CHAPTER II.

ON THE MANUFACTURE OF STONE IMPLEMENTS IN PREHISTORIC TIMES.[54]

In seeking to ascertain the method by which the stone implements and

weapons of antiquity were fabricated, we cannot, in all probability,

follow a better guide than that which is afforded us by the manner in

which instruments of similar character are produced at the present day.

As in accounting for the vast geological changes which we find to have

taken place in the crust of the earth, the safest method of argument

is by referring to ascertained physical laws, and to the existing

operations of nature, so, in order to elucidate the manufacture

of stone implements by the ancient inhabitants of this and other

countries, we may refer to the methods employed by existing savages

in what we must judge to be a somewhat similar state of culture, and

to the recognized characteristics of the materials employed. We may

even go further, and call in aid the experience of some of our own

countrymen, who still work upon similar materials, although for the

purpose of producing different objects from those which were in use in

ancient times.

So far as relates to the method of production of implements formed of

silicious materials, there can be no doubt that the manufacture of

gun-flints, which, notwithstanding the introduction of percussion-caps,

is still carried on to some extent both in this and in neighbouring

countries, is that best calculated to afford instruction. The principal

place in England where the gun-flint manufacture is now carried on,

is Brandon, on the borders of Norfolk and Suffolk, where I have

witnessed the process. I have also seen the manufacture at Icklingham,

in Suffolk, where thirty years ago, gun-flint factories existed,

which have now I believe |15| been closed. They were also formerly

manufactured in small numbers at Catton, near Norwich. At Brandon, in

1868, I was informed that upwards of twenty workmen were employed, who

were capable of producing among them from 200,000 to 250,000 gun-flints

per week. These were destined almost entirely for exportation,

principally to Africa. On July 18th, 1890, the _Daily News_[55] gave

the number of workmen at Brandon as thirty-five.

Some other sites of the gun-flint manufacture in former times are

mentioned by Mr. Skertchly, as for instance, Clarendon near Salisbury;

Gray’s Thurrock, Essex; Beer Head, Devon; and Glasgow; besides several

places in Norfolk and Suffolk.

In France the manufacture of gun-flints is still carried on in the

Department of Loir et Cher,[56] and various other localities are

recorded by Mr. Skertchly.[57]

In proof of the antiquity of the use of flint as a means of producing

fire, I need hardly quote the ingenious derivation of the word Silex

as given by Vincent of Beauvais:—“Silex est lapis durus, sic dictus eò

quod ex eo ignis exiliat.”[58] But before iron was known as a metal,

it would appear that flint was in use as a fire-producing agent in

combination with blocks of iron pyrites (sulphide of iron) instead of

steel. Nodules of this substance have been found in both French and

Belgian bone-caves belonging to an extremely remote period; while,

as belonging to Neolithic times, to say nothing of discoveries in

this country, which will subsequently be mentioned, part of a nodule

of pyrites may be cited which was found in the Lake settlement of

Robenhausen, and had apparently been thus used.[59] In our own days,

this method of obtaining fire has been observed among savages in

Tierra del Fuego, and among the Eskimos of Smith’s Sound.[60] The |16|

Fuegian tinder, like the modern German and ancient Roman, consists of

dried fungus, which when lighted is wrapped in a ball of dried grass

and whirled round the head till it bursts into flames. Achates, as will

shortly be seen, is described by Virgil as following the same method.

The name of pyrites (from πῦρ) is itself sufficient evidence of the

purpose to which this mineral was applied in early times, and the

same stone was used as the fire-giving agent in the guns with the

form of lock known as the wheel-lock. Pliny[61] speaks of a certain

sort of pyrites, “plurimum habens ignis, quos vivos appellamus, et

ponderosissimi sunt.” These, as his translator, Holland, says, “bee

most necessary for the espialls belonging unto a campe, for if they

strike them either with an yron spike or another stone they will cast

forth sparks of fire, which lighting upon matches dipt in brimstone

(_sulphuratis_) drie puff’s (_fungis_) or leaves, will cause them to

catch fire sooner than a man can say the word.”

Pliny also[62] informs us that it was Pyrodes, the son of Cilix, who

first devised the way to strike fire out of flint—a myth which seems to

point to the use of silex and pyrites rather than of steel. The Jews

on their return to Jerusalem, under Judas Maccabæus, “made another

altar and striking stones they took fire out of them and offered a

sacrifice.”[63] How soon pyrites was, to a great extent, superseded

by steel or iron, there seems to be no good evidence to prove; it is

probable, however, that the use of flint and steel was well known to

the Romans of the Augustan age, and that Virgil[64] pictured the Trojan

voyager as using steel, when—

“silici scintillam excudit Achates,

Suscepitque ignem foliis atque arida circum

Nutrimenta dedit, rapuitque in fomite flammam.”

And again, where—

“quærit pars semina flammæ

Abstrusa in venis silicis.”[65]

In Claudian[66] we find the distinct mention of flint and steel—

“Flagrat anhela silex et amicam saucia sentit

Materiem, placidosque chalybs agnoscit amores.”

At Unter Uhldingen[67] a Swiss lake station where Roman pottery was

present, was found what appears to be a steel for striking a |17|

light. However the case may have been as to the means of procuring

fire, it was not until some centuries after the invention of gunpowder

that flints were applied to the purpose of discharging fire-arms.

Beckmann,[68] in his “History of Inventions,” mentions that it was not

until the year 1687 that the soldiers of Brunswick obtained guns with

flint-locks, instead of match-locks, though, no doubt, the use of the

wheel-lock with pyrites had in some other places been superseded before

that time.

I am not aware of there being any record of flints, such as were in

use for tinder-boxes,[69] having been in ancient times an article

of commerce: this, however, must have been the case, as there are

so many districts in which flint does not naturally occur, and into

which, therefore, it would have by some means to be introduced.

Even at the present day, when so many chemical matches are in use,

flints are still to be purchased at the shops in country places in

the United Kingdom; and artificially prepared flints continue to

be common articles of sale both in France and Germany, and are in

constant use, in conjunction with German tinder, or prepared cotton, by

tobacco-smokers. At Brandon[70] a certain number of “strike-a-light”

flints are still manufactured for exportation, principally to the East

and to Brazil—they are usually circular discs, about two inches in

diameter. These flints are wrought into shape in precisely the same

manner as gun-flints, and it seems possible that the trade of chipping

flint into forms adapted to be used with steel for striking a light may

be of considerable antiquity, and that the manufacture of gun-flints

ought consequently to be regarded as only a modification and extension

of a pre-existing art, closely allied with the facing and squaring of

flints for architectural purposes, which reached great perfection at an

early period. However this may be, it would seem that when gun-flints

were an indispensable munition of war, a great mystery was made as

to the manner in which they were prepared. Beckmann[71] says that,

considering the great use made of them, it will hardly be believed how

much trouble he had to obtain information on the subject. It would be

ludicrous to repeat the various answers he obtained to his inquiries.

Many thought that the stones were cut down by grinding them; some

conceived that |18| they were formed by means of red-hot pincers,

and many asserted that they were made in mills. The best account of

the manufacture with which he was acquainted, was that collected by

his brother, and published in the _Hanoverian Magazine_ for the year

1772. At a later date the well-known mineralogist Dolomieu[72] gave

an account of the process in the _Mémoires de l’Institut National des

Sciences_, and M. Hacquet,[73] of Leopol, in Galicia, published a

pamphlet on the same subject. The accounts given by both these authors

correspond most closely with each other, and also with the practice of

the present day, though the French process differs in some respects

from the English.[74] This has been well described by Dr. Lottin.[75]

The flints best adapted for the purpose of the manufacture are those

from the chalk. They must, however, be of fair size, free from flaws

and included organisms, and very homogeneous in structure. They are

usually procured by sinking small shafts into the ground until a band

of flints of the right quality is reached, along which low horizontal

galleries, or “burrows,” as they are called, are worked. For success in

the manufacture a great deal is said to depend upon the condition of

the flint as regards the moisture it contains, those which have been

too long exposed upon the surface becoming intractable, and there being

also a difficulty in working those that are too moist. A few blows

with the hammer enable a practised flint-knapper to judge whether the

material on which he is at work is in the proper condition or no. Some

of the Brandon workmen, however, maintain that though a flint which has

been some time exposed to the air is harder than one recently dug, yet

that it works equally well, and they say further, that the object in

keeping the flints moist is to preserve the black colour from fading,

black gun-flints being most saleable.

A detailed account, by Mr. Skertchly, of the manufacture of gun-flints,

with an essay on the connection between Neolithic art and the gun-flint

trade, forms an expensive memoir of the geological survey, published in

1879; but it seems well to retain the following short account of the

process.

The tools required are few and simple:—

1. A flat-faced blocking, or quartering hammer, from one to |19| two

pounds in weight, made either of iron or of iron faced with steel.

