Chapter 5
Part 5
As to the stone celt discovered at Ash, Mr. Douglas remarks it may not “be improbable that this stone instrument was deposited with the dead, as an amulet; and which the owner had found and preserved with a superstitious reverence.” In a tumulus in Flanders,[473] six celts were found placed upright in a circle round the interment, but from the difference in the condition of their surface they appeared to be of different ages, so that it has been suggested that they also were gathered from the surface of the soil and placed in the tomb as amulets. We shall subsequently see that flint arrow-heads were frequently thus preserved in Merovingian cemeteries.
In many cases in Germany,[474] stone axes, for the most part perforated, are said to have been found in association with objects of iron; but the proofs of the contemporaneity of the two classes of objects are not satisfactory. The religious veneration attaching to the Thor’s hammers may, however, have had to do with their interment in graves, at a time when they had ceased to be in ordinary use. Moreover, the axes may have been preserved to ward off lightning.
Another argument in favour of these instruments having remained in use in Britain until a comparatively late period, has been derived from the circumstance of the words _stan-æx_ and _stan-bill_, occurring in Ælfric’s Saxon glossary. These words are translated by Lye[475] as a stone axe, a stone bill—terms which have naturally been regarded as referring to axes and bills made of stone, which, therefore, it might be reasonably inferred were in use at the time when the glossary was written, or about A.D. 1000. On examination, however, it appears that no such inference is warranted. The glossary is Latin with the Saxon equivalents annexed to each word, and the two words referred to are |146| _Bipennis_, rendered _twibille_ and _stan-æx_; and Marra, rendered _stan-bill_. Now _Bipennis_ is an axe cutting at either end, and the word is accurately rendered by “twibille;”[476]—the axe having “bill” or steel at its two edges. But a double-cutting axe in stone is a form of very rare occurrence, and this alone raises a presumption of the _stan_ in _stan-æx_ referring to stone in some other manner than as the material of which the axe was made. The second word, _Marra_, seems to clear up the question, for this was a mattock or pick-axe, or some such tool, and this is rendered _stan-bill_,—the steel for use on or among stones. The stone axe may be one for cutting stones, like the mill-bill of the present day, which is used for dressing mill-stones, and this being usually sharp at each end, might not inaptly be regarded as the equivalent of the ancient _bipennis_. An axe is still a bricklayer’s tool, and is also occasionally used by stone-cutters. It seems, then, that the “_stan_” in these two Saxon words refers, not to the material of which the axes or bills were made, but to the stones on or among which they were used. In Halliwell’s “Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words,”[477] the interpretation of Stone-axe is given as “A stone-worker’s axe,” but it is not stated where the term occurs.
In the “_Matériaux_”[478] M. Soreil has called attention to a very early German poem, possibly of the fifth century, in which the heroes are described as contending with stone axes. The subject has been discussed by Dr. Much,[479] who suggests that the name survived long after the actual use of the weapons, and points out that the modern word Hellebarde (halberd) has the same meaning, _hella_ in Old German signifying “stone,” and _barte_ being still used to signify an “axe” or “chopper.” He also hints at a connection between the _scrama-seax_ or large knife, with _saxum_. The whole paper is worth reading.
In the Song of Hildebrand and Hadubrand, probably of the eighth century, stone hammers, _staim-borts_, are also mentioned.
“Do stoptun tosamane staimbort chludun Hewun harmlicco huitte scilti.”[480]
The passage in “William of Poitiers,”[481]—“Jactant cuspides ac |147| diversorum generum tela, sævissimas quasque secures ac lignis imposita saxa,”—which has been cited as proving that some of the Anglo-Saxons fought with weapons of stone at the battle of Hastings, seems only to refer to stone missiles probably discharged from some engines of war, and serving the same purpose as the stone cannon-balls of more recent times. Professor Nilsson[482] has pointed out that _jactare_ often signifies to brandish, and argues that the large stone axes were too heavy either for brandishing or throwing as weapons. It seems to me, however, that _jactare_ in this passage is used in the sense of throwing, the same as in Virgil,[483]—
“Deucalion vacuum lapides jactavit in orbem, Unde homines nati, durum genus.”
If it be uncertain to how late a period these Neolithic implements remained in use in this country, it is still more uncertain to how early a period their introduction may be referred. If we take the possible limits in either direction, the date at which they fell into disuse becomes approximately fixed as compared with that at which they may first have come into use in Britain. For we may safely say that the use of bronze must have been known in this country 500 or 600 years B.C., and, therefore, that at that time cutting tools of stone began to be superseded; while by A.D. 1100, it will be agreed on all hands that they were no longer in use. We can, therefore, absolutely fix the date of their desuetude within at the outside two thousand years; but who can tell within any such limits the time when a people acquainted with the use of polished stone implements first settled in this island, or when the process of grinding them may have been first developed among native tribes? The long duration of the period which intervened between the deposit of the River-gravels (containing, so far as at present known, implements chipped only and not polished), and the first appearance of polished hatchets, is not in this country so well illustrated as in France; but even there, all that can be said as to the introduction of polished stone hatchets, is that it took place subsequently to the accumulation in the caves of the south of France, of the deposits belonging to an age when reindeer constituted one of the principal articles of food of the cave-dwellers. As to the date at which those cave-deposits were formed, history and tradition are silent, and at present even Geology affords but little aid in determining the question. |148|
But though we cannot fix the range in time of these implements, it will be well to notice some of the circumstances under which they have been found, if only as illustrative of the habits and customs of the ancient people who used them. Of course the most instructive cases are those in which they have occurred with interments, and some of these I have already incidentally mentioned; as, for instance, the discovery in a barrow on Upton Lovel Down of a roughly chipped celt, with others polished at the edge, and other objects; and that of two very roughly chipped flint celts found by Dr. Mantell, in a barrow at Alfriston, Sussex.
* * * * *
A celt of greenstone, ground at the edge only, was found in a barrow with a burnt body on Seamer Moor, Yorkshire, by the Rev. F. Porter; and in another[484] barrow on the same moor, Canon Greenwell found a celt of clay-slate, like Fig. 50, burnt red, in association with a deposit of burnt bones. In a third tumulus on the same moor, opened by the late Lord Londesborough, there were numerous interments, but one of these consisted of a small portion of human bones,[485] four flint celts, five beautifully formed arrow-heads of flint, two rude spear-heads of flint, two well-formed knives and spear-heads of flint, two very large tusks of the wild boar, and a piece of deer-horn, perforated at the end and drilled through, which was thought to be the handle for one of the celts.
