Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/92

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CHIPPED OR ROUGH-HEWN CELTS.
[CHAP. IV.

triangular. If attached to a handle it was probably after the manner of an adze rather than of an axe. I have a smaller specimen of the same type, and another, flatter and more neatly chipped, 73/4 inches long, from the Cambridge Fens.


Fig. 15.—Oving, near Chichester. 1/2
I have seen implements of much the same form which have been found at Bemerton, near Salisbury (Blackmore Museum); at St. Mary Bourne, Andover; at Santon Downham, near Thetford; at Little Dunham, Norfolk; near Ware; and near Canterbury; but the edge is sometimes formed by several chips, in the same manner as the sides, and not merely by the junction of two planes of fracture.

There are also smaller rough celts with the subtriangular section, of which I have a good example, 41/2 inches long, found by Mr. W. Whitaker, F.R.S., near Maiden Castle, Dorsetshire. It is curiously similar to one that I found near Store Lyngby, in Denmark.

The same form occurs in France.

Other roughly-chipped implements are to be found in various parts of Britain, lying scattered over the fields, some of them so rude that they may be regarded as merely flints chipped into form, to serve some temporary purpose; as wasters thrown away as useless by those who were trying to manufacture stone implements which were eventually destined to be ground; or as the rude implements of the merest savage. Certainly some of the stone hatchets of the Australian natives are quite as rude or ruder, and yet we find them carefully provided with handles. In Hertfordshire, I have myself picked up several such implements; and they have been found in considerable numbers in the neighbourhood of Icklingham in Suffolk, near Andover, and in other places. An adze-like celt of this kind (41/2 inches) is recorded from Wishmoor,[1] Surrey. Were proper search made for them, there are probably not many districts where it would be fruitless. In Ireland they appear to be rare; but numerous roughly-shaped imple-
  1. Jour. Anth. Inst., vol. ii., p. 368, pl. xxi.