Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/301

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NUMEROUS IN ANCIENT SETTLEMENTS.
279

Cornwall,[1] Devonshire,[2] Dorsetshire, Wilts, Hants,[3] Surrey,[4] Oxfordshire,[5] Sussex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Derbyshire, Lancashire,[6] and Yorkshire; but they may be said to be ubiquitous. In some parts of Devonshire, and especially near Croyde, they occur in great numbers, so great, indeed, as to have led Mr. Whitley[7] to suppose them to have been formed by natural causes rather than by human agency. Far more rational accounts of them have been given by Mr. Townshend M. Hall,[8] Mr. H. S. Ellis,[9] and Mr. O. Spence Bate.[10]

Flakes and splinters of flint frequently occur in and around ancient encampments and settlements, as well as in association with interments both by cremation and inhumation. Many of the immense number of "spear-heads" collected by Mr. Bateman in his investigations were of the simple flake form, and others were flakes with but slight secondary working at the edges, such as will hereafter be noticed. Many other instruments which he discovered were merely flakes, such as the thick-backed cutting instrument of flint three inches long, with a bronze dagger and two small balls of stone, in a barrow containing a skeleton near Pickering,[11] which would appear to have been of this character. They occurred with burnt bones in cinerary urns at Broughton,[12] Lincolnshire, in one case with a flat bronze arrow-head; at Summer Hill,[13] near Canterbury; with a flint arrow-head at Sittingbourne;[14] with burnt bones and bronze daggers in a barrow at Teddington,[15] Middlesex; at Penhow,[16] Monmouth; and in the Gristhorpe Barrow,[17] near Scarborough; with burnt bones in a circle of stones near Llanaber,[18] Merionethshire, where no flint occurs naturally; with burnt bones in an urn beneath a tumulus at Brynbugeilen,[19] Llangollen; in a barrow near Blackbury Castle,[20] Devon; and in one on Dartmoor;[21] and at Hollingsclough and Upper Edge,[22] Derbyshire. Flakes, not of flint, but of a hard silicious grit, occurred in a cist with burnt bones near Harlech;[23] and of some other hard stone in a cist in Merionethshire.[24] Other instances have been cited by General Pitt Rivers,[25] who found several rough flakes and splinters of grit and felspathic ash in cairns near Bangor, North Wales. Some of these showed signs of rubbing and use on their edges; in some cases they had the appearance of having been scraped by metal. Whether they were the weapons and tools of the people buried in the cairns, or
  1. Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd S., vol. v. p. 438.
  2. Tr. Dev. Assoc., vol. xvii. p. 70; xviii. p. 74. Arch. Assoc. Journ., vol. xxviii. p. 220.
  3. Journ. Anth. Inst., vol. v. p. 30. Notes and Queries, 5th S., vol. vii. p. 447.
  4. "Flint Impts., &c., found at St. Mary Bourne," Jos. Stevens, 1867.
  5. Journ. Anth. Inst., vol. xiii. p. 137.
  6. Tr. Lanc. and Chesh. Arch. Soc., vol. ii. pl. i. iv. p. 305.
  7. Journ. R. Inst. Cornwall, Oct., 1864.
  8. Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd S., vol. iii. p. 22.
  9. Trans. Preh. Cong., 1868, p. 89. Tr. Devon. Assoc., vol. i.; pt. v. p. 80.
  10. Op. cit., p. 128.
  11. "Ten Years' Dig.," p. 226.
  12. Arch. Journ., vol. viii. p. 343.
  13. Arch. Assoc. Journ., vol. xxii. p. 241.
  14. Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd S., vol. vi. p. 48.
  15. Arch., vol. xxxvi. p. 176.
  16. Arch. Journ., vol. xviii. p. 71.
  17. Reliquary, vol. vi. p. 4.
  18. Arch. Journ., vol xii. p. 189.
  19. Arch. Camb., 2nd S., vol. i. p. 331; ii. 222.
  20. Arch. Assoc. Journ., vol. xviii. p. 58.
  21. Tr. Devon. Assoc., vol. vi. p. 272, fig. 2.
  22. Reliquary, vol. iii. p. 162.
  23. Arch. Journ., vol. ix. p. 92.
  24. Arch. Camb., 2nd S., vol. iii. p. 102.
  25. journ. Ethnol. Soc., vol. ii. p. 306.