In these three instances the polished celts accompany interments by cremation, and probably belong to a late period of the Stone Age in Britain. They have, however, been frequently found with the remains of unburnt bodies. In one of the banks of an ancient settlement near Knook Castle, Upton Lovel, Sir R. Colt Hoare[486] discovered a skeleton with its head towards the north and at its feet a fine black celt. In a barrow about seven miles east of Pickering,[487] besides other interments is said to have been one of a skeleton with the head towards the south, and a “beautiful stone adze or celt, 3 1∕2 inches long, wrought in green basalt, and a very elaborately chipped spear of flint, near four inches long, near its right hand.”
In another barrow in the same district[488] the skeleton was accompanied by “a very small celt or chisel of grey flint, smoothly rubbed, and a plain spear-head of the same material.”
In another barrow on Elton Moor, Derbyshire,[489] there lay behind the skeleton a neatly ornamented “drinking cup,” containing three pebbles of quartz, a flat piece of polished iron ore, a small celt of flint, with a rounded instead of a cutting edge, a beautifully chipped cutting tool, twenty-one circular-ended instruments, and seventeen rude pieces of flint.
In Liffs Low, near Biggin,[490] Mr. Bateman found a skeleton in the |149| contracted position, and with it two flint celts beautifully chipped and polished at the cutting edges; two flint arrow-heads delicately chipped, two flint knives polished on the edge, and one of them serrated on the back to serve as a saw; numerous other objects of flint, some red ochre, a small earthenware cup, and a hammer-head of stag’s horn.
In Cross Low, near Parwich,[491] a fragment of a celt and a small piece of chipped flint were with a human skeleton in a cist; and a kind of flint axe or tomahawk is reported to have been similarly found in a barrow near Pickering.[492]
In the Gospel Hillock barrow, near Buxton, Captain Lukis, F.S.A., found near the shoulder of a contracted skeleton, a polished flint celt, of which an engraving is given in the _Reliquary_.[493]
In what appears to have been a tumulus at Seaford,[494] Sussex, celts both whole and broken, and other forms of worked flint, were found, but the account given of the exploration is rather confused.
It will be observed that in these cases stone celts accompany the earliest form of interment with which we are acquainted, that in which the body is deposited in the contracted position. The reason why bodies were interred in that posture appears to be that it was in all probability the usual attitude of sleep, at a period when the small cloak of the day must generally have served as the only covering at night.
In Scotland stone celts seem to be of frequent occurrence in cairns. I have one, already mentioned,[495] which is said to have been found with four others in a cairn on Druim-a-shi, near Culloden.
Three others, of which two have been already described,[496] were discovered in a cairn in Daviot parish, Inverness, together with a cylindrical implement, possibly a pestle, and are now in the National Museum at Edinburgh. Not improbably my specimen came from the same cairn.
Another[497] was found in the Cat’s Cairn, Cromartyshire. A second,[498] pointed at the butt, is said to have been found in a “Druidical circle,” Aberdeenshire. A third,[499] of black flint, from the parish of Cruden, Aberdeenshire, would seem to have accompanied an interment, as with it was found a necklace of large oblong beads of jet, and rudely shaped pieces of amber.
None, however, of these instances afford any absolute testimony as to their exact or even approximate age, unless, indeed, the jet and amber, if they really accompanied the flint celt, point in that case to a date at all events not far removed from that of the bronze objects with which such necklaces have frequently been found.
In the other cases of interments in barrows, however ancient they may be, it seems probable that they are not those of the earliest occupants of this country, by whom polished stone celts, or those of the same character rough hewn only, were in use. The labour bestowed in the formation of the graves and the erection of the barrows must |150| have been immense, and could hardly have been undertaken until a stage of civilization had been reached higher than that of some of the ruder savage races of the present day.
It may be mentioned that stone celts are not unfrequently found in the soil of which barrows are composed, but in no way connected with the interments in the barrow.
There are a few instances of the finding of these instruments, not in association with interments, where the circumstances under which they have been discovered testify to a great, though still indeterminate antiquity. One, for instance, of greenstone, in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries, is stated to have been “found deep in the clay whilst digging the Chelsea Waterworks at Kingston.”[500] Others in a sand-bed near York[501] were 6 or 7 feet below the surface, and nearly a quarter of a mile from the river which is thought to have deposited the sand.
In Wilson’s “Prehistoric Annals of Scotland”[502] is recorded the finding of a greenstone celt in a primitive canoe, formed of a hollowed trunk of oak, at a depth of 25 feet from the surface, at Glasgow; and in the Norwich Museum is one of brown flint, ground all over, 4 1∕4 inches long, similar to Fig. 54, but with facets towards the edge, as if from repeated grinding, which is stated to have been found fixed in a tree in the submarine forest at Hunstanton, by the Rev. George Mumford, of East Winch, in the year 1829.
* * * * *
On the whole evidence it would appear, from the number of implements of this class which has been discovered, from the various characters of the interments with which they are associated, and from the circumstances under which they have been found, that these stone celts must have been in use in this country during a long period of years; though we still revert to our first confession, that it is impossible to determine at how early a date this period commenced, or to how late a date it may have extended. If, however, the occupation of this part of the globe by man was continuous from the period of the deposit of the old River-gravels unto the present day, it seems probable that some of these implements may claim an almost fabulous antiquity, while in certain remote districts of Britain into which civilization made but a tardy approach, it is possible that their use may have lingered on to a time when in other parts of the country, owing to the superiority and abundance of metallic tools, these stone hatchets had long fallen into disuse.
Instances of this comparatively late use of stone celts appear to be afforded by some of the discoveries made in the Orkney and Shetland Isles; and it is doubtful whether in Ireland the use of |151| stone implements did not survive in some parts of the country to a far more recent date than would at first sight appear probable. I have, however, remarked on this subject elsewhere.[503] Sir Arthur Mitchell’s book, “The Past in the Present,” may also be consulted.
The methods in which these instruments were used and mounted must to some extent have varied in accordance with the purposes to which they were applied. In describing the forms, I have pointed out that in some cases they were used as axes or hatchets, and in other cases as adzes, and that there are some celts which not improbably were used in the hand without any handle at all, or else were mounted in short handles, and used after the manner of chisels or knives.