2. A well-hardened steel flaking hammer, bluntly pointed at each end,

and weighing about a pound, or more; or in its place a light oval

hammer, known as an “English” hammer, the pointed flaking hammer having

been introduced from France.

3. A square-edged trimming or knapping hammer, which may either be in

the form of a disc, or oblong and flat at the end, made of steel not

hardened. In England, this hammer is usually made from a portion of an

old flat file perforated to receive the helve, and drawn out at each

end into a thin blade, about 1∕16 of an inch in thickness; the total

length being about 7 or 8 inches.

4. A chisel-shaped “stake” or small anvil set vertically in a block of

wood, which at the same time forms a bench for the workman. In England,

the upper surface of this stake is about 1∕4 inch thick, and inclined

at a slight angle to the bench.

The method of manufacture[76] is as follows:—A block of flint is

broken by means of the quartering hammer in such a manner as to detach

masses, the newly-fractured surfaces of which are as nearly as possible

plane and even. One of these blocks is then held in the left hand, so

that the edge rests on a leathern pad tied on the thigh of the seated

workman, the surface to be struck inclining at an angle of about 45°.

A splinter is then detached from the margin by means of the flaking

hammer. If the flint is of good quality, this splinter may be three

or four inches in length, the line of fracture being approximately

parallel to the exterior of the flint. There is, of course, the usual

bulb of percussion, or rounded protuberance at the end,[77] where

the blow is given, and a corresponding depression is left in the

mass of flint. Another splinter is next detached, by a blow given at

a distance of about an inch on one side of the spot where the first

blow fell, and then others at similar distances, until some portion

of the block assumes a more or less regular polygonal outline. As

the splinters which are first detached usually show a portion of the

natural crust of the flint upon them, they are commonly |20| thrown

away as useless. The second and succeeding rows of flakes are those

adapted for gun-flints. To obtain these, the blows of the flaking

hammer are administered midway between two of the projecting angles of

the polygon, and almost immediately behind the spots where the blows

dislodging the previous row of flakes or splinters were administered,

though a little to one side. They fall at such a distance from the

outer surface as is necessary for the thickness of a gun-flint. By

this means a succession of flakes is produced, the section of which

is that of an obtuse triangle with the apex removed, inasmuch as for

gun-flints, flakes are required with the face and back parallel, and

not with a projecting ridge running along the back.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.—Flint-core with flakes replaced upon it.]

Fig. 2, representing a block from which a number of flakes adapted

for gun-flints have been detached and subsequently returned to their

original positions around the central core or nucleus, will give a

good idea of the manner in which flake after flake is struck off.

Mr. Spurrell and Mr. Worthington Smith have succeeded in building up

flakes of Palæolithic date into the original blocks from which they

were struck. The former has also replaced ancient Egyptian flakes,[78]

the one upon the other. Mr. F. Archer has likewise restored a block of

flint from Neolithic flakes[79] found near Dundrum Bay, county Down.

To complete the manufacture of gun-flints, each flake is taken in the

left hand, and cut off into lengths of the width required, by means

of the knapping hammer and the stake fixed in the bench. The flake

is placed over the stake at the spot where it is to be cut, |21|

and a skilful workman cuts the flake in two at a single stroke. The

sections of flakes thus produced have a cutting edge at each end;

but the finished gun-flint is formed by chipping off the edge at the

butt-end and slightly rounding it by means of the fixed chisel and

knapping hammer, the blows from which are made to fall just within

the chisel, so that the two together cut much in the same manner as

a pair of shears. Considerable skill is required in the manufacture,

more especially in the production of the flakes; but Hacquet[80] says

that a fortnight’s practice is sufficient to enable an ordinary workman

to fashion from five hundred to eight hundred gun-flints in a day.

According to him, an experienced workman will produce from a thousand

to fifteen hundred per diem. Dolomieu estimates three days as the time

required by a “_caillouteur_” to produce a thousand gun-flints; but

as the highest price quoted for French gun-flints by Hacquet is only

six francs the thousand, it seems probable that his calculation as to

the time required for their manufacture is not far wrong. Some of the

Brandon flint-knappers are, however, said to be capable of producing

sixteen thousand to eighteen thousand gun-flints in a week. Taking

the lowest estimate, it appears that a practised hand is capable of

making at least three hundred flint implements of a given definite

form, and of some degree of finish, in the course of a single day. If

our primitive forefathers could produce their worked flints with equal

ease, the wonder is, not that so many of them are found, but that they

do not occur in far greater numbers.

An elegant form of gun-flint, showing great skill in surface flaking,

is still produced in Albania. A specimen, purchased at Avlona[81] by

my son, is shown in Fig. 2A. Some gun-flints and strike-a-lights are

formed of chalcedony or agate, and cut and polished.

[Illustration: Fig. 2A.—Gun-flint, Avlona, Albania. 1∕1]

The ancient flint-workers had not, however, the advantages of steel

and iron tools and other modern appliances at their command; and, at

first sight, it would appear that the |22| production of flakes of

flint, without having a pointed metallic hammer for the purpose, was

a matter of great difficulty, I have, however, made some experiments

upon the subject, and have also employed a Suffolk flint-knapper

to do so, and I find that blows from a rounded pebble, judiciously

administered, are capable of producing well-formed flakes, such as, in

shape, cannot be distinguished from those made with a metallic hammer.

The main difficulties consist—first, in making the blow fall exactly

in the proper place; and, secondly, in so proportioning its intensity

that it shall simply dislodge a flake, and not shatter it. The pebble

employed as a hammer need not be attached to a shaft, but can be used,

without any preparation, in the hand. Professor Nilsson tried the same

method long ago, and has left on record an interesting account of his

experience.[82]

In the neighbourhood of the Pfahl-bauten of Moosseedorf, in

Switzerland, have been found numerous spots where flint has been

worked up into implements, and vast numbers of flakes and splinters

left as refuse. Dr. Keller[83] says, that “the tools used for making

these flint implements do not seem to have been of the same material,

but of gabbro, a bluish-green and very hard and tough kind of stone.

Several of these implements have been met with; their form is very

simple, and varies between a cube and an oval. The oval specimens were

ground down in one or two places, and the most pointed part was used

for hammering.” There were nearly similar workshops at Wauwyl[84] and

Bodmann, not to mention places where flint was dug for the purposes of

manufacture.

Closely analogous sites of ancient flint-workshops have been discovered

both in France[85] and Germany[86] as well as in Great Britain; such,

for instance, as that at the confluence[87] of the Leochel and the

Don, in Aberdeenshire, where, moreover, flint is not native in the

neighbourhood; but proper attention has not, in all cases, been paid to

the hammer-stones, which, in all probability, occur with the chippings

of flint.

The blow from the hammer could not, of course, be always administered

at the right spot; and I have noticed on some ancient flakes, a groove

at the butt-end, the bottom of which is crushed, as if by blows from a

round pebble, which, from having |23| fallen too near the edge of the

block, had at first merely bruised the flint, instead of detaching the

flake.

There are, moreover, a certain number of small cores, or nuclei, both

English and foreign, from which such minute and regular flakes have

been detached, that it is difficult to believe that a mere stone

hammer could have been directed with sufficient skill and precision to

produce such extreme regularity of form. I may cite as instances some

of the small nuclei which are found on the Yorkshire wolds, and some

of those from the banks of the Mahanuddy,[88] in India, which, but for

the slight dissimilarity in the material (the latter being usually

chalcedony and the former flint), could hardly be distinguished from

each other. Possibly in striking off the flakes some form of punch was

used which was struck with the hammer as subsequently described. There

are also some large nuclei, such as those from the neighbourhood of

the Indus,[89] in Upper Scinde, and one which I possess from Ghlin, in

Belgium, which are suggestive of the same difficulty. In form they much

resemble the obsidian cores of Mexico, and it seems not improbable that

they are the result of some similar process of making flakes or knives

to that which was in use among the Aztecs.

Torquemada[90] thus describes the process he found in use:—“One of

these Indian workmen sits down upon the ground, and takes a piece of

this black stone” (obsidian) “about eight inches long or rather more,

and as thick as one’s leg or rather less, and cylindrical; they have

a stick as large as the shaft of a lance, and three cubits or rather

more in length; and at the end of it they fasten firmly another piece

of wood, eight inches long, to give more weight to this part; then,

pressing their naked feet together, they hold the stone as with a pair

of pincers or the vice of a carpenter’s bench. They take the stick

(which is cut off smooth at the end) with both hands, and set it well

home against the edge of the front of the stone (_y ponenlo avesar

con el canto de la frente de la piedra_), which also is cut smooth in

that part; and then they press it against their breast, and with the

force of the pressure there flies off a knife, with its point, and edge

on each side, as neatly as if one were to make them of a turnip with

a sharp knife, |24| or of iron in the fire.” Hernandez[91] gives a

similar account of the process, but compares the wooden instrument used

to a cross-bow, so that it would appear to have had a crutch-shaped

end to rest against the breast. So skilful were the Mexicans in the

manufacture of obsidian knives, that, according to Clavigero, a single

workman could produce a hundred per hour.

