A globular nodule of flint, one pound in weight, and chipped all over, found with numerous flint flakes in the long-chambered barrow at West Kennet,[1] appeared to Dr. Thurnam to have been used in their production. Several others found together in the parish of Benlochy,[2] near Blairgowrie, were regarded as sling-stones. A lump of red flint found in a barrow near Pickering,[3] in company with a flint spear-head and two arrow-heads at the right hand of a skeleton, was considered by Mr. Bateman to have been used as a hammer for chipping other flints. A more highly-decorated class of stone balls will be described at a subsequent page. Stone balls, such as were in common use for cannon in the Middle Ages, and those thrown by catapults and other military engines, do not come within my province.
Judging from the battered surface of the spherical stones now under consideration, there can be no doubt of their having been in use as hammers or pounders; but they were probably not in all cases used merely for fashioning other implements of stone, but also for triturating grain, roots, and other substances for food, in the same manner as round pebbles are still used by the native Australians.[4] One such root, abundant in this country, is a principal article of food consumed by the Ahts[5] of North America, among whom "the roots of the common fern or bracken are much used as a regular meal. They are simply washed and boiled, or beaten with a stone till they become soft, and are then roasted." In New Zealand also fern roots are pounded for food, with pestles of basalt. The corn-crushers and mealing-stones found in the Swiss Lake-dwellings have evidently been intended for the purposes which their names denote; and at the present day among many savage tribes, the only form of mill that is known is that of a flat or slightly concave bed-stone, with a stone rolling-pin or muller. Among the Kaffirs[6] and in West Africa the mill is of this character, the bed-stone being large and heavy, slightly hollowed on its upper surface; the muller, a large oval pebble which is used with a peculiar rocking and grinding motion. The corn (maize or millet) is often boiled before grinding. In Abyssinia[7] the bed-stone of gneiss or granite is about 2 feet in length and 14 inches in width. The face of this is roughened by beating it with a sharp-pointed piece of harder stone, such as quartz or hornblende, and the grain is reduced to flour by repeated grinding or rubbing
- ↑ Arch. vol. xxxviii. p. 416.
- ↑ Arch. Assoc. Journ., vol. xxiii. p. 391.
- ↑ "Ten Years' Diggings," p. 223.
- ↑ Trans. Ethn. Soc., N. S., vol. iii. p. 278.
- ↑ Sproat's "Scenes and Studies of Savage Life," p. 55.
- ↑ Wood, "Nat. Hist. of Man," vol. i. p. 152. Ratzel, "Völkerk.," vol. i., 1887, p. 216.
- ↑ "Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia," Baker, p. 78. See also "The Albert Nyanza," vol. i. p. 65. Klemm's "Cult.-Wiss.," p. 88.