The instances of their being found in this country still attached to their handles are rare. In the case of the celt found near Tranmere,[504] Cheshire, and now in the Mayer Museum at Liverpool, “the greater part of the wood had perished, but enough remained to show that the handle had passed in a slightly diagonal direction towards the upper end of the stone.” In the Christy Collection is a large felstone celt 12 1∕4 inches long and 3 1∕4 inches broad, of the same section as Fig. 43, slightly flattened at the sides, on the face of which the mark of the handle is still visible, crossing it obliquely near the middle. This specimen was found at Pentney, Norfolk. Similar marks may not improbably be observed on other specimens, like that from Drumour already mentioned at page 119.
[Illustration: Fig. 91.—Solway Moss.]
In the Solway Moss, near Longtown, a hafted hatchet was found by a labourer digging peat, at the depth of rather more than six feet, but the handle appears to have been broken, even at the time when the sketch was made from which the woodcut |152| given in the _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries_[505] was engraved, which is, by permission, here reproduced. The instrument is now in the British Museum, but the haft, in drying, has, unfortunately, quite lost its form, and is still further broken. The process of preserving wood when in the tender condition in which it is found after long burial in peat was probably not known at the time. It has been adopted with great success by Mr. Engelhardt in preserving the wooden antiquities from the Danish peat bogs, and consists in keeping the objects moist until they have been well steeped, or even boiled, in a strong solution of alum, after which they are allowed to dry gradually, and are found to retain their form in a remarkable manner.
It is probably owing to the broken and distorted condition of the wood that the sketch was inaccurate as to the position of the blade with regard to the handle, for the mark of the wood where it was in contact with the stone is still visible, and proves that the central line of the blade was inclined outwards at an angle of about 100° to the haft, instead of being nearly vertical, as shown. The edge of the hatchet is oblique to nearly the same extent as the inclination of the blade to the haft. It would seem from this, that the obliquity of the edge was in some cases connected with the method of hafting, and not always, as suggested by Nilsson,[506] the result of the blade being most worn away in the part farthest from the hand holding the shaft.
The preservation of the wooden handle has been more successfully effected in the case of the celt shown in Fig. 92, engraved from a photograph kindly supplied me by Mr. R. D. Darbishire, F.G.S. It is figured on a larger scale in the _Archæologia_,[507] where all the circumstances of the discovery are set forth in detail. The axe was found, in the year 1871, in peat which had once formed the bed of a small lake, known as Ehenside Tarn, near Egremont, in Cumberland, which has now been drained. With it were found another haft of the same character, and several stone celts, one of them 14 1∕2 inches in length, with the sides but slightly curved, and almost equally broad at each end. Some wooden paddles and clubs formed of beech and oak, pottery and other objects, were also found. The farmer who cultivates the former bed of the lake had previously discovered some stone antiquities which were brought under the notice of Sir Wollaston Franks, |153| who induced Mr. Darbishire to make the search which was so amply rewarded. The haft is formed of a hard root of beech-wood, and has been most carefully carved, the surface exhibiting alternate cuts and ridges forming small concave facets about 1∕8-inch apart, and arranged spirally. The other haft for a celt is of oak-wood, and is not so well preserved. It will be noticed that the end of the beech-wood handle has originally been recurved, possibly with a view of steadying the butt-end of the celt.
[Illustration: Fig. 92.—Cumberland. 1∕4]
Curiously enough, in the outline of a celt in its handle, carved on the under side of the roof-stone of a dolmen, known as La Table des Marchands, near Locmariaker, Brittany,[508] the end of the handle seems also to be curved back beyond the socket for the blade, which however it does not touch. At the other end of the handle there is a loop like a sword guard, for the insertion of the hand. There is some little difficulty in determining the exact form of this incised carving, as the lines are shallow, and the light does not fall upon them. I speak from a sketch I made on the spot in 1863. Other such representations occur in Brittany.[509]
In a paper[510] on a neolithic flint weapon in a wooden haft, Mr. C. Dawson has given an account of a discovery made by Mr. Stephen Blackmore, a shepherd of East Dean, near Eastbourne, of a flint hatchet at Mitchdean. It was lying in its wooden haft which was perfectly carbonized, but Mr. Blackmore made a |154| drawing of it, apparently from memory. He describes the blade, which seems to have been unground, as lying in a horizontal groove cut in one side of the shaft, which was 2 feet 6 inches long. At one end of the shaft were two projections supposed to serve for holding the ligatures by which the blade was attached, and nearer the hand were a number of grooves running round the haft. Neither the description nor the drawings of this and other objects found with it are such as to inspire complete confidence.
About 1822, in sinking a well at Ferry Harty, Isle of Sheppey,[511] there were found, according to newspaper reports, the remains of a hut, two skeletons, and “flints and hard stones, apparently intended for axes and cutting implements, with handles of wood quite complete and in good preservation.” Nothing farther seems to be known of this discovery.
At Ervie,[512] near Glenluce, Wigtownshire, a celt of indurated clay-stone in form like Fig. 77 (8 inches) was found, which shows a band of dark colour about 1 1∕2 inch wide and about 2 inches from the butt-end, crossing it at an angle of about 20°. This band probably shows the position of the haft in which the blade was fixed. Another celt from Glenshee, Forfarshire, likewise in the Edinburgh Museum, shows a fainter mark of the kind. On a third from Dolphinton,[513] Lanarkshire, the mark is very distinct and at a right angle to the axis of the blade. Montelius[514] mentions a Swedish specimen, and A. de Mortillet[515] a French one of flint similarly marked.
[Illustration: Fig. 93.—Monaghan.]
In the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy[516] is a drawing of a celt in its handle (which is apparently of pine) found in the county of Monaghan. This handle was 13 1∕2 inches long, and more clumsy at the socketed end than that from Solway Moss. The woodcut given by Sir W. Wilde is here, by permission, reproduced as Fig. 93.
Another nearly similar specimen was discovered near |155| Cookstown,[517] in the county of Tyrone. What may be the haft of a stone hatchet was found in another Irish crannog.[518] Another is in the collection of General Pitt Rivers, F.R.S. Some of the hatchets from the Swiss Lake-dwellings were hafted in a similar manner. In one such haft, formed of ash, from Robenhausen,[519] the blade is inclined towards the hand; in another, also of ash, the blade is at right angles to the shaft.[520] Some of these club-like hafts resemble in character those in use for iron blades in Southern and Central Africa.[521] The copper or bronze axes of the Mexicans[522] were hafted in the same manner.
A method of hafting, which implies fixity of residence, is said to have been in use among the Caribs[523] of Guadaloupe. The blade of the axe had a groove round it at the butt-end, and a deep hole having been cut in the branch of a growing tree, this end of the blade was placed in it, and as the branch grew became firmly embedded in it, the wood which grasped it having formed a collar that filled the groove. The Hurons[524] are said to have adopted the same plan.