The short piece of heavy wood was probably cut from some of the

very hard trees of tropical growth. I much doubt whether any of

our indigenous trees produce wood sufficiently hard to be used for

splintering obsidian; and flint is, I believe, tougher and still more

difficult of fracture. We have, however, in this Mexican case, an

instance of the manufacture of flakes by sudden pressure, and of the

employment of a flaking tool, which could be carefully adjusted into

position before the pressure or blow was given to produce the flake.

Mr. G. E. Sellers, in the Smithsonian Report for 1885,[92] has

published some interesting “observations on stone chipping,” and from

the report of Mr. Catlin, who sojourned long among the Indians of North

America, gives sketches of crutch-like flaking tools tipped with walrus

tooth or bone which he had seen in use. He also describes a method of

making flint flakes by the pressure of a lever. The whole memoir is

worthy of study.

The subject of the manufacture of stone implements is also discussed

by[93] Sir Daniel Wilson in an essay on the Trade and Commerce of the

Stone Age.

There appears to have been another process in use in Central America,

for Mr. Tylor[94] heard on good authority that somewhere in Peru the

Indians still have a way of working obsidian by laying a bone wedge on

the surface of a piece and tapping it till the stone cracks. Catlin[95]

also describes the method of making flint arrow-heads among the Apaches

in Mexico as being of the same character. After breaking a boulder of

flint by means of a hammer formed of a rounded pebble of horn-stone

set in a handle made of a twisted withe, flakes are struck off, and

these are wrought into shape while held on the palm of the left hand,

by means of a punch made of the tooth of the sperm whale, held in the

right hand, and struck with a hard wooden mallet by an assistant. Both

holder and striker sing, and the strokes of the |25| mallet are given

in time with the music, the blow being sharp and _rebounding_, in

which the Indians say is the great medicine or principal knack of the

operation.

The Cloud River[96] Indians at the present day use a punch made of

deer’s-horn for striking off obsidian flakes from which to make

arrow-heads.

Such a process as this may well have been adopted in this country in

the manufacture of flint flakes; either bone or stag’s-horn sets or

punches, or else small and hard pebbles, may have been applied at the

proper spots upon the surface of the flints, and then been struck by

a stone or wooden mallet. I have tried some experiments with such

stone sets, and have succeeded in producing flakes in this manner,

having been first led to suppose that some such system was in use by

discovering, in the year 1864, some small quartz pebbles battered at

the ends, and associated with flint flakes and cores in an ancient

encampment at Little Solsbury Hill, near Bath, of which I have already

given an account elsewhere.[97] I am, however, inclined to think that

the use of such a punch or set was in any case the exception rather

than the rule; for with practice, and by making the blows only from

the elbow kept fixed against the body, and not with the whole arm, it

is extraordinary what precision of blow may be attained with merely a

pebble held in the hand as a hammer.

The flakes of chert from which the Eskimos manufacture their

arrow-heads are produced, according to Sir Edward Belcher,[98] who saw

the process, by slight taps with a hammer formed of a very stubborn

kind of jade or nephrite. He has kindly shown me one of these hammers,

which is oval in section, about 3 inches long and 2 inches broad, and

secured by a cord of sinew to a bone handle, against which it abuts.

The ends are nearly flat. This hammer is now in the Christy Collection

at the British Museum and is figured by Ratzel.[99] Another from

Alaska,[100] and several such hammers made of basalt from the Queen

Charlotte Islands,[101] have also been figured. It seems doubtful

whether the proper use of these hammers was not for crushing bones.[102]

Among the natives of North Australia a totally different method |26|

appears to have been adopted, the flakes being struck off the stone

which is used as a hammer, and not off the block which is struck. In

the exploring expedition, under Mr. A. G. Gregory, in 1855–6, the party

came on an open space between the cliffs along one of the tributary

streams of the Victoria River, where the ground was thickly strewn with

fragments of various stones and imperfectly-formed weapons. The method

of formation of the weapons, according to Mr. Baines,[103] was this,

“The native having chosen a pebble of agate, flint, or other suitable

stone, perhaps as large as an ostrich egg, sits down before a larger

block, on which he strikes it so as to detach from the end a piece,

leaving a flattened base for his subsequent operations. Then, holding

the pebble with its base downwards, he again strikes so as to split

off a piece as thin and broad as possible, tapering upward in an oval

or leaf-like form, and sharp and thin at the edges. His next object

is to strike off another piece nearly similar, so close as to leave a

projecting angle on the stone, as sharp, straight, and perpendicular

as possible. Then, again taking the pebble carefully in his hand, he

aims the decisive blow, which, if he is successful, splits off another

piece with the angle running straight up its centre as a midrib, and

the two edges sharp, clear, and equal, spreading slightly from the

base, and again narrowing till they meet the midrib in a keen and taper

point. If he has done this well, he possesses a perfect weapon, but at

least three chips must have been formed in making it, and it seemed

highly probable, from the number of imperfect heads that lay about,

that the failures far outnumbered the successful results. In the making

of tomahawks or axes, in which a darker green stone is generally used,

great numbers of failures must ensue; and in these another operation

seemed necessary, for we saw upon the rocks several places were they

had been ground, with a great expenditure of labour, to a smooth round

edge.”

In the manufacture of flint flakes, whether they were to serve as

knives or lance-heads without any more preparation, or whether they

were to be subjected to further manipulation, so as eventually to

become arrow-heads, scrapers, or any other of the more finished

implements, the form of the nucleus from which they were struck was

usually a matter of no great importance, the chips or flakes being

the object of the operator and not the resulting core, which was in

most cases thrown away as worthless. But where very long |27| flakes

were desired, it became a matter of importance to produce nuclei of a

particular form, specially adapted for the purpose. I have never met

with any such nuclei in England, but the well-known _livres-de-beurre_

chiefly found in the neighbourhood of Pressigny-le-grand (Indre et

Loire), France, are typical instances of the kind. I have precisely

similar specimens, though on a rather smaller scale, and of a somewhat

different kind of flint, from Spiennes, near Mons, in Belgium; and

a few nuclei of the same form have also been found in Denmark. The

occurrence of flints wrought into the same shape, at places so far

apart, might at first appear to countenance the view of this peculiar

form being that of an implement intended for some special purpose,

and not merely a refuse block. This, however, is not the case. I have

treated of this question elsewhere,[104] but it will be well here to

repeat a portion, at least, of what I have before written on this point.

These large nuclei or _livres-de-beurre_ are blocks of flint, usually

10 or 12 inches long and 3 to 4 inches wide in the broadest part, the

thickness being in most cases less than the width. In general outline

they may be described as boat-shaped, being square at one end and

brought to a point—more or less finished—at the other. The outline

has been given by striking a succession of flakes from the sides of a

mass of flint, until the boat-like contour has been obtained, with the

sides slightly converging towards the keel, and then the upper surface

corresponding to the deck of the boat has been chipped into form by a

succession of blows administered at right angles to the first, and in

such a manner that the deck, as originally formed, was convex instead

of flat. After this convex surface was formed, one, two, or even more

long flakes were dislodged along its whole length, or nearly so, by

blows administered at the part represented by the stern of the boat,

thus leaving one or more channels along what corresponds to the deck.

In rare instances, these long flakes have not been removed, in others

of more frequent occurrence, one of the flakes has broken off short

before attaining its full length.

Strange as this boat-shaped form may at the outset appear, yet on a

little consideration it will be seen that the chipping into such a

form is in fact one of the necessities of the case for the production

of long blades of flint. Where flakes only 3 or 4 inches long are

required, the operator may readily, with his hammer, strike off from

the outside of his block of flint a succession of chips, so as to |28|

give it a polygonal outline, the projections of which will serve for

the central ridges or back-bones of the first series of regular flakes

that he strikes off. The removal of this first series of flakes leaves

a number of projecting ridges, which serve as guides for the formation

of a second series of flakes, and so on until the block is used up.

