Both slabs and prismatic pieces of sandstone have been found in the Swiss Lake-dwellings,[1] several of the former with concavities on one or both faces, resulting from stone hatchets having been ground upon them.[2]
In France the discovery of numerous 'polissoirs' has been noticed, some of them of very large dimensions. They are abundant in the Departments of la Charente[3] and la Dordogne,[4] and some fine examples are in the Museum of Troyes (Aube). One, nearly 3 feet long, with hollows of different characters, apparently for grinding different parts of tools and weapons, is figured by M. Peigné Delacourt;[5] an oval concavity upon it is 2 feet 3 inches long by 1 foot wide, and seems well adapted for grinding the faces of large celts. Another fine example was in the possession of Dr. Léveillé,[6] at Grand Pressigny, and a large specimen, also from Poitou, is in the Musée de St. Germain. Several have been found in Luxembourg[7] and Belgium.
Flat grinding-stones of smaller dimensions have been found in the turbaries of the Somme and in the Camp de Catenoy.[8] A narrow sharpening stone 5 inches long is recorded to have been found with stone hatchets and other implements in the Cueva de los Murciélagos, in Spain.[9] Polissoirs have also been observed in India.[10]
The Carreg y Saelhau,[11] or Stone of the Arrows, near Aber, Carnarvonshire, has numerous scorings upon it, a quarter or half an inch in depth; and, though doubtless used for sharpening tools and weapons of some kind, it seems to belong to the metallic age. Canon Greenwell informs me that he observed a rock close to a camp on Lazenby Fell, Cumberland, with about seventy grooves upon it from 4 to 7 inches long and about 1 inch wide and deep, pointed at either end, as if from sharp-ended tools or weapons having been ground in them. The grooves are in various directions, though sometimes in groups of four or five together, which are parallel with each other. In the course of his investigations in the barrows on the Yorkshire Wolds[12] he has found a few of the flat slabs for grinding or polishing, though of small size. One of them, formed of a flat piece of red sandstone about 412 inches by 312 inches, with both faces bearing marks of having been in use for grinding, lay close to a deposit of burnt bones. Another somewhat similar fragment of sandstone (234 inches by 212 inches), which also bore traces of attrition, was found in a barrow at Helperthorpe.
In another barrow at Cowlam,[13] Yorkshire, E. R., was a rough piece- ↑ Keller's "Lake-dwell.," p. 24.
- ↑ Keller, "Pfahlbauten," lter Bericht, Taf. iii. 19; 3ter. Ber. Taf. ii. 2.
- ↑ "Les Polissoirs préh. de la Charente," G. Chauvet, Angoulême, 1883.
- ↑ "Les Polissoirs néol. du Dép. de la Dordogne," Testut. Mat., 3rd S., vol. iii. (1886) p. 65.
- ↑ "Notice sur deux Instruments," &c., p. 4. Mortillet, Matériaux, vol. ii. p. 420.
- ↑ See "Ant. Celt et Antéd, de Poitou," pl. xxx.
- ↑ Ann. Soc. Arch. de Bruxelles, vol. x., 1896, p. 109.
- ↑ B. de Perthes, "Ant. Celt et Antéd.," vol. ii. p. 165. Mortillet, "Prom. au Mus. St. Germain," p. 148.
- ↑ De Gongora y Martinez, "Ant. Preh. de Andalusia," p. 34, fig. 19.
- ↑ Journ. Anth. Inst., vol. xvi. p. 73.
- ↑ See Arch. Journ., vol. xxi. p. 170.
- ↑ "Brit. Barrows," p. 168.
- ↑ "Brit. Barrows," p. 220.