[Illustration: Fig. 94.—Axe from the Rio Frio. 1∕6]
I have engraved in Fig. 94, an extremely rude example of hafting by fitting the blade into a socket, from an original kindly lent me by the late Mr. Thomas Belt, F.G.S., who procured it among the Indians of the Rio Frio, a tributary of the San Juan del Norte in Nicaragua. The blade is of trachyte entirely unground and most rudely chipped. The club-like haft is formed of some endogenous wood, and has evidently been chopped into shape by means of stone tools.
[Illustration: Fig. 95.—War-axe—Gaveoë Indians, Brazil.]
In these instances Clavigero’s[525] remark with regard to the copper |156| or bronze axes of the Mexicans holds good; they are like “those of modern times, except that we put the handle in an eye of the axe while they put the axe in an eye of the handle.” A similarly hafted hatchet with the blade ground is in use among the Botocudo Indians. In the Island of New Hanover[526] the axe blade is inserted about the middle of the club-like haft. Some hatchets from the Admiralty Islands[527] are curiously like those from the Swiss |157| Lake-dwellings. Excessively long hafts in which the blades are let into a socket are occasionally in use among the Chamacocos[528] of south-east Bolivia.
Many stone and metallic axes in use among other modern savages are hafted in much the same manner by insertion in a socket. In some instances it would appear as if the hole for receiving the stone did not extend through the haft, but was merely a shallow depression—even a notch. Such seems to be the case with a war-axe of the Gaveoë Indians of Brazil in the British Museum, figured in the _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries_,[529] and here, by permission, reproduced, as Fig. 95. Some of their axes have longer hafts. In the Over Yssel Museum is a Brazilian stone axe with a blade of this kind, which is said to have been used in an insurrection at Deventer[530] in 1787.
[Illustration: Fig. 96.—Axe of Montezuma II.]
The “securis lapidea in sacrificiis Indorum usitata,” engraved by Aldrovandus,[531] seems to have the blade inserted in a socket without being tied, but in most axes of the same kind the blade is secured in its place by a plaited binding artistically interlaced. The stone axe said to be that of Montezuma II., preserved in the Ambras Museum at Vienna, is a good example of the kind.[532] I have engraved it as Fig. 96, from a sketch I made in 1866.
In some cases the whole handle is covered with the binding. Two such in the Dresden Historical Museum are engraved by Klemm.[533] Others have been figured by Prof. Giglioli.[534]
Some of the war-axes (called taawisch or tsuskiah) in use among the natives of Nootka Sound[535] are mounted in this manner, but the socket end of the shaft is carved into the form of a grotesque human head, in the mouth of which the stone blade is |158| secured with cement, as in Fig. 97. In another instance the handle is carved into the form of a bird[536] and inlaid with mother-of-pearl, or, more properly speaking, shell of _haliotis_. The blade of basalt projects from the breast of the bird, the tail of which forms the handle. In some the blade goes right through the handle, so as to project equally on both sides of it, and is sharpened at both ends.
[Illustration: Fig. 97.—Axe—Nootka Sound.]
The socket in all these handles is usually at some little distance from their end, but even with this precaution, the wedge-like form of the celt must have rendered them very liable to split. It was probably with a view of avoiding this, that the intermediate socket of stag’s horn, so common in the Lake-dwellings of Switzerland, was adopted. The stone was firmly bedded in the horn, the end of which was usually worked into a square form, but slightly tapering, and with a shoulder all round to prevent its being driven into the wood. In the annexed woodcut (Fig. 98) is shown one of these sockets with the hatchet inserted. It was found at Concise, in the Lake of Neuchâtel. An analogous system for preventing the stone blade from splitting the haft was adopted in Burma, Cambodia, |159| and Eastern India, but the shoulders were there cut in the stone-blades themselves. One of the Swiss instruments in its complete form is shown in Fig. 99, which I have copied from Keller.[537] It was found at Robenhausen, and the club-like handle is of ash. Several other specimens are engraved by the same author and Professor Desor,[538] and by other more recent writers.
[Illustration: Fig. 98.—Axe in stag’s-horn socket—Concise. 1∕2]
[Illustration: Fig. 99.—Axe—Robenhausen. 1∕1]
In some instances the stone was inserted lengthways[539] into the end of a tine of a stag’s horn at the part where it had been severed from the antler, so as to form a sort of chisel.[540] In other cases the socket was worked through the tine, and the stone blade fixed in it after the manner of an axe, though the handle was too short for the tool to be used for chopping. Some wooden handles[541] are also but a few inches long, so that the celts mounted in them must have been used for cutting by drawing them along the object to be cut.
Such stag’s-horn sockets have occurred, though rarely, in France. M. Perrault found some in his researches in the Camp de Chassey, |160| (Saône et Loire).[542] Some seem to have been found at Vauvray,[543] in making the railway from Paris to Rouen. Others were discovered in company with arrow-heads, celts, and trimmed flakes of flint, in the Dolmen,[544] or _Allée couverte_, of Argenteuil (Seine et Oise). These are now in the Musée de St. Germain. Others were found in a cavern on Mont Sargel (Aveyron).[545] They occasionally occur in Germany. One from Dienheim is in the Central Museum at Mayence.
Discoveries of these stag’s-horn sockets for stone tools in England seem to be extremely rare. Mr. Albert Way describes one, of which a woodcut is given in the _Archæological Journal_.[546] It is formed of the horn of the red deer (which is erroneously described as being extinct), and is said to have been found with human remains and pottery of an early character at Cockshott Hill, in Wychwood Forest, Oxfordshire. It seems better adapted for mounting a small celt as a chisel, like that of bronze found in a barrow at Everley,[547] than for forming part of a hatchet. Mr. Way[548] cites several cases of the discovery of these stag’s-horn sockets in France and elsewhere on the continent of Europe. I may add, by way of caution, that numerous forgeries of them have been produced at Amiens. In some of the genuine specimens from the peat of the valley of the Somme,[549] the stone was fixed in a socket bored in one end of the piece of stag’s horn, and the shaft was inserted in another hole bored through the horn. M. Boucher de Perthes describes the handle of one as made of a branch of oak, burnt at each end.
An example of this method of mounting is given in Fig. 99A. The original was found at Penhouet, Saint Nazaire sur Loire,[550] in 1877. The length of the haft is 19 1∕2 inches. A fine socket with the blade still in it, but without the shaft, has been figured by the Baron Joseph de Baye.[551] It was found in La Marne, in which department funereal grottoes have been discovered, at the entrances of which similar hafted axes were sculptured.