But where a flake 10 or 12 inches in length is required, a different

process becomes necessary. For it is nearly impossible with a rough

mass of flint, to produce by single blows plane surfaces 10 or 12

inches in length, and arranged at such an angle as to produce a

straight ridge, such as would serve to form the back-bone, as it were,

of a long flake; and without such a back-bone, the production of a

long flake is impossible. It is indeed this ridge (which need not,

of course, be angular, but may be more or less rounded or polygonal)

that regulates the course of the fissure by which the flake is

dislodged from the matrix or parent flint; there being a slight degree

of elasticity in the stone, which enables a fissure once properly

commenced in a homogeneous flint to proceed at right angles to the

line of least resistance in the dislodged flake, while at the same

time exerting a nearly uniform strain, so that the inner surface of

the flake becomes nearly parallel to the outer ridge. It was to obtain

this outer ridge that the Pressigny cores were chipped into the form

in which we find them; and it appears as if the workmen who fashioned

them adopted the readiest means of obtaining the desired result of

producing along the block of flint a central ridge whenever it became

necessary, until the block was so much reduced in size as to be no

longer serviceable. For, the process of chipping the block into the

boat-like form could be repeated from time to time, until it became too

small for further use. The same process of cross-chipping was practised

in Scandinavia in early times, and the obsidian cores from the Greek

island of Melos, Crete, and other ancient Greek sites prove that it was

also known there. The blocks are found in various stages, rarely with

the central ridge still left on, as Fig. 3, and more commonly with one

or more long flakes removed from them, like Figs. 4 and 5. The sections

of each block are shown beneath them. Two of the flakes are represented

in Figs. 6 and 7. All the figures are on the scale of one-half linear

measure.

The causes why the nuclei were rejected as useless are still

susceptible of being traced. In some cases they had become so thin that

they would not bear re-shaping; in others a want of |29| uniformity in

the texture of the flint, probably caused by some included organism,

had made its appearance, and caused the flakes to break off short of

their proper length, or had even made it useless to attempt to strike

them off. In some rare instances, when the striking off long flakes

had proved unsuccessful on the one face, the attempt has been made to

procure them from the other. The abundance of large masses of flint

near Pressigny—some as much as two or three feet across—has, however,

rendered the workmen rather prodigal of their materials. The skill

which has been brought to bear in the manufacture of these long flakes

is marvellous, as the utmost precision is required in giving the blow

by which they are produced. Generally speaking, the projecting ridge

left at the butt-end of the nucleus between the depressions, whence

two of the short flakes have been struck off in chipping it square,

has been selected as the point of impact. They appear to me to have

been struck off by a free blow, and not by the intervention of a set

or punch. No doubt the face of the flint at the time of the blow being

struck was supported on some elastic body. A few flints which bear

marks of having been used as hammer-stones are found at Pressigny. |30|

[Illustration: Fig. 3.—Nucleus—Pressigny. 1∕2]

[Illustration: Fig. 4, Fig. 5; Nuclei—Pressigny. 1∕2]

An interesting lecture on the Flint Industry of Touraine was given on

the occasion of the annual meeting of the Société Archéologique de

Touraine, in 1891, by M. J. de Saint-Venant. |31|

[Illustration: Fig. 6.—Flake—Pressigny. 1∕2]

[Illustration: Fig. 7.—Flake—Pressigny. 1∕2]

I have hitherto been treating of the production of flint flakes for

various purposes. In such cases the flakes are everything, and the

resulting core, or nucleus, mere refuse. In the manufacture of celts,

or hatchets, the reverse is the case, the flakes are the refuse

(though, of course, they might occasionally be utilized) and the

resulting block is the main object sought. To produce this, however,

much the same process appears to have been adopted, at all events

where flint was the material employed. The hatchets seem to have been

rough-hewn by detaching a succession of flakes, chips, or splinters,

from a block of flint, by means of a hammer-stone, and these rough-hewn

implements were subsequently worked into a more finished form by

detaching smaller splinters, also probably by means of a hammer,

previously to their being ground or polished, if they were destined to

be finished in such a manner. In most cases, one face of the hatchet

was first roughed out, and then by a series of blows, given at proper

intervals, along the margin of that face the general shape was given

and the other face chipped out. This is proved by the fact that in most

of the |32| roughly-chipped hatchets found in Britain, the depressions

of the bulbs of percussion of the flakes struck off occur in a perfect

state only on one face, having been partly removed on the other face

by the subsequent chipping. There are, however, exceptions to this

rule, and more especially among the implements found in our ancient

river gravels. In some cases (see _postea_, Fig. 12) the cutting edge

has been formed by the intersection of two convex lines of fracture

giving a curved and sharp outline, and the body of the hatchet has

been subsequently made to suit the edge. The same is the case with

the hatchets from the Danish kjökken-möddings and coast-finds, though

the intersecting facets are at a higher angle, and the resulting edge

straighter, than in the specimens which I have mentioned. The edge is

also, like that of a mortising chisel, at the extremity of a flat face,

and not in the centre of the blade. The cutting edge has, however, in

most of the so-called celts of the ordinary form, been fashioned by

chipping subsequent to the roughing out of the hatchet; and even in

the case of polished hatchets, the edge when damaged was frequently

re-chipped into form before being ground afresh.

There hardly appears to be sufficient cause for believing that any of

the stone hatchets found in this country were chipped out by any other

means than by direct blows of a hammer; but in the case of the Danish

axes with square sides, and with their corners as neatly crimped or

puckered as if they had been made of pieces of leather sewn together,

it is probable that this neat finish was produced by the use of some

kind of punch or set. The hammer-stones used in the manufacture of

flint hatchets appear to have been usually quartzite pebbles, where

such are readily to be obtained, but also frequently to have been

themselves mere blocks of flint. Many such hammer-stones of flint

occurred in the Cissbury pits[105]—of which more hereafter—and I have

found similar hammer-stones on the Sussex Downs, near Eastbourne, where

also flint implements of various kinds appear to have been manufactured

in quantities. Not improbably, these hammers were made of flints which

had been for some time exposed on the surface, and which were in

consequence harder than the flints recently dug from the pits. We have

already seen that the gun-flint knappers of the present day are said

to work most successfully on blocks of flint recently extracted, and

those, too, from a particular layer in |33| 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.[106]

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. |34| It is

to be observed that such picks as these formed of stag’s horn have

been found in various other places, but have not had proper attention

called to their character. I have seen one from the neighbourhood

of Ipswich,[107] Suffolk. Canon Greenwell mentions somewhat similar

discoveries having been made at Eaton and Buckenham, Norfolk. One was

also found by him in a grave under a barrow he examined at Rudstone,

near Bridlington,[108] and others occurred near Weaverthorpe and

Sherburn. A polished hatchet of basalt had also been used at Grime’s

Graves as one of the tools for excavation, and the marks of its cutting

edge were plentiful in the gallery in which it was discovered. There

were also found some rudely-made cups of chalk apparently intended

for lamps; a bone pin or awl; and, what is very remarkable, a rounded

piece of bone 4 1∕2 inches long and 1 inch in circumference, rubbed

smooth, and showing signs of use at the ends, which, as Canon Greenwell

suggests, may have been a punch or instrument for taking off the lesser

flakes of flint in making arrow-heads and other small articles. It

somewhat resembles the pin of reindeer horn in the Eskimo arrow-flaker,

shortly to be mentioned. The shaft had been filled in with rubble,

apparently from neighbouring pits, and in it were numerous chippings

and cores of flint, and several quartzite and other pebbles battered at

the ends by having been used as hammers for chipping the flints. Some

large rounded cores of flint exhibited similar signs of use. On the

surface of the fields around, numerous chippings of flint, and more or

less perfect implements, such as celts, scrapers, and borers were found.

At Spiennes (near Mons, in Belgium), where a very similar manufacture

but on a larger scale than that of Cissbury or even of Grime’s Graves,

appears to have been carried on, flints seem to have been dug in the

same manner. Since I visited the spot, now many years ago, a railway

cutting has traversed a portion of the district where the manufacture

existed, and exposed a series of excavations evidently intended for

the extraction of flint. Mons. A. Houzeau de Lehaie, of Hyon, near

Mons, has most obligingly furnished me with some particulars of

these subterranean works, a detailed account of which has also been

published.[109] From this |35| account it appears that shafts from

3 feet to 3 feet 6 inches in diameter were sunk through the loam and

sand above the chalk to a depth of 30 or even 40 feet; and from the

bottom of the shafts lateral galleries were worked, from 5 to 6 feet in

height and about the same in width. Stag’s horns which had been used

as hammers, were found in the galleries, but it is doubtful whether

they had been used as pick-axes like those in Grime’s Graves. Among

the rubble in the galleries, as well as on the surface of the ground

above, were found roughly-chipped flints and splinters, and more or

less rudely-shaped hatchets by thousands. There is one peculiar feature

among these hatchets which I have not noticed to the same extent

elsewhere, viz., that many of them are made from the nuclei or cores

which, in the first instance, had subserved to the manufacture of long

flint flakes, the furrows left by which appear on one of the faces of

the hatchets. Sometimes, though rarely, the Pressigny nuclei have been

utilized in a similar manner.

In France, pits for the extraction of flint have been discovered

at Champignolles, Sérifontaine (Oise)[110] and at Mur de Barrez

(Aveyron).[111]

Professor J. Buckman[112] has recorded a manufactory of celts and other

flint instruments near Lyme Regis.

