the chalk; and it seems probable that the ancient flint-workers were also acquainted with the advantages of using the flints fresh from the quarry, and worked them into shape at the pits from which they were dug, not only on account of the saving in transport of the partly-manufactured articles, but on account of the greater facility of working the freshly-extracted flints. This working the flints upon the spot is conclusively shown by the examination of the old flint-quarry at Cissbury, Sussex, by General Pitt Rivers (then Colonel A. Lane-Fox) and others. A very large number of hatchets, more or less perfectly chipped out, were there found, as will subsequently be mentioned. That they were in some cases at great pains to procure flint of the proper quality for being chipped into form, and were not content with blocks and nodules, such as might be found on the surface, is proved by the interesting explorations at Grime's Graves, near Brandon, carried on by Canon Greenwell, F.R.S.[1]
In a wood at this spot, the whole surface of the ground is studded with shallow bowl-shaped depressions from 20 to 60 feet in diameter, sometimes running into each other so as to form irregularly shaped hollows. They are over 250 in number, and one selected for exploration was about 28 feet in diameter at the mouth, gradually narrowing to 12 feet at the bottom, which proved to be 39 feet below the surface. Through the first 13 feet it had been cut through sand, below which the chalk was reached, and after passing through one layer of flint of inferior quality, which was not quarried beyond the limits of the shaft, the layer known as the "floor-stone," from which gun-flints are manufactured at the present day, was met with at the bottom of the shaft. To procure this, various horizontal galleries about 3 feet 6 inches in height were driven into the chalk. The excavations had been made by means of picks formed from the antlers of the red-deer, of which about 80 were found. The points are worn by use, and the thick bases of the horns battered by having been used as hammers, for breaking off portions of the chalk and also of the nodules of flint. Where they had been grasped by the hand the surface is polished by use, and on some there was a coating of chalky matter adhering, on which was still distinctly visible the impression of the cuticle of the old flint-workers. The marks of the picks and hammers were as fresh on the walls of the galleries as if made but yesterday.
- ↑ Journ. Ethnol. Soc., N. S., vol. ii. p. 419. See also Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. viii. p. 419.