The socket discovered by the late Lord Londesborough in a barrow, near Scarborough,[552] appears to have been a hammer, |161| although he describes it as a piece of deer horn, perforated at the end, and drilled through, and imagined it to have been the handle for one of the celts found with it, “much in the manner of that in the museum of M. de Courvale, at his Castle of Pinon, in France,” of which he sent a drawing to the Archæological Association. A stag’s-horn socket, with a transverse hole for the haft, and a circular socket bored in the end, from which the main body of the horn was cut off, was found in the Thames, near Kew, and is in the possession of Mr. Thomas Layton, F.S.A. In the circular socket was a portion of a tine of stag’s horn, so that it seems rather to have been intended for mounting such tines for use as picks, than for hafting celts.
[Illustration: Fig. 99A.—Penhouet. 1∕6]
[Illustration: Fig. 99B.—New Guinea.]
A celt, mounted in a socket of stag’s horn, bored through to receive the wooden shaft, found in the Lake-dwellings at Concise, and in the collection of Dr. Clément, has been engraved by Desor;[553] and another, found near Aerschot,[554] in Belgium, by Le Hon. A hatchet, mounted in a socket of this kind, is figured by Dupont[555] |162| and Van Overloop.[556] Some of the stag’s-horn sockets are ornamented by having patterns engraved upon them.[557]
[Illustration: Fig. 99C.—New Guinea Adze.]
In New Guinea and Celebes a plan has been adopted of inserting the stone blade into the end of a tapering piece of wood, which is securely bound round to prevent its splitting. The small end of this fits in a hole in the club-like haft. An example is shown in Fig. 99B,[558] obligingly lent by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. By turning round the pivot an axe is converted into an adze. In some New Guinea and New Caledonia adzes and axes the blade is let into a socket at a nearly right angle to the haft, and either forming part of it or attached to it. Such an adze is shown in Fig. 99C, kindly lent by the same Society. A similar method of hafting is in use in the Entrecasteaux Islands.[559]
Some ingenious suggestions as to the probable method of mounting stone implements in ancient times have been made by the Vicomte Lepic.[560] With a polished Danish flint hatchet 8 inches long, hafted in part of the root of an oak, an oak-tree 8 inches in diameter was cut down without injury to the blade.
Another method of hafting, adopted by the Swiss Lake-dwellers for their stone hatchets, is described by Dr. Keller,[561] from whose work I have copied the annexed woodcut, Fig. 100. |163|
The haft was usually formed of a stem of hazel, “with a root running from it at right angles. A cleft was then made in this shorter part, forming a kind of beak in which the celt was fixed with cord and asphalte.” A woodcut of a handle of the same character, found near Schraplau, in company with its stone blade, is given by Klemm,[562] and is here reproduced as Fig. 101. A handle of much the same kind, consisting of a shaft with a branch at right angles to it, in which was fixed a flint axe, was found with a skeleton and a wooden shield in a tumulus near Lang Eichstätt, in Saxony,[563] and has been engraved by Lindenschmit. Another is said to have been found at Winterswyk.
[Illustration: Fig. 100.—Axe—Robenhausen.]
[Illustration: Fig. 101.—Schraplau.]
The discovery in the district between the Weser and the Elbe of several stone hatchets mounted in hafts of wood, stag’s-horn, and bone, has been recorded by Mr. A. Poppe,[564] but the authenticity of the hafting seems to me open to question. The compound haft of a stone axe, said to have been found at Berlin,[565] is also not above all suspicion. The handles of bronze palstaves, found in the salt mines near Salzburg, Austria, are forked in the same manner as Figs. 100 and 101. One of them, formerly in the Klemm Collection, is now in the British Museum.
[Illustration: Fig. 102.—Adze—New Caledonia.]
The same system of hafting has been in use among the savages in recent times, as will be seen from the annexed figure of a stone adze from New Caledonia,[566] Fig. 102, lent to me by the late Mr. Henry Christy. Another is engraved in the _Proceedings of the Society of |164| Antiquaries of Scotland_.[567] Several other varieties of New Caledonian and Fiji handles have been engraved by M. Chantre.[568] In some countries, probably in consequence of the difficulty of procuring forked boughs of trees of the proper kind, the wood which forms the socket for the blade is bound on at the desired angle to the end of the wooden handle. An adze of stone from the Caroline Islands, thus mounted, is engraved in the _Comptes Rendus_;[569] and a |165| handle of this kind from North America, but with a small iron blade, is figured by Klemm.[570]
[Illustration: Fig. 103.—Adze—Clalam Indians.]
We are left in a great degree to conjecture as to the other methods of mounting stone hatchets and adzes on handles in prehistoric times; but doubtless some besides those already mentioned were practised. A very common method among existing savages is to bind the blade of stone on to the face of a branch at the end of the handle, which in some cases projects upwards, and in others downwards, and is inclined at an angle more or less perpendicular to the handle.
Figs. 103 and 104 are kindly lent me by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.[571] The short-handled adze, Fig. 103, is one |166| used by the Schlalum or Clalam Indians, of the Pacific Coast, to the south of the Straits of De Fuca and on Puget’s Sound, to hollow out their canoes. The group, Fig. 104, exhibits various methods of attachment of stone adzes to their handles employed by the South-Sea Islanders.
[Illustration: Fig. 104.—South-Sea Island Axes.]
The Australians occasionally mounted their tomahawks in much the same manner as that shown in the central figure. An example has been engraved by the Rev. J. G. Wood.[572] The right-hand figure probably represents an adze from the Savage Islands. Some Brazilian and Aleutian Island adzes are mounted in much the same fashion.
The jade adzes of the New Zealanders are hafted in a somewhat similar manner; but the hafts are often beautifully carved and inlaid. A fine example is in the Blackmore Museum, and a handle in the Christy Collection. I have also a haft with the original |167| jade blade, but the binding has been taken off. One of them is engraved by the Rev. J. G. Wood.[573] The axe to the left, in Fig. 104, as well as that in the centre, is from Tahiti. The axes from Mangaia, so common in collections, exhibit great skill in the mounting and in the carving of the handles. Some have been engraved by the Rev. J. G. Wood.[574] A ceremonial stone adze with a very remarkable carved haft from New Ireland[575] has been figured by Professor Giglioli.
In some instances the ligaments for attaching the stone blade against the end of the handle pass through a hole towards its end. A North American adze in the Ethnological Museum, at Copenhagen, is thus mounted, the cord being apparently of gut.
