Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/354

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TRIMMED FLAKES, KNIVES, ETC.
[CHAP. XV.

and but little more than half the length of this specimen, which was found by Mr. E. Tindall, with another nearly similar, in a barrow near Bridlington. Dr. Travis in 1836 described another (23/4 inches) from a barrow near Scarborough. Another (2 inches) was found with food-vessels in a barrow at Marton,[1] Yorkshire, E.R. A knife of the same kind from a cave at Kozarnia,[2] Poland, has been figured by Dr. F. Römer.

Among other English examples I may mention a thin flake (41/4 inches), somewhat curved laterally, and trimmed along both edges and rounded at the point, found in Burwell Fen, Cambridge. Another from the same locality (33/4 inches) is even more curved on the concave edge. A recurved flake or knife of flint, 31/2 inches long, finely chipped at the sharp convex edge, was found with jet ornaments and an ovoid instrument of serpentine, accompanying a skeleton, in a barrow near Avebury, Wilts.[3] I have several from the surface, Suffolk, and from the Cambridge Fens. In a larger instrument from Icklingham, both edges are worn smooth and rounded by use, as if in scraping some soft but gritty substance, possibly hides in the process of preparation as leather.


Fig. 243.—Potter Bromton Wold. 1/2

In some of these instruments the point is sharp instead of being rounded. One of them, found by Canon Greenwell in a barrow on Potter Brompton Wold,[4] is shown in Fig. 243.

I have a more triangular form of implement, of the same kind, 33/4 inches long, showing the crust of the flint at the base, found near Icklingham, Suffolk. Another from the same locality is of the same form as the figure.

Instruments of the same character as these were discovered by the late Mr. Bateman in many of the Derbyshire Barrows. What appears to be one of the same kind was found with a flake and burnt bones in an urn at Broughton, Lincolnshire.[5] It may, however, have been convex on both faces. A fragment of another was found at Dorchester Dykes,[6] Oxfordshire, by General Pitt Rivers.

The sharp-edged instruments of the forms last described seem to have been intended for use as cutting, or occasionally as scraping tools, and may not improperly be termed knives, as has been proposed by Canon Greenwell.[7] Even the last described, though sharply pointed, cannot with certainty be accepted as a spear-head. To regarding the other form. Fig. 242, as such, Canon Greenwell objects that "the people who fashioned the arrow-heads so beautifully, if they fabricated a spear-head in flint, would not have made one side straight, the other curved, and carefully rounded it off at the sharper end." One of these pointed instruments (3 inches), trimmed on one face and slightly curved, was found with an urn and a whetstone in a cairn at Stenton,[8] East Lothian.

  1. Trans. E.R. Ant. Soc., vol. i., 1893, p. 49.
  2. "The Bone Caves of Ojcow," 1884, pl. i. 7.
  3. "Cran. Brit.," vol. ii. pl. 58, p. 2.
  4. "Brit. Barr.," p. 158, and 41, where it is figured full size.
  5. Arch. Journ., vol. viii. 344.
  6. Journ. Ethnol. Soc., vol. ii. p. 414.
  7. Arch. Journ., vol. xxii. p. 243.
  8. Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. xiv. p. 221.