I have, lastly, to notice the more or less polished condition of one of the faces of these stones, which may be due to their being used for grinding the material already pounded by their edges to a finer powder on the slab, which served instead of a mortar. One of the flat pebbles found in the Cave of La Madelaine, Dordogne, appears to have served as a muller for grinding the hæmatite used as paint.
Sometimes these hammer-stones are mere pebbles without any previous preparation, and indeed it is but natural that such should have been the case. Canon Greenwell has found pebbles of quartz and greenstone, worn and battered at the ends, accompanying interments on the Yorkshire Wolds, and such are also occasionally present on the surface, though they are, of course, liable to escape observation. A quartzite pebble that has served as a hammer-stone, and is much worn and fractured by use, was found at Ty Mawr, and is figured in the Archæological Journal,[1] as are also several from hut-circles in Holyhead and Anglesea.[2] A large sarsen-stone pebble, weighing 434 lbs., and which had obviously been used as a hammer, was found in the Long Barrow, at West Kennet,[3] Wiltshire. A large conical sort of muller of sarsen-stone,[4] weighing 1212 lbs., was discovered with twenty-two skeletons, various animal remains, and pottery, in a large cist, in a barrow near Avebury. Mr. G. Clinch has a hammer from West Wickham, made from a nearly cylindrical quartz pebble, much worn at both ends, one of which is more rounded than the other.
On the Downs of Sussex, in the pits of Cissbury, in Yorkshire, Suffolk, Dorsetshire, and other counties, hammer-stones of flint, apparently used for chipping other flints, have been found, but from their rudeness it seems hardly worth while to engrave any specimens. At Grime's Graves the hammer-stones consisted principally of quartzite pebbles, though some were of flint. In many instances the hammers made of flint seem to be cores from which flakes have been struck, but which, proving to be of refractory stone, have been found more serviceable as hammers. Some of the cores found at Spiennes, near Mons, have been thus used, as well as fragments of celts. Some of the hammer-stones from the French caves consist also of such cores. Stone mullers are in common use in most countries at the present day, for grinding paint and similar purposes. They occur at the Cape of Good Hope,[5] but were there, no doubt, originally intended for other uses.
12Figs. 167 and 168.—Yorkshire Wolds. 12
