dwellings, are proved to have been mounted in handles. One of these, from Nussdorf, in the Ueberlinger See,[1] is in my own collection, and is shown in Fig. 197. It is fastened into a yew-wood handle by an apparently bituminous cement. The edge has been formed by secondary chipping on the ridged face of the flake. I am unable to say whether the edge of the flake still embedded in the wood is left as originally produced or no, but several unmounted flakes from the same locality have been re-chipped on both edges. In some instances, however, only one edge is thus worked. In the case of many of the small narrow flakes from the Dordogne caves, one edge is much worn away, and the other as sharp as ever, as if it had been protected by being inserted in a wooden handle.
Fig. 197.—Nussdorf. 12
From the hole in the handle, this form of instrument would appear to have been carried attached to a string, like a sailor's knife at the present day—a similarity probably due to the somewhat analogous conditions of life of the old Lake-dwellers to those of seamen. In some French and Swiss flakes[2] which seem to have been used in a similar manner, the ends are squared, and a central notch worked in each, apparently for the reception of a cord. In this case, a loop at the end of the cord would answer the same purpose as the hole in the handle, which with these flakes seem to have been needless. They are abundant at Pressigny.
A pointed flake in the museum at Berne[3] is hafted like a dagger, in a wooden handle, which is bound round with a cord made from rushes.
Some of the Swiss handles are not bored, and occasionally they are prolonged at one end to twice the length of the flint, so as to form a handle like that of a table-knife, the flint flake, though let in to a continuation of the handle, projecting and forming the blade. In some cases there is a handle at each end, like those of a spoke-shave. The handles are of yew, deal, and more rarely of stags'-horn; and the implements, though usually termed saws, are not regularly serrated, and may with equal propriety be termed knives.
The late Sir Edward Belcher showed me an Eskimo "flensing knife," from Icy Cape, hafted in much the same manner. The blade is an ovate piece of slate about 5 inches long, and is let into a handle made of several pieces of wood, extending along nearly half the circumference, and secured together by resin. Other specimens of the same kind are in the British Museum, and in the Ethnological Museum at Copenhagen. The stone blades are more like the flat Picts'[4] knives,- ↑ Others are engraved in Keller's "Pfahlbaut.," lter Bericht. Taf. iii. 8. Lindenschmit, "Alt. u. h. V.," vol. i., Heft. xii. Taf. i. 15. "Hohenzollernsch. Samml.," Taf. xxvii. 18. Mackie, "Nat. Hist. Rep.," vol. i. p. 139. Le Hon, "L'homme Foss.," 2nd ed., p. 175. "Ant. Lac. du Mus. de Lausanne," 1896. Pl. x.
- ↑ "Mus. préh.," Nos. 276, 277. "Ant. Lac. du Mus. de Lausanne," 1896. Pl. x., 10, 11.
- ↑ Zeitsch. f. Ethn., vol. xiv. p. (531).
- ↑ Keller's "Lake-Dw.," pl. iii. 1; xxi. 10; xxviii. 9, 10. Troyon, "Hab. Lac," pl. v. 11. "Pfahlbauten," 2 ter Ber. Taf. iii. pl. 40. Desor, "Palafittes," fig. 12. Rau's "Preh. Fishing," 1884, p. 186.
