Docks is mentioned by Mr. H. Ecroyd Smith.[1] In the British Museum are two such axes, and some other stone implements, found near Alexandria, but which probably are Carib, as would also seem to be those in the Museum of Douai,[2] on which are sculptured representations of the human face.
Stone axe-heads with a groove round their middle, for receiving a handle, have been found in Denmark,[3] but are of rare occurrence. The form has been found in the salt-mines of Koulpe,[4] Caucasus, and in Russian Armenia. The large stone mauls found so commonly in the neighbourhood of ancient copper-mines, in this and many other countries in both hemispheres, were hafted much in the same manner as the Australian axe.
In other cases axe-heads are mounted by being fixed in a cleft stick for a handle, the stick being then lashed round so as to secure the stone and retain it in its place. This method was employed by some of the North American Indians,[5] and the aborigines in the colony of Victoria.[6] In the Blackmore Museum is a stone axe thus mounted, from British Guiana. There is a small hole through the butt which is carved into a series of small spikes. Others from Guiana[7] have notches at the sides to receive a cord which bound the haft in a groove running along the butt-end. The same form has been found in Surinam.[8] An Egyptian[9] stone hammer is mounted in much the same way. The notches practically produce lugs at the butt-end of the blade. I have an iron hatchet, edged with steel, brought home by the late Mr. David Forbes, F.R.S., from among the Aymara Indians of Bolivia, which is mounted in a stick cleft at the end. The blade is T-shaped at the butt, and is tied in such a manner, by means of a strip of leather, that the arms of the T rest on two of the coils, so as to prevent its falling out, while other two coils pass over the butt and prevent its being driven back, and the whole binds the two sides of the cleft stick together so as tightly to grasp the blade and prevent lateral or endways motion. The ancient Egyptian bronze hatchets were merely placed in a groove and bound to the handle by the lugs, and sometimes by the cord being passed through holes in the blade. The same shape is
- ↑ "Arch. of Mersey District," 1867, p. 15.
- ↑ Arch., vol. xxxii. p. 400; Proc. Soc. Ant., 1st s. vol. i. p. 131.
- ↑ Worsaae's "Nordiske Oldsager," fig. 14.
- ↑ Chantre, "Le Caucase," 1855, vol. i. p. 50, pl. ii.
- ↑ Schoolcraft, "Ind. Tribes," vol. ii. pl. 73; Klemm, " Cult.-Gesch.," vol. ii. p. 62.
- ↑ Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. v. p. 287.
- ↑ Journ. Anth. Inst., vol. xi. p. 448.
- ↑ Int. Arch. f. Eth., vol. v., Supp. pl. i.
- ↑ "Illahun" (1891), p. 55.