In these instances, especially at Cissbury and Grime’s Graves in

England, and at Pressigny and Spiennes on the Continent, and, indeed,

at other places also,[113] there appears to have been an organized

manufactory of flint instruments by settled occupants of the different

spots; and it seems probable that the products were bartered away to

those who were less favoured in their supply of the raw material,

flint. At Old Deer,[114] Aberdeenshire, thirty-four leaf-shaped flints,

roughly blocked out, were found together.

The chipping out of celts and some other tools formed, not of flint,

but of other hard rocks, must have been effected in the same manner.

The stone employed is almost always of a more or less silicious nature,

and such as breaks with a conchoidal fracture. |36|

Dr. F. A. Forel[115] chipped out a hatchet of euphotide or gabbro with

a hammer formed of a fragment of saussurite. The process occupied an

hour and ten minutes, and the subsequent grinding three hours more. He

made and ground to an edge a rude hatchet of serpentine in thirty-five

minutes.

To return, however, to the manufacture of the flint implements of this

country, and more especially to those which are merely flakes submitted

to a secondary process of chipping. We have seen that in the gun-flint

manufacture the flakes are finally shaped by means of a knapping or

trimming hammer and a fixed chisel, which act one against the other,

somewhat like the two blades of a pair of shears, and the process

adopted by the ancient flint-workers for many purposes must have been

to some extent analogous, though it can hardly have been precisely

similar. One of the most common forms of flint implements is that to

which the name of “scraper” or “thumb-flint” has been given, and which

is found in abundance on the Yorkshire Wolds, on the Downs of Sussex,

and in many other parts of England and Scotland. The normal form is

that of a broad flake chipped to a semicircular edge, usually at the

end farthest from the bulb of percussion, the edge being bevelled

away from the flat face of the flake, like that of a round-nosed

turning-chisel. The name of “scraper” or “_grattoir_,” has been given

to these worked flints from their similarity to an instrument in use

among the Eskimos[116] for scraping the insides of hides in the course

of their preparation; but I need not here enter upon the question of

the purpose for which these ancient instruments were used, as we are at

present concerned only with the method of their manufacture. I am not

aware of any evidence existing as to the method pursued by the Eskimos

in the chipping out of their scraping tools: but I think that if, at

the present time, we are able to produce flint tools precisely similar

to the ancient “scrapers” by the most simple means possible, and

without the aid of any metallic appliances, there is every probability

that identically the same means were employed of old. Now, I have found

by experiment that, taking a flake of flint (made, I may remark, with

a stone hammer, consisting of a flint or quartzite pebble held in the

hand), and placing it, with the flat face upwards, on a smooth block of

stone, I can, by successive blows of the pebble, chip the end of the

flake without any difficulty into the desired form. The face of the

stone hammer is brought to |37| bear a slight distance only within

the margin of the flake, and, however sharp the blow administered, the

smooth block of stone on which the flake is placed, and which of course

projects beyond it, acts as a stop to prevent the hammer being carried

forward so as to injure the form, and brings it up sharply, directly it

has done its work of striking off a splinter from the end of the flake.

The upper face of the flake remains quite uninjured, and, strange as

it may appear, there is no difficulty in producing the evenly circular

edge of the scraper by successive blows of the convex pebble.

Some of the other ancient tools and weapons, having one flat face,

seem to have been fashioned in much the same manner. In the case of

arrow-heads and lance-heads, however, another process would appear to

have been adopted. It is true that we know not exactly how

“the ancient arrow-maker

Made his arrow-heads of sandstone,

Arrow-heads of chalcedony,

Arrow-heads of flint and jasper,

Smooth and sharpened at the edges,

Hard and polished, keen and costly.”

And yet the process of making such arrow-heads is carried on at the

present day by various half-civilized peoples, and has been witnessed

by many Europeans, though but few have accurately recorded their

observations. Sir Edward Belcher[117] who had seen obsidian arrow-heads

made by the Indians of California, and those of chert or flint by the

Eskimos of Cape Lisburne, states that the mode pursued in each case

was exactly similar. The instrument employed among the Eskimos, which

may be termed an “arrow-flaker,” usually consists of a handle formed

of fossil ivory, curved at one end for the purpose of being firmly

held, and having at the other end a slit, like that for the lead in

our pencils, in which is placed a slip of the point of the horn of a

reindeer, which is found to be harder and more stubborn than ivory.

This is secured in its place by a strong thong of leather or plaited

sinew, put on wet, which on drying becomes very rigid. A representation

of one of these instruments, in the Blackmore Museum at Salisbury, is

given in Fig. 8. Another in the Christy Collection[118] is shown in

Fig. 9. Another form of |38| instrument of this kind, but in which

the piece of horn is mounted in a wooden handle, is shown in Fig. 10,

from an original in the same collection from Kotzebue Gulf. The bench

on which the arrow-heads are made is said to consist of a log of wood,

in which a spoon-shaped cavity is cut; over this the flake of chert

is placed, and then, by pressing the “arrow-flaker” gently along the

margin vertically, first on one side and then on the other, as one

would set a saw, alternate fragments are splintered off until the

object thus properly outlined presents the spear or arrow-head form,

with two cutting serrated sides. |39|

[Illustration: Fig. 8.—Eskimo Arrow-flaker. 1∕2]

[Illustration: Fig. 9.—Eskimo Arrow-flaker. 1∕2]

[Illustration: Fig. 10.—Eskimo Arrow-flaker. 1∕2]

Sir Edward Belcher some years ago kindly explained the process to me,

and showed me both the implements used, and the objects manufactured.

It appears that the flake from which the arrow-head is to be made is

sometimes fixed by means of a cord in a split piece of wood so as to

hold it firmly, and that all the large surface flaking is produced

either by blows direct from the hammer, or through an intermediate

punch or set formed of reindeer horn. The arrow-or harpoon-head

thus roughly chipped out is afterwards finished by means of the

“arrow-flaker.”

The process in use at the present day among the Indians of Mexico in

making their arrows is described in a somewhat different manner by

Signor Craveri, who lived sixteen years in Mexico, and who gave the

account to Mr. C. H. Chambers.[119] He relates that when the Indians

wish to make an arrow-head or other instrument of a piece of obsidian,

they take the piece in the left hand, and hold grasped in the other

a small goat’s horn; they set the piece of stone upon the horn, and

dexterously pressing it against the point of it, while they give the

horn a gentle movement from right to left, and up and down, they

disengage from it frequent chips, and in this way obtain the desired

form. M. F. de Pourtalès[120] speaks of a small notch in the end of

the bone into which the edge of the flake is inserted, and a chip

broken off from it by a sideways blow. Mr. T. R. Peale[121] describes

the manufacture of arrow-heads among the Shasta and North California

Indians, as being effected by means of a notched horn, as a glazier

chips glass. This has also been fully described and illustrated by

Mr. Paul Schumacher[122] of San Francisco. Major Powell confirms this

account.

The Cloud River Indians[123] and the Fuegians,[124] also fashion their

arrow-heads by pressure. Mr. Cushing[125] has described the process and

claims to be the first civilized man who flaked an arrow-head with horn

tools. This was in 1875. I had already done so and had described the

method at the Norwich Congress in 1868.

The late Mr. Christy,[126] in a paper on the Cave-dwellers of |40|

Southern France, gave an account, furnished to him by Sir Charles

Lyell, of the process of making stone arrow-heads by the Shasta Indians

of California who still commonly use them, which slightly differs from

that of Mr. Peale. This account by Mr. Caleb Lyon runs as follows:—“The

Indian seated himself upon the floor, and, laying the stone anvil

upon his knee, with one blow of his agate chisel he separated the

obsidian pebble into two parts, then giving a blow to the fractured

side he split off a slab a quarter of an inch in thickness. Holding

the piece against his anvil with the thumb and finger of his left

hand, he commenced a series of continuous blows, every one of which

chipped off fragments of the brittle substance. It gradually seemed to

acquire shape. After finishing the base of the arrow-head (the whole

being little over an inch in length), he began striking gentle blows,

every one of which I expected would break it in pieces. Yet such was

his adroit application, his skill and dexterity, that in little over

an hour he produced a perfect obsidian arrow-head. . . . . No sculptor

ever handled a chisel with greater precision, or more carefully

measured the weight and effect of every blow than did this ingenious

Indian; for even among them, arrow-making is a distinct profession,

in which few attain excellence.” Dr. Rau[127] has, however, pointed

out that this account of the manufacture requires confirmation; but

Mr. Wyeth[128] states that the Indians on the Snake River form their

arrow-heads of obsidian by laying one edge of the flake on a hard

stone, and striking the other edge with another hard stone; and that

many are broken when nearly finished and are thrown away.

Captain John Smith,[129] writing in 1606 of the Indians of Virginia,

says, “His arrow-head he maketh quickly with a little bone, which he

ever weareth at his bracert,[130] of any splint of stone or glasse in

the form of a heart, and these they glew to the end of their arrowes.

With the sinewes of deer and the tops of deers’ horns boiled to a

jelly, they make a glue which will not dissolve in cold water.”