A similar method of mounting their adzes, by binding them against the haft, was in use among the Egyptians.[576] Although it is extremely probable that some of the ancient stone adzes of other countries may have been mounted in this manner, there have not, so far as I am aware, been any of the handles of this class discovered. I have, however, two Swiss celts of Lydian stone, and of rectangular section, found at Nussdorf and Sipplingen, in the Ueberlinger See, and on the flatter of the two faces of each, there is a slight hollow worn away apparently by friction, which was, I think, due to their having been attached against a handle in this manner. The blade in which the depression is most evident has lost its edge, seemingly from its having been broken in use. I have not up to the present time found any similarly worn surfaces upon British celts.
Another method of hafting adopted by various savage tribes is that of winding a flexible branch of wood round the stone, and securing the two ends of the branch by binding them together in such a manner as tightly to embrace the blade. A stone axe from Northern Australia thus hafted, is figured in the _Archæologia_,[577] whence I have borrowed the cut, Fig. 105. Another used by natives on the Murray river[578] has been figured by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. This method of hafting has been mentioned by White,[579] who describes the binding as being effected by strips |168| of bark, and in his figure shows the two ends of the stick more firmly bound together.
[Illustration: Fig. 105.—Axe—Northern Australia.]
Another example has been engraved by the Rev. J. G. Wood.[580] This mode is very similar to that in common use among blacksmiths for their chisels and swages, which are held by means of a withy twisted round them, and secured in its place by a ring.
It seems extremely probable that so simple a method may have been in use in early times in this country, though we have no direct evidence as to the fact. A “fancy sketch” of a celt in a withy handle will be found in the _Archæologia_.[581] It resembles in a singular manner the actual implements employed by the Ojibway Indians,[582] of which there is a specimen in the Christy Collection, engraved by the Rev. J. G. Wood.[583] Some of the other North American tribes[584] mounted their hatchets in much the same manner. A hatchet thus hafted is engraved by Schoolcraft.[585]
In some instances a groove of greater or less depth has been worked round the axes mounted in this manner, though undoubtedly British examples are scarce. An axe-hammer of diorite (13 inches), found near Newburgh,[586] Aberdeenshire, has a groove round it instead of the usual haft-hole. The blade engraved in the _Archæological Journal_[587] and found near Coldstream, Northumberland, is probably of Carib origin, like others which have also been supposed to have been British. Another from the Liverpool |169| Docks is mentioned by Mr. H. Ecroyd Smith.[588] In the British Museum are two such axes, and some other stone implements, found near Alexandria, but which probably are Carib, as would also seem to be those in the Museum of Douai,[589] on which are sculptured representations of the human face.
Stone axe-heads with a groove round their middle, for receiving a handle, have been found in Denmark,[590] but are of rare occurrence. The form has been found in the salt-mines of Koulpe,[591] Caucasus, and in Russian Armenia. The large stone mauls found so commonly in the neighbourhood of ancient copper-mines, in this and many other countries in both hemispheres, were hafted much in the same manner as the Australian axe.
In other cases axe-heads are mounted by being fixed in a cleft stick for a handle, the stick being then lashed round so as to secure the stone and retain it in its place. This method was employed by some of the North American Indians,[592] and the aborigines in the colony of Victoria.[593] In the Blackmore Museum is a stone axe thus mounted, from British Guiana. There is a small hole through the butt which is carved into a series of small spikes. Others from Guiana[594] have notches at the sides to receive a cord which bound the haft in a groove running along the butt-end. The same form has been found in Surinam.[595] An Egyptian[596] stone hammer is mounted in much the same way. The notches practically produce lugs at the butt-end of the blade. I have an iron hatchet, edged with steel, brought home by the late Mr. David Forbes, F.R.S., from among the Aymara Indians of Bolivia, which is mounted in a stick cleft at the end. The blade is T-shaped at the butt, and is tied in such a manner, by means of a strip of leather, that the arms of the T rest on two of the coils, so as to prevent its falling out, while other two coils pass over the butt and prevent its being driven back, and the whole binds the two sides of the cleft stick together so as tightly to grasp the blade and prevent lateral or endways motion. The ancient Egyptian bronze hatchets were merely placed in a groove and bound to the handle by the lugs, and sometimes by the cord being passed through holes in the blade. The same shape is |170| found in flint hatchets ascribed by Professor Flinders Petrie[597] to the twelfth dynasty. What may be a stone hatchet mounted occurs in a painting at Medum.[598]
[Illustration: Fig. 106.—Hatchet—Western Australia.]
Another Australian method of mounting implies the possession of some resinous material susceptible of being softened by heat, and again becoming hard and tough when cold. This mode is exhibited in Fig. 106, which represents a rude instrument from Western Australia, now in my collection, engraved in the _Archæologia_.[599] It is hammer-like at one end, axe-like at the other, and is formed of either one or two roughly chipped pieces of basalt-like stone entirely unground, and secured in a mass of resinous gum, in which the handle is inserted. In most implements of this kind there appear to be two separate stones used to form the double blade, and these are sometimes of different kinds of rock. It would seem that the shaft, either cleft or uncleft, passed between them, and that the stones, when bound with string to hold them in their places, were further secured with a mass of the gum of the _Xanthorrhæa_ or grass-tree.[600]
Such a method of hafting cannot, I think, have been in general use in this country, for want of the necessary cementing material, though, from discoveries made in Scandinavia, it would appear that a resinous pitch was in common use for fixing bronze implements to their handles; so that the practice may also have applied to those of stone. In the Swiss Lake-dwellings, bitumen was used as a cement for attaching stone to wood. In the case of the axes of the Indians on the River Napo,[601] Ecuador, the binding of |171| the blades, which are formed with lugs like those of Guiana, is covered with a thick coating formed of bees-wax and mastic.
Besides those that were hafted as axes or adzes, it seems probable that not a few of the implements known as celts may have been for use in the hand as cutting tools, either mounted in short handles or unmounted. There can be but little doubt that the tools, Fig. 83 and 83A, were thus used in the hand, as also the implement with a depression on each face (Fig. 87), and that with the notches at the side (Fig. 89); and they can hardly have been unique of their kind.
Dr. Lukis,[602] indeed, at one time expressed an opinion that the stone celt was not intended to be secured “in a handle, but was held in the hand and applied to particular uses which are not now evident, but to which neither the hammer nor the hatchet were applicable.” But in the face of the fact that numerous handles have since been found, such an opinion is no longer tenable except in a very limited sense.
