Scamridge, Yorkshire, worn away at one end to a curved ridge somewhat oblique to the faces of the pebble, one of which is slightly polished as if by constant rubbing. There is in the Greenwell Collection a granite pebble (312 inches), from the same place, battered at one end, and the other much worn away by use, which also has one face flat and slightly polished. In the camp at Little Solsbury Hill,[1] near Bath, I found two quartzite implements of rudely quadrangular prismatic form, each having one end worn away to a ridge. Another quartzite pebble, rubbed to an obtuse edge at one end, was found by General Pitt Rivers, F.R.S.,[2] within an ancient earthwork at Dorchester, Oxfordshire.
A hammer-stone of close-grained grit, having a ridge all round the periphery, was found in Anglesea.[3] Others with ridged ends have occurred in crannogs at Lochlee,[4] Ayrshire, and in Wigtownshire.[5] Some of them seem to belong to the Iron Age.
Among the specimens just described, there are three peculiarities which, though not occurring together on all, are worthy of notice—the notch on the face, the ridge at the end, and the polished face.
There can be no doubt of the notch on the face being, like the cup-shaped depressions, merely intended as an aid in holding the stone. On the hammer-stones discovered by the late Mr. J. W. Flower, F.G.S., in a post-Roman kjökken-mödding, in the island of Herm,[6] there were usually one or two rough notches or indentations on each face, exactly adapted to receive the ends of the thumb and some of the fingers; and, curiously enough, I have a pebble notched in precisely the same manner from Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, and no doubt intended for a hand-hammer or pounder.
In the same kjökken-mödding at Herm were several[7] celt-like implements of porphyry and greenstone which, instead of an edge, had the end blunt, but with a ridge obliquely across it, as on these pebbles. Somewhat similar pounding-stones have been found by the late Hon. W. O. Stanley, at Pen-y-Bonc,[8] Holyhead, in some instances provided with a depression fitting the thumb or finger, and several having the ridge at the end.
The same sort of ridge occurs on pounding-stones from Denmark, Portugal,[9] Spain,[10] Ireland, and elsewhere, and occasionally extends all round the stone when it happens to be disc-shaped, like those already mentioned from Upton Level and elsewhere. Hammer-stones worn to a ridge are also found in Egypt.[11] It would appear that the face of the hammer was ground away, either by a rocking motion on a flat stone, or by the blows given with it being administered alternately from the right and from the left, so as to keep any matter that was being pounded with it from being driven out of position.
- ↑ Trans. Ethnol. Soc., N. S., vol. iv. p. 242.
- ↑ Journ. Ethnol. Soc., vol. ii. p. 413.
- ↑ Arch. Camb., 4th S., vol. v. p. 184.
- ↑ P. S. A. S., vol. xiii. p. 204, Munro, "Lake-dw.," p. 102.
- ↑ P. S. A. S., vol. xxiii. p. 214.
- ↑ Journ. Anth. Soc., 1869, p. cxvii.
- ↑ The burnishing stones in use among pewterers are, when dismounted from their setting, curiously like these blunt-ended celt-like instruments. They have no ridge, however, at the truncated end. Some of the stone burnishers used by bookbinders are also in form like celts, but have a flattened edge.
- ↑ Arch. Journ., vol. xxvii. p. 161.
- ↑ Trans. Ethn. Soc., N. S., vol. vii. p. 48.
- ↑ De Gongora, "Ant. Preh. de Andalusia," p. 108.
- ↑ Zeitsch. f. Ethn., vol. xx. p. (365).