Beyond the pin of bone already mentioned, as having been found in

one of the pits at Grime’s Graves, I am not aware of any bone or

horn implements of precisely this character, having |41| been as

yet discovered in Europe; but hammers of stag’s horn and detached

tines have frequently been found in connection with worked flints,

and may have served in their manufacture. I have, moreover, remarked

among the worked flints discovered in this country, and especially

in Yorkshire, a number of small tools, the ends of which present a

blunted, worn, and rounded appearance, as if from attrition against

a hard substance. These tools are usually from 2 to 4 inches long,

and made from large thick flakes, with the cutting edges removed by

chipping; but occasionally, they are carefully finished implements of a

pointed oval or a subtriangular section, and sometimes slightly curved

longitudinally. Of these, illustrations will be given at a subsequent

page. They are usually well adapted for being held in the hand, and I

cannot but think that we have in them some of the tools which were used

in the preparation of flint arrow-heads and other small instruments.

I have tried the experiment with a large flake of flint used as the

arrow-flaker, both unmounted and mounted in a wooden handle, and have

succeeded in producing with it very passable imitations of ancient

arrow-heads, both leaf-shaped and barbed. The flake of flint on which I

have operated has been placed against a stop on a flat piece of wood,

and when necessary to raise the edge of the flake I have placed a small

blocking piece, also of wood, underneath it, and then by pressure of

the arrow-flaker upon the edge of the flake, have detached successive

splinters until I have reduced it into form. If the tool consists of

a rather square-ended flake, one corner may rest upon the table of

wood, and the pressure be given by a rocking action, bringing the

other corner down upon the flake. In cutting the notches in barbed

arrow-heads, this was probably the plan adopted, as I was surprised

to find how easily this seemingly difficult part of the process was

effected. Serration of the edges may be produced by the same means.

The edges of the arrow-heads made entirely with these flint

arrow-flakers are, however, more obtuse and rounded than those of

ancient specimens, so that probably these flint tools were used rather

for removing slight irregularities in the form than for the main

chipping out. This latter process, I find experimentally, can be best

performed by means of a piece of stag’s horn, used much in the same way

as practised by the Eskimos. By supporting the flake of flint which is

to be converted into an arrow-head against a wooden stop, and pressing

the horn against the edge of the |42| flake, the flint enters slightly

into the body of the horn; then bringing the pressure to bear sideways,

minute splinters can be detached, and the arrow-head formed by degrees

in this manner without much risk of breaking. Not only can the

leaf-shaped forms be produced, but the barbed arrow-heads, both with

and without the central stem. The leaf-shaped arrow-heads are, however,

the most easy to manufacture, and this simple form was probably that

earliest in use. The counterfeit arrow-heads made by the notorious

Flint Jack are of rude work, and were probably made with a light hammer

of iron. Of late years (1895) a far more skilful workman at Mildenhall

has produced imitations which can hardly be distinguished from genuine

arrow-heads. He keeps his process of manufacture secret.

Among many tribes[131] of America, arrow-making is said to have been

a trade confined to a certain class, who possessed the traditional

knowledge of the process of manufacture; and it can hardly be expected

that a mere novice like myself should be able at once to attain the

art. I may, therefore, freely confess that, though by the use of stag’s

horn the ordinary surface-chipping characteristic of ancient implements

may be obtained, yet the method of producing the even fluting, like

ripple-marks, by detaching parallel splinters uniform in size, and

extending almost across the surface of a lance- or arrow-head is at

present a mystery to me; as is also the method by which the delicate

ornamentation on the handles of Danish flint daggers was produced. It

seems, however, possible that by pressing the flint to be operated

upon on some close-fitting elastic body at the time of removing the

minute flakes, the line of fracture may be carried along a considerable

distance over the surface of the flint, before coming to an end by

reason of the dislodged flake breaking off or terminating. It is also

possible that the minute and elegant ornaments may have been produced

by the use of a pointed tooth of some animal as a punch. Mr. F. C.

J. Spurrell,[132] in an interesting article, has suggested that the

final flaking was effected after the blades had been ground to a

smooth surface, in the same manner as the flaking on some of the most

symmetrical Egyptian blades. His view appears to be correct, at all

events so far as certain parts of some Danish blades are concerned.

It seems, however, very doubtful whether any such general practice

prevailed. I have seen a delicate lance-head |43| 6 inches long, of

triangular section, with the broad face polished and the two other

faces exquisitely fluted. In this case also the faces may have been

ground before fluting. This blade was found in a cavern at Sourdes, in

the Landes, and was in the collection of M. Chaplain-Duparc.

With regard to the process of grinding or polishing flint and other

stone implements not much need be said. I may, however, refer the

reader to Wilde’s Catalogue[133] of the Museum of the Royal Irish

Academy, for an account of the different processes. In all cases the

grindstone on which they were polished was fixed and not rotatory, and

in nearly all cases the striæ running along the stone hatchets are

longitudinal, thus proving that they were rubbed lengthways and not

crossways on the grinding-bed. This is a criterion of some service in

detecting modern forgeries. The grinding-stones met with in Denmark

and Scandinavia are generally of compact sandstone or quartzite, and

are usually of two forms—flat slabs, often worn hollow by use, and

polygonal prisms smallest in the middle, these latter having frequently

hollow facets in which gouges or the more convex-faced hatchets might

be ground, and sometimes rounded ridges such as would grind the hollow

part of gouges. From the coarse striation on the body of most flint

hatchets, especially the large ones, it would appear that they were

not ground immediately on such fine-grained stones, but that some

coarse and hard grit must have been used to assist the action of the

grindstone. M. Morlot[134] thought that some mechanical pressure was

also used to aid in the operation, and that the hatchet to be ground

was weighted in some manner, possibly by means of a lever. In grinding

and polishing the hollowed faces of different forms of stone axes, it

would appear that certain rubbers formed of stone were used, probably

in conjunction with sand. These will be more particularly described

in a subsequent page. The surface of hard rocks or of large boulders

fixed in the ground was often used for the purpose of grinding stone

implements. Instances will be given hereafter.

Closely allied to the process of grinding is that of sawing

stone. It is however rarely, if ever, that in this country any

of the stone implements show signs of having been reduced into

shape by this process. Among the small hatchets in fibrolite, so

common in the Auvergne and in the south of France, and among the

greenstone, and especially the nephrite celts found in the |44| Swiss

Pfahlbauten,[135] many show evident traces of having been partially

fashioned by means of sawing. I have also remarked it on a specimen

from Portugal, and on many fibrolite hatchets from Spain.[136] Dr.

Keller has noticed the process, and suggests that the incisions on the

flat surface of the stone chosen for the purpose of being converted

into a celt were made sometimes on one side, and sometimes on both, by

means of a sharp saw-like tool. He has since[137] gone more deeply into

the question, and has suggested that the stone to be sawn was placed

on the ground near a tree, and then sawn by means of a splinter of

flint fixed in the end of a staff, which at its other end was forked,

and as it were hinged under one of the boughs of the tree sufficiently

flexible to give pressure to the flint when a weight was suspended from

it. The staff was, he supposed, to have been grasped in the hand, and

moved backwards and forwards while water was applied to the flint to

facilitate the sawing. The objection to this suggestion is, that in

case of the flint being brought to the edge of the stone it would be

liable to be driven into the ground by the weight on the bough, and

thus constantly hinder the operation; nevertheless some such mechanical

aids in sawing may have been in use.

M. Troyon[138] considered that the blade of flint was used in

connection with sand as well as water. This latter view appears, at

first sight, far more probable, as the sawing instrument has in some

instances cut nearly 3∕4 of an inch into the stone, which, it would

seem, could hardly have been accomplished with a simple flint saw; and

the sides of the saw-kerf or notch show, moreover, parallel striæ,

as if resulting from the use of sand. The objection that at first

occurred to my mind against regarding the sawing instrument as having

been of flint was of a negative character only, and arose from my not

having seen in any of the Swiss collections any flint flakes that had

indisputably been used for sawing by means of sand. At one time I

fancied, from the character of the bottom and sides of the notches,

that a string stretched like that of a bow might have been used with

sand in the manner in which, according to Oviedo,[139] the American

Indians sawed in two their iron fetters, and I succeeded in cutting

off the |45| end of an ancient Swiss hatchet of hard steatite by this

means. I found, however, that the bottom of the kerf thus formed was

convex longitudinally, whereas in the ancient examples it was slightly

concave. It is therefore evident that whatever was used as the saw must

have been of a comparatively unyielding nature, and probably shorter

than the pebble or block of stone it was used to saw, for even the iron

blades used in conjunction with sand and water by modern masons become

concave by wear, and, therefore, the bottom of the kerf they produce

is convex longitudinally. I accordingly made some further experiments,

and this time upon a fragment of a greenstone celt of such hardness

that it would readily scratch window-glass. I found, however, that

with a flint flake I was able to work a groove along it, and that

whether I used sand or no, my progress was equally certain, though it

must be confessed, very slow. I am indeed doubtful whether the flint

did not produce most effect without the sand, as the latter to become

effective requires a softer body in which it may become embedded; while

by working with the points and projections in the slightly notched

edge of the flake, its scratching action soon discoloured the water in

the notch. What was most remarkable, and served in a great measure to

discredit the negative evidence to which I before referred, was that

the edges of the flake when not used with sand showed but slight traces

of wear or polish.

