Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/233

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AXE-HAMMERS HOLLOWED ON THE SIDES.
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Fig. 139.—Skelton Moors. 1/2

Another axe-hammer of greenstone, with projections on the faces opposite the centre of the hole, and with a hollow fluting near each margin, that is carried round on the sides below the holes, is shown in Fig. 139. The original was found by the Rev. J. C. Atkinson, who kindly lent it me for engraving. It lay in an urn about 17 inches high, containing burnt bones and some fragments of burnt flint, in a large barrow on the Skelton Moors, Yorkshire. In the same barrow were found eight other urns, all containing secondary interments. In another barrow, on Westerdale Moors, Mr. Atkinson found a second axe-hammer of nearly the same size and form, but more hammer-like at the end. This also has the channels on the faces. It is of fine-grained granite, and lay in an urn with burnt bones, a small "incense-cup," and a sort of long bone bead, having a spiral pattern upon it and a transverse orifice into the perforation, about the centre. In this case, also, the interment was not that over which the barrow was originally raised. In another barrow, on Danby North Moors, also opened by Mr. Atkinson, a rather larger axe-hammer of much the same outline, lay with the hole in a vertical position, about 15 inches above a deposit of burnt bones. It is of basalt much decayed. An axe-hammer from Inveraray,[1] Argyllshire (53/4 inches), in outline rather like Fig. 143, has small projections on each face opposite to the centre of the shaft-hole.


Fig. 140.—Selwood Barrow. 1/2

A longer and more slender form has also occasionally been found in tumuli. Sir R. Colt Hoare has given an engraving of a beautiful specimen from the Selwood Barrow,[2] near Stourton, which is here reproduced as Fig. 140. The axe is of syenite, 51/2 inches long, and lay in a cist, in company with burnt bones and a small bronze dagger, which in the description is erroneously termed a lance-head. Parallel with each side, there appears to be a small groove worked on the face of the weapon. A very pretty example of the same form accom-
  1. P.S.A.S., vol. xxiii.p.8.
  2. "South Wilts," Tumuli, pl. i. "Cat. Devizes Mus.," No. 283.