Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/290

awl, and other objects. Another occurred in a barrow at Everley,^[1] with a bronze chisel, an unused whetstone of freestone, and a hone of bluish colour; and another with a skeleton, a stone hammer, a bronze celt, a bone tube, and various other articles in a barrow at Wilsford.^[2] Two or three of these sharpening stones, found in a barrow at Roundway, near Devizes, are in the Museum of the Wilts Archaeological Society. One of these has been figured.^[3] A pebble with shallow grooves on each face found at Mount Caburn, Lewes,^[4] may possibly belong to this class of implements, though it may have been a hammer. A rubbing-stone of this kind was found at Topcliffe,^[5] Yorkshire, but not in a barrow.

Sir R. C. Hoare considered whetstones of this kind to have been used for sharpening and bringing to a point, pins and other implements of bone, and they seem well adapted for such a purpose, and are still so used by the Eskimos. They may also have served for smoothing the shafts of arrows. Serpentine pebbles with a groove in them are used for straightening arrow-shafts by the Indians of California,^[6] and shaft rubbers of sandstone have been found in Pennsylvania.^[7]

The Rev. W. C. Lukis found a similar stone (41/4 inches) in a barrow in Brittany. It is now in the British Museum. Another from a dolmen in Lozère^[8] has been thought to be for sharpening the points of bone instruments. Stones of the same form have been found in Germany; two from the cemetery near Monsheim^[9] are preserved in the Museum at Mainz. They are rather more elongated than the English examples. A specimen very like Fig. 185 has been found in Denmark.^[10] They seem also to occur in Hungary.^[11] I have a grooved stone of this kind from the Lago di Varese, Como, where the manufacture of flint arrow-heads was carried on extensively. An object found with polished stone instruments in the cave Casa da Moura, Portugal,^[12] not improbably belongs to this class of grooved sharpening stones.

Fig. 186.—Hove. 1/2

From their association with bronze objects, they appear to belong to the Bronze rather than to the Stone Period; and the same holds good with the more ordinary form of whetstone, of which an example is given in Fig. 186. The original was found in the tumulus at Hove,^[13] near Brighton, which contained the stone axe-head already mentioned, a beautiful amber cup, and a bronze dagger. Another, of compact red sandstone, 33/8 inches long, with the perforated end rounded, was found in a barrow on Bow Hill,^[14] Sussex, and is now in the British Museum. Another, 3 inches long, bluish grey in

1. Hoare, "South Wilts," p. 182. "Cat. Dev. Mus.," No. 97.
2. "S. W." p. 209.
3. Arch., vol. xliii. p. 423. A. C. Smith, "Ants. of N. Wilts," p. 68. "Cat. Devizes Mus.," No. 172a.
4. Arch., vol. xlvi. p. 435, pl. xxiv. 20.
5. Reliquary, N. S., vol. v., 1891, p. 47.
6. Arch. f. Anth., vol. ix. p. 249.
7. 13th Rep. Bureau of Ethn., 1896, p. 126.
8. "Musée préh.," No. 593.
9. Lindenschmit, "A. u. h. V.," vol. ii. Heft viii. Taf. i. 2. Zeitsch. des Vereins für Rhein. Geschichte, &c., in Mainz, vol. iii. Archiv für Anthrop., vol. iii. Taf. ii. Rev. Arch., vol. xix. pl. x. 2.
10. Sophus Müller, "Stenalderen," fig. 196.
11. Zeitsch. f. Eth., 1891, p. 89.
12. Trans. Ethnol. Soc., N. S., vol. vii. p. 49.
13. Sussex Arch. Coll., vol. ix., p. 120, whence the cut is borrowed. Arch. Journ., vol. xiii. p. 184; xv. 90.
14. Arch. Journ., vol. x. p. 356. "Chichester Vol.," p. 52.