Among modern savages we have instances of similar tools being used in the hand without the intervention of any haft, giving a form much like that of Fig. 83A, though among the Australians the butt-end is sometimes enveloped in a mass of resinous matter, so as to form a knob which fits the hand. According to Prinz Neuwied,[603] the Botocudos used their stone blades both unmounted in the hand and hafted as hatchets. The South Australians[604] and Tasmanians[605] likewise use celts in a similar manner.
There are cases in which the hatchet and haft have been formed from one piece of stone. Such a one, of chloritic stone, found in a mound in Tennessee,[606] is in outline like Fig. 92, and has a small loop for suspension at the end of the handle. Mr. Cursiter, of Kirkwall, has an instrument of the same kind from Orkney, formed of hard slate. In extreme length it measures 9 3∕4 inches. It cannot, however, be assigned to a very early date. For a comparison of celts from different countries Westropp’s “Prehistoric Phases”[607] may be consulted.
With regard to the uses to which these instruments were applied, they must have been still more varied than the methods of mounting, which, as we have seen, adapted them for the purposes of hatchets and adzes; while, mounted in other ways, or |172| unmounted, they may have served as wedges, chisels, and knives. The purposes which similar instruments serve among modern savages must be much the same as those for which the stone celts found in this country were employed by our barbarian predecessors. An admirable summary of the uses to which stone hatchets—the “Toki” of the Maori—are, or were applied in New Zealand, has been given by Dr. W. Lauder Lindsay.[608] They were used chiefly for cutting down timber, and for scooping canoes[609] out of the trunks of forest trees; for dressing posts for huts; for grubbing up roots, and killing animals for food; for preparing firewood; for scraping the flesh from the bones when eating, and for various other purposes in the domestic arts. But they were also employed in times of war, as weapons of offence and defence, as a supplementary kind of tomahawk.
For all these purposes stone celts must also have been employed in Britain, and some may even have been used in agriculture. We can add to the list at least one other service to which they were applied, that of mining in the chalk in pursuit of flint, as the raw material from which similar instruments might be fashioned.
|173|
CHAPTER VII.
PICKS, CHISELS, GOUGES, ETC.
I now come to several forms of implements which, though approximating closely to those to which the name of celts has been applied, may perhaps be regarded with some degree of certainty as forming a separate class of tools. Among these, the long narrow form to which, for want of a better name, that of “Picks” has been given, may be first described. It is, however, hard to draw a line between them and chisels.
[Illustration: Fig. 107.—Great Easton. 1∕2]
* * * * *
An idea of the prevailing form will be gathered from Fig. 107, which represents a specimen in my own collection found at Great Easton, near Dunmow, Essex, and given me by Colonel A. J. Copeland, F.S.A. Its surfaces are partially ground, especially towards the upper end, which appears to have been pointed, though now somewhat broken. The lower end is chipped to a rounded outline, but this end is not ground, and the outer or more convex face of the implement, in one part shows the original crust of the flint.
In the Fitch Collection is a finer and more symmetrical specimen of the same kind from North Walsham. It is 7 1∕2 inches long, rather more than 1 inch wide, and 7∕8 inch thick. It is polished nearly all over, both faces are ridged, so that it is almost rhomboidal in section, though the angles are rounded; one face is curved lengthways much more than the other, which is nearly straight. At one end it is ground to a semicircular edge, but at the other it is merely chipped, and still shows part of the original crust of the flint. Another implement of this character, but 11 1∕2 inches long, and 2 7∕8 inches wide in the broadest part, was found at Melbourn,[610] Cambridgeshire, and was in the collection of the late Lord Braybrooke. |174|
I have seen another nearly 6 inches long, but little polished, and almost oval in section, which was found at Melton, near Woodbridge, Suffolk. This also is blunt at one end, and ground to a semicircular edge at the other. A fragment of a tool of this class, found near Maidenhead, is in the Geological Museum in Jermyn Street. Another, more roughly chipped out and but partially polished, was found on Mount Harry, near Lewes, and is preserved in the Museum in that town. It is narrow at one end, where it is ground to a sharp edge.
The late Mr. H. Durden, of Blandford, had another, found on Iwerne Minster Down, Dorset, 5 1∕2 inches long and 1 1∕4 inches broad, more celt-like in type. One face is more convex than the other; the sides are sharp, and one end is squarer than the other, which comes to a rounded point.
In my own collection is one of oval section (5 inches), polished nearly all over, from Burwell Fen, Cambridge; another (4 3∕8 inches), much polished on the surface, is from the Thames at Twickenham. A third, from Quy Fen, Cambridge (4 7∕8 inches), is rather broader in its proportions, and of pointed oval section. A fourth, from Bottisham Fen (4 3∕4 inches), has a narrow segmental edge, and is rounded at the butt, where it is slightly battered. These may perhaps be regarded as chisels.
[Illustration: Fig. 108.—Bury St. Edmunds. 1∕2]
In the Greenwell Collection is what appears to be a fragment of a chisel, still about 4 inches long, found at Northdale, Bridlington. The same form of implement is found in France. I have a fragment of one which was found by M. Dimpre, of Abbeville, in the old encampment known as the Camp de César, near Pontrémy.
In the case of some very similar implements of flint from Scandinavia it is the broad end that is usually sharp, though some are entirely unground.
Occasionally these implements occur in this country in the same unpolished condition, like Fig. 108, from the neighbourhood of Bury St. Edmunds. This also presents on the more highly ridged face the same curvature in the direction of its length as is to be observed on the polished specimens, and the pointed end seems the sharper and the better adapted for use.
I have a fine unground specimen (6 inches) from Feltwell, Norfolk, and another (4 1∕2 inches) from Chart Farm, Ightham, Kent, given to me by Mr. B. Harrison.
Unfortunately there are no indications by which to judge of the method of hafting such instruments. It appears probable, however, that the broader end may have been attached at the end of a handle, like those in Fig. 104, and that the tool was a sort of narrow adze or pick, adapted for working out cavities in wood, or it may be for |175| grubbing in the ground. Some rough instruments of this character are found in Ireland,[611] but are usually more clumsy in their proportions than the English specimens that I have figured. They are often of a sub-triangular section, and pointed at one or both ends, though rarely ground. I have, however, a tapering pointed tool of black chert, and belonging to the same class of implements, found in Lough Neagh.[612] It appears adapted for boring holes in leather or other soft substances.
[Illustration: Fig. 109.—Burwell.]