On the whole, I am inclined to think that both the Swiss antiquaries

are in the right, and that the blocks of stone were sawn both with

and without sand, by means of flint flakes, but principally of strips

of wood and bone used in conjunction with sand.[140] The reader may

consult Munro’s Lake-Dwellings, 1890, p. 505.

Professor Flinders Petrie, in addition to the flint implements of the

“New Race,” which he discovered near Abydos, found a number of stone

implements at Kahun, and Mr. F. C. J. Spurrell has contributed to

his[141] book an interesting chapter on their character and the method

of their manufacture.

Most of the jade implements from New Zealand and N.W. America have

been partially shaped by sawing, and in the British Museum is a large

block of jade from the former country deeply grooved by sawing, and

almost ready to be split, so as to be of the |46| right thickness for a

_mere_. The natives[142] use stone hammers for chipping, flakes of trap

or of some other hard rock for sawing, and blocks of sandstone and a

micaceous rock for grinding and polishing. Obsidian is said to be used

for boring jade. I have a flat piece of jade, apparently part of a thin

hatchet, on one face of which two notches have been sawn converging at

an angle of 135° and marking out what when detached and ground would

have formed a curved ear-ring. It was given me by the late Mr. H. N.

Moseley, who brought it from New Zealand.

There is another peculiarity to be seen in some of the greenstone

hatchets and perforated axes, of which perhaps the most characteristic

examples occur in Switzerland, though the same may occasionally be

observed in British specimens. It is that the blocks of stone have

been reduced into form, not only by chipping with a hammer, as is the

case with flint hatchets, but by working upon the surface with some

sort of pick or chisel, which was not improbably formed of flint.

In some instances, where the hatchets were intended for insertion

into sockets of stag’s horn or other materials, their butt-end was

purposely roughened by means of a pick after the whole surface had been

polished. Instances of this roughening are common in Switzerland, rare

in France, and rarer still in England. The greenstone hatchet found

in a gravel-pit near Malton[143] (Fig. 81) has its butt-end roughened

in this manner. The shaft-holes in some few perforated axes appear

to have been worked out by means of such picks or chisels, the hole

having been bored from opposite sides of the axe, and generally with a

gradually decreasing diameter. In some rare instances the perforation

is oval. The cup, or funnel-shaped depressions, in some hammer-stones

seem to have been made in a similar manner. The inner surface of

the shaft holes in perforated axes is also frequently ground, and

occasionally polished. This has in most cases been effected by turning

a cylindrical grinder within the hole; though in some few instances the

grinding instrument has been rubbed backwards and forwards in the hole

after the manner of a file. M. Franck de Truguet,[144] of Treytel, in

Switzerland, thinks he has found in a lake-dwelling an instrument used

for finishing and enlarging the holes. It is a fragment of sandstone

about 2 1∕2 inches long, and rounded on one face, which is worn by

friction.

But, besides the mode of chipping out the shaft-hole in |47|

perforated implements, several other methods were employed, especially

in the days when the use of bronze was known, to which period most of

the highly-finished perforated axes found in this country are to be

referred. In some cases it would appear that, after chipping out a

recess so as to form a guide for the boring tool, the perforation was

effected by giving a rotatory motion, either constant or intermittent,

to the tool. I have, indeed, seen some specimens in which, from the

marks visible in the hole, I am inclined to think a metallic drill

was used. But whether, where metal was not employed, and no central

core, as subsequently mentioned, was left in the hole, the boring tool

was of flint, and acted like a drill, or whether it was a round stone

used in conjunction with sand, as suggested by the late Sir Daniel

Wilson[145] and Sir W. Wilde,[146] so that the hole was actually ground

away, it is impossible to say. I have never seen any flint tools that

could unhesitatingly be referred to this use; but Herr Grewingk, in

his “Steinalter der Ostseeprovinzen,”[147] mentions several implements

in the form of truncated cones, which he regards as boring-tools

(_Bohrstempel_), used for perforating stone axes and hammers. He

suggests the employment of a drill-bow to make them revolve, and thinks

that, in some cases, the boring tools were fixed, and the axe itself

caused to revolve. Not having seen the specimens, I cannot pronounce

upon them; but the fact that several of these conical pieces show

signs of fracture at the base, and that they are all of the same kinds

of stone (diorite, augite, porphyry, and syenite) as those of which

the stone axes of the district are made, is suggestive of their being

merely the cores, resulting from boring with a tube, in the manner

about to be described, in some cases from each face of the axe, and in

others where the base of the cone is smooth, from one face only. One of

these central cores found in Lithuania is figured by Mortillet,[148]

and is regarded by him as being probably the result of boring by means

of a metal tube; others, from Switzerland, presumably of the Stone Age,

are cited by Keller.[149] Bellucci[150] thinks that he has found them

in Northern Italy.

Worsaae[151] has suggested that in early times the boring may have

been effected with a pointed stick and sand and water; and, |48|

indeed, if any grinding process was used, it is a question whether some

softer substance, such as wood, in which the sand or abrasive material

could become imbedded, would not be more effective than flint. By way

of experiment I bored a hole through the Swiss hatchet of steatite

before mentioned, and I found that in that case a flint flake could be

used as a sort of drill; but that for grinding, a stick of elder was

superior to both flint and bone, inasmuch as it formed a better bed for

the sand.

Professor Rau, of New York, has made some interesting experiments in

boring stone by means of a drilling-stock and sand, which are described

in the “Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institute for 1868.”[152]

He operated on a piece of hard diorite an inch and three-eighths in

thickness, and employed as a drilling agent a wooden wand of ash, or

at times, of pine, in conjunction with sharp quartz sand. Attached to

the wand was a heavy disc, to act as a fly-wheel, and an alternating

rotatory motion was obtained by means of a bow and cord attached at its

centre to the apex of the drilling-stock, and giving motion to it after

the manner of a “pump-drill,” such as is used by the Dacotahs[153] and

Iroquois[154] for producing fire by friction, or what is sometimes

called the Chinese drill. So slow was the process, that two hours of

constant drilling added, on an average, not more than the thickness of

an ordinary lead-pencil line to the depth of the hole.

The use of a drill of some form or other, to which rotatory motion in

alternate directions was communicated by means of a cord, is of great

antiquity. We find it practised with the ordinary bow by the ancient

Egyptians;[155] and Ulysses is described by Homer[156] as drilling out

the eye of the Cyclops by means of a stake with a thong of leather

wound round it, and pulled alternately at each end, “like a shipwright

boring timber.” The “fire-drill,” for producing fire by friction, which

is precisely analogous to the ordinary drill, is, or was, in use in

most parts of the world. Among the Aleutian Islanders the thong-drill,

and among the New Zealanders a modification of it, is used for boring

holes in stone. Those who wish to see more on the subject must consult

Tylor’s “Early History of Mankind”[157] and a “Study of the Primitive

Methods of Drilling,”[158] by Mr. J. D. McGuire. |49|

Professor Carl Vogt[159] has suggested that the small roundels of

stone (like Worsaae, “Afb.” No. 86) too large to have been used as

spindle-whorls, which are occasionally found in Denmark, may have been

the fly-wheels of vertical pump-drills, used for boring stone tools.

They may, however, be heads of war-maces.

In the case of some of the unfinished and broken axes found in the

Swiss lakes, and even in some of the objects made of stag’s horn,[160]

there is a projecting core[161] at the bottom of the unfinished hole.

This is also often seen in[162] Scandinavian and German specimens.

Dr. Keller has shown that this core indicates the employment of some

kind of tube as a boring tool; as indeed had been pointed out so long

ago as 1832 by Gutsmuths,[163] who, in his paper “Wie durchbohrte

der alte Germane seine Streitaxt?” suggested that a copper or bronze

tube was used in conjunction with powdered quartz, or sand and water.

In the Klemm collection, formerly at Dresden, is a bronze tube, five

inches long and three quarters of an inch in diameter, found near

Camenz, in Saxony, which its late owner regarded[164] as one of the

boring tools used in the manufacture of stone axes. This is now in the

British Museum, but does not appear to me to have been employed for

such a purpose. The Danish antiquaries[165] have arrived at the same

conclusion as to tubes being used for boring. Von Estorff[166] goes so

far as to say that the shaft-holes are in some cases so regular and

straight, and their inner surface so smooth, that they can only have

been bored by means of a metallic cylinder and emery. Lindenschmit[167]

considers the boring to have been effected either by means of a hard

stone, or a plug of hard wood with sand and water, or else, in some

cases, by means of a metallic tube, as described by Gutsmuths. He

engraves some specimens, in which the commencement of the hole, instead

of being a mere depression, is a sunk ring. Similar specimens are

mentioned by Lisch.[168] Dr. Keller’s translator, Mr. Lee, cites a

friend as suggesting the |50| employment of a hollow stick, such as a

piece of elder, for the boring tool. My experience confirms this; but

I found that the coarse sand was liable to clog and accumulate in the

hollow part of the stick, and thus grind away the top of the core. If I

had used finer sand this probably would not have been the case.

