Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/398

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JAVELIN AND ARROW HEADS.
[CHAP. XVI.

Others, of the same character, but of smaller size, are engraved in Figs. 290 and 291. Both the originals are from the Yorkshire Wolds.

That shown in Fig. 290 is in the Greenwell Collection. It is thin, slightly curved longitudinally, and very neatly worked into shape at the edges. It is a form of not unfrequent occurrence in the Yorkshire Wolds, sometimes of larger dimensions, and more roughly chipped, but more commonly of smaller size. I have a beautifully-made arrow-head of nearly the same size and shape, found at Lakenheath, Suffolk. It is not more than one-eighth of an inch in thickness. One of wider proportions from Burnt Fen is in the Greenwell Collection. Fig. 291 is thicker in proportion to its width, more convex on one face than the other, and less acutely pointed at the base.


Figs. 292 and 293.—Yorkshire Wolds.

In Figs. 292 and 293 are shown some more or less unsymmetrical varieties of form. Fig. 292 is, towards the point, equally convex on each face; but at the base the flat inner face of the original flake has been left untouched, so that the edge is like that of a "scraper," or of a round-nosed chisel. Though the point is, in all respects, identical with that of undoubted arrow-heads, and though I have placed it here among them, it is possible that that end may, after all, have been intended for insertion in a handle, and that it was a small cutting tool, and not an arrow-head.

There can be no doubt of the purpose of Fig. 293, which is of white flint delicately chipped, and is equally convex on the two faces. On one side the outline is almost angular, instead of forming a regular sweep, so that it shows how easy is the passage from the leaf-shape to the lozenge form.


Fig. 294.—Yorkshire Wolds.

There are often instances like that afforded by the arrow-head engraved in Fig. 294, where it is hard to say under which form a specimen should be placed. The original of this figure forms part of the Greenwell Collection, and is neatly worked on both faces. I have a somewhat broader arrow-head of the same character, which I found in the camp of Maiden Bower, near Dunstable. General Pitt Rivers found one of the same form, and one like Fig. 311, within an earthwork at Callow Hill,[1] Oxfordshire. Another was found with a perforated hammer, a flint flake ground at the edge, some scrapers, and other objects, in a cairn in Caithness.[2] One like Fig. 294, but smaller, was found in the Horned Cairn[3] of Get, at Garrywhin, Caithness. A large specimen from Glenluce[4] has been figured. Another, very thin, found at Urquhart, Elgin, is in the Edinburgh Museum.

It is to arrow-heads of this leaf-shaped form, but approximating

  1. Journ. Ethnol. Soc., vol. i. p. 5.
  2. P. S. A. S., vol. vii. p. 500.
  3. P. S. A. S., vol. ix. p. 246.
  4. P. S. A. S., vol. xi. p. 586.