moor, Canon Greenwell found a celt of clay-slate, like Fig. 50, burnt red, in association with a deposit of burnt bones. In a third tumulus on the same moor, opened by the late Lord Londesborough, there were numerous interments, but one of these consisted of a small portion of human bones,^[2] four flint celts, five beautifully formed arrow-heads of flint, two rude spear-heads of flint, two well-formed knives and spear-heads of flint, two very large tusks of the wild boar, and a piece of deer-horn, perforated at the end and drilled through, which was thought to be the handle for one of the celts.

In these three instances the polished celts accompany interments by cremation, and probably belong to a late period of the Stone Age in Britain. They have, however, been frequently found with the remains of unburnt bodies. In one of the banks of an ancient settlement near Knook Castle, Upton Lovel, Sir E. Colt Hoare^[3] discovered a skeleton with its head towards the north and at its feet a fine black celt. In a barrow about seven miles east of Pickering,^[4] besides other interments is said to have been one of a skeleton with the head towards the south, and a "beautiful stone adze or celt, 31/2 inches long, wrought in green basalt, and a very elaborately chipped spear of flint, near four inches long, near its right hand."

In another barrow in the same district^[5] the skeleton was accompanied by "a very small celt or chisel of grey flint, smoothly rubbed, and a plain spear-head of the same material."

In another barrow on Elton Moor, Derbyshire,^[6] there lay behind the skeleton a neatly ornamented "drinking cup," containing three pebbles of quartz, a flat piece of polished iron ore, a small celt of flint, with a rounded instead of a cutting edge, a beautifully chipped cutting tool, twenty-one circular-ended instruments, and seventeen rude pieces of flint.

In Liffs Low, near Biggin,^[7] Mr. Bateman found a skeleton in the

1. See p. 105 supra.
2. A woodcut of these is given in the Arch. Assoc. Journ., vol. iv. p. 105. The objects are now in the British Museum.
3. "South Wilts," p. 85.
4. "Ten Years' Diggings," p. 221.
5. Ibid., p. 222.
6. "Vestiges of the Ant. of Derbyshire," p. 53.
7. Ibid., p. 42.