Mr. Rose[169] has suggested the use of a hollow bone; but, as already

observed, I found bone less effective than wood, in consequence of its

not being so good a medium for carrying the sand.

Mr. Sehested,[170] however, who carried out a series of interesting

experiments in grinding, sawing, and boring stone implements, found dry

sand better than wet, and a bone of lamb better than either elder or

cow’s-horn for boring.

Most of the holes drilled in the stone instruments and pipes of North

America appear to have been produced by hollow drills, which Professor

Rau[171] suggests may have been formed of a hard and tough cane, the

_Arundinaria macrosperma_, which grows abundantly in the southern parts

of the United States. He finds reason for supposing that the Indian

workmen were acquainted with the ordinary form of drill driven by a

pulley and bow. The tubes of steatite, one foot in length, found in

some of the minor mounds of the Ohio Valley,[172] must probably have

been bored with metal.

Dr. Keller, after making some experiments with a hollow bone and

quartz-sand, tried a portion of ox-horn, which he found surprisingly

more effective, the sand becoming embedded in the horn and acting like

a file. He comments on the absence of any bronze tubes that could

have been used for boring in this manner, and on the impossibility of

making flint tools for the purpose. The perishable nature of ox-horn

accounts for its absence in the Lake settlements.[173] On the whole

this suggestion appears to me the most reasonable. Experiments have

also been made in boring with stag’s-horn.[174]

M. Troyon[175] considered that these holes were not bored by means of

a hollow cylinder, inasmuch as this would not produce so conical an

opening, and he thought that the axe was made to revolve in some sort

of lathe, while the boring was effected by |51| means of a bronze

tool used in conjunction with sand and water. He mentions some stone

axes found in Bohemia, and in the collection of the Baron de Neuberg,

at Prague, which have so little space left between the body of the axe

and the central cores, that in his opinion they must have been bored

by means of a metal point and not of a hollow cylinder. Mortillet[176]

thinks that some of the Swiss axes were bored in a similar manner. The

small holes for suspension, drilled through some of the Danish celts,

he thinks were drilled with a pointed stone.[177] Not having seen the

specimens cited by M. Troyon, I am unable to offer any opinion upon

them; but it appears to me very doubtful whether anything in character

like a lathe was known at the early period to which the perforated

axes belong, for were such an appliance in use we should probably

find it extended to the manufacture of pottery in the shape of the

potter’s wheel, whereas the contemporary pottery is all hand-made. M.

Desor,[178] though admitting that a hollow metallic tube would have

afforded the best means of drilling these holes, is inclined to refer

the axes to a period when the use of metals was unknown. He suggests

that thin flakes of flint may have been fastened round a stick and

thus used to bore the hole, leaving a solid core in the middle. I do

not however think that such a method is practicable. In some of the

Swiss[179] specimens in which the boring is incomplete there is a

small hole in advance of the larger, so that the section is like that

of a trifoliated Gothic arch. In this case the borer would appear to

have somewhat resembled a centre-bit or pin-drill. In others[180] the

holes are oval, and must have been much modified after they were first

bored. The process of boring holes of large diameter in hard rocks

such as diorite and basalt by means of tubes was in common use among

the Egyptians. These tubes are supposed to have been made of bronze,

and corundum to have been employed with them. Professor Flinders

Petrie[181] has suggested that they had jewelled edges like the modern

diamond crown drill, and that they could penetrate diorite at the rate

of one inch in depth for 27 feet of forward motion. I think, however,

that this is an over-estimate. Saws of the same kind were also used.

Kirchner,[182] the ingenious but perverse author of “Thor’s

Donnerkeil,” considers that steel boring tools must have been used

|52| for the shaft-holes in stone axes; and even Nilsson,[183] who

comments on the rarity of the axes with the central core in the holes,

is inclined to refer them to the Iron Age. He[184] considers it an

impossibility to bore “such holes” with a wooden pin and wet sand, and

is no doubt right, if he means that a wooden pin would not leave a core

standing in the centre of the hole.

The drilling the holes through the handles of the New Zealand[185]

_meres_ is stated to be a very slow process, but effected by means of a

wetted stick dipped in emery powder. I have seen one in which the hole

was unfinished, and was only represented by a conical depression on

each face.

In some stones, however, such holes can be readily bored with wood

and sand; and in all cases where the stone to be worked upon can be

scratched by sand, the boring by means of wood is possible, given

sufficient time, and the patience of a savage.

To what a degree this extends may be estimated by what Lafitau[186]

says of the North American Indians sometimes spending their whole life

in making a stone tomahawk without entirely finishing it; and by the

years spent by members of tribes on the Rio Negro[187] in perforating

cylinders of rock crystal, by twirling a flexible leaf-shoot of wild

plantain between the hands, and thus grinding the hole with the aid of

sand and water. The North American[188] tobacco-pipes of stone were

more easily bored, but for them also a reed in conjunction with sand

and water seems to have been employed.

On the whole, we may conclude that the holes were bored in various

manners, of which the principal were—

1. By chiselling, or picking with a sharp stone.

2. By grinding with a solid grinder, probably of wood.

3. By grinding with a tubular grinder, probably of ox-horn.

4. By drilling with a stone drill.

5. By drilling with a metallic drill.

Holes produced by any of these means could, of course, receive their

final polish by grinding.

With regard to the external shaping of the perforated stone axes

not much need be said. They appear to have been in some |53| cases

wrought into shape by means of a pick or chisel, and subsequently

ground; in other cases to have been fashioned almost exclusively by

grinding. In some of the axe-hammers made of compact quartzite, the

form of the pebble from which they have been made has evidently given

the general contour, in the same manner as has been observed on some

fibrolite hatchets, which have been made by sawing a flat pebble in two

longitudinally, and then sharpening the end, or ends, the rest of the

surface being left unaltered in form. This is also the case with some

stone hatchets, to form which a suitable pebble has been selected, and

one end ground to an edge.

Such is a general review of the more usual processes adopted in

the manufacture of stone implements in prehistoric times, which I

have thought it best should precede the account of the implements

themselves. I can hardly quit the subject without just mentioning that

here, as elsewhere, we find traces of improvement and progress, both in

adapting forms to the ends they had to subserve, and in the manner of

treating the stubborn materials of which these implements were made.

Such progress may not have been, and probably was not, uniform, even

in any one country; and, indeed, there are breaks in the chronology of

stone implements which it is hard to fill up; but any one comparing,

for instance, the exquisitely made axe-hammers and delicately chipped

flint arrow-heads of the Bronze Age, with the rude implements of the

Palæolithic Period—neatly chipped as some of these latter are—cannot

but perceive the advances that had been made in skill, and in

adaptation of means to ends. If, for the sake of illustration, we

divide the lapse of time embraced between these two extremes into four

Periods, it appears—

1. That in the Palæolithic, River-gravel, or Drift Period, implements

were fashioned by chipping only, and not ground or polished. The

material used in Europe was, moreover, as far as at present known,

mainly flint, chert, or quartzite.

2. That in the Reindeer or Cavern Period of Central France, though

grinding was almost if not quite unused, except in finishing bone

instruments, yet greater skill in flaking flint and in working up

flakes into serviceable tools was exhibited. In some places, as at

Laugerie-haute, surface-chipping is found on the flint arrow-heads, and

cup-shaped recesses have been worked in other hard stones than flint,

though no other stones have been used for cutting purposes. |54|

3. That in the Neolithic or Surface Stone Period of Western Europe,

other materials besides flint were largely used for the manufacture

of hatchets; grinding at the edge and on the surface was generally

practised, and the art of flaking flint by pressure from the edge

was probably known. The stone axes, at least in Britain, were rarely

perforated.

4. That in the Bronze Period such stone implements, with the exception

of mere flakes and scrapers, as remained in use, were, as a rule,

highly finished, many of the axes being perforated and of graceful

form, and some of the flint arrow-heads evincing the highest degree of

manual skill. The subsequent manufacture of stone implements in Roman

and later times needs no further mention.

Having said thus much on the methods by which the stone implements of

antiquity were manufactured, I pass on to the consideration of their

different forms, commencing with those of the Neolithic Age, and with

the form which is perhaps the best known in all countries—the celt.

|55|

IMPLEMENTS OF THE NEOLITHIC PERIOD.