[Illustration: Fig. 110.—Near Bridlington. 1∕2]
A very remarkable implement belonging to the same group is shown in Fig. 109. It was found in the Fen country near Burwell, Cambridge, and was given me by the late Mr. J. W. Flower, F.G.S. At the broad end it is much like the instruments just described. A portion of both faces has been polished, the sides have been rounded by grinding, and though it has been chipped to an edge at the broad end, this also has been rendered blunt in the same manner, possibly with the view of preventing it from cutting the ligaments by which it was attached to a handle. The narrow end is ground to a chisel edge, which is at right angles to that of the broad end. In form and character this chisel end is exactly like that of a narrow “cold chisel” of steel, in use by engineers. Whether it was used as a narrow adze or axe, or after the manner of a chisel, it is difficult to say.
Fig. 110 is still more chisel-like in character. It is of flint weathered white, but stained in places by iron-mould, from having been brought |176| in contact with modern agricultural implements, while lying on the surface of the ground. It was found at Charleston, near Bridlington. It is unground except at the edge, where it is very sharp, and at one or two places along the sides, where slight projections have been removed or rounded off by grinding. The butt-end is truncated, but is not at all battered, so that if a hammer or mallet was used with it, without the intervention of a socket or handle, it was probably of wood. I have another specimen of rather smaller size from the same locality. It is, however, of porphyritic greenstone, and the butt-end, instead of being truncated, has been chipped to a comparatively sharp edge, which has subsequently been partially rounded by grinding. If used as a chisel at all, this implement must have been inserted in a socket.
Mr. H. Durden had a chisel of the same character found at Hod Hill, Dorset, 5 1∕2 inches long, and 1 3∕8 inches broad, with the sides ground straight.
The Greenwell Collection contains a flint chisel of this form 5 inches long and 1∕2 inch broad, found near Icklingham, Suffolk. It is ground at the sides as well as at the edge. Another, 4 3∕4 inches long, in the same collection, was found at North Stow, Suffolk. There is also a small chisel of hone-stone, 2 7∕8 inches long, found at Rudstone, near Bridlington, and another 3 3∕4 inches long, of subquadrate section, found in a barrow at Cowlam,[613] Yorkshire.
The form occurs in France. A beautiful chisel (7 inches), polished all over, and brought to a narrow edge at either end, was found in the Camp de Catenoy (Oise).[614] It is nearly round in section. Another, of dark jade-like material (4 inches), polished all over, was obtained from a dolmen at Pornic[615] (Loire Inférieure).
There are occasionally found some small chisels apparently intended for holding in the hand, as if for carving wood. One of these, from Dalton, on the Yorkshire Wolds, and in the collection of Messrs. Mortimer, is shown in Fig. 111. It is of grey flint, slightly curved longitudinally, nearly semicircular in section, with the side angles rounded, the butt truncated, but all its sharp angles worn or ground away, and with a circular edge slightly gouge-like in character. It has been ground transversely or obliquely on both faces, but the _striæ_ from the grinding are at the edge longitudinal. I have a nearly similar tool from West Stow, Suffolk (5 1∕4 inches), and one from the neighbourhood of Bridlington, Yorkshire, but the butt-end is broken.
[Illustration: Fig. 111.—Dalton, Yorkshire. 1∕2]
Another flint chisel, from the same neighbourhood, 3 1∕2 inches long and 7∕8 inch wide, in my collection, presents the peculiarity of having the butt-end ground to a sharp narrow semicircular edge, the principal edge at the other end being broader and less curved. There can be |177| little doubt of this having been merely a hand tool. A portion of the edge at the narrow end is worn away as if by scraping bone or something equally hard. This wearing away does not extend to the end of the tool. Another specimen from Yorkshire is in the Blackmore Museum.[616]
A chisel from Suffolk,[617] ground at both ends, has been figured.
The implement shown in Fig. 112 appears to belong to this same class of tools, though closely resembling some of those which will hereafter be described as “arrow-flakers,” from which it differs only in not showing any signs of being worn away at the ends. It is of flint neatly chipped, and was found at Helperthorpe, Yorkshire. I have another of the same form, but a trifle longer, found by Mr. W. Whitaker, F.R.S., near Baldock, Herts. Neither of them shows any traces of grinding.
A similar chisel of flint, square at the edge, and found near Londinières[618] (Seine Inférieure), is engraved by the Abbé Cochet.
[Illustration: Fig. 112.—Helperthorpe. 1∕2]
Implements, which can without hesitation be classed as chisels, are rare in Ireland, though long narrow celts approximating to the chisel form are not uncommon. These are usually of clay-slate, or of some metamorphic rock. I have, however, specimens of oval section not more than an inch wide, and as much as 5 inches long, with narrow straight edges, which seem to be undoubtedly chisels. I do not remember to have seen a specimen in flint, those described by Sir W. Wilde[619] being more celt-like in character.
Narrow chisels, occasionally 10 and 12 inches long, and usually square in section, and either polished all over or merely ground at the edge, are of common occurrence in Denmark and Sweden.[620] They are sometimes, but more rarely, oval in section.
In Germany and Switzerland the form is scarce, but one from the Sigmaringen district is engraved by Lindenschmit,[621] and a Swiss specimen, in serpentine, by Perrin.[622]
Some of the small celts found in the Swiss lakes appear to have been rather chisels than hatchets or adzes, as they were mounted in sockets[623] bored axially in hafts of stag’s horn. In some instances the hole was bored transversely through the piece of horn, but even then, the tools are so small that they must have been used rather as knives or drawing chisels than as hatchets. Chisels made of bone are abundant in the Swiss Lake-settlements. They are also plentiful in some of the caverns in the French Pyrenees, which have been inhabited in Neolithic times. Several have also occurred in the Gibraltar caves. |178|
Among the Maories of New Zealand small hand-chisels of jade are used for carving wood and for other purposes. They are sometimes attached to their handles by a curiously intertwined cord,[624] and sometimes by a more simple binding. For the sketch of that shown in Fig. 113, I am indebted to the late Mr. Gay. The original is in the British Museum.[625] It will be observed that the end of the handle, which has been battered in use, is tied round with a strip of bark to prevent its splitting. The blade seems to rest against a shoulder in the handle, to which it is firmly bound by a cord of vegetable fibre. A stone chisel from S. E. Bolivia[626] is mounted in the same fashion, but the blade is shorter. The stone chisels in use in ancient times in Britain were, when hafted at all, probably mounted in a somewhat analogous manner.
[Illustration: Fig. 113.—New Zealand Chisel. 1∕2]
* * * * *
Considering the great numbers of gouges or hollow chisels of flint which have been found in Denmark and Sweden, their extreme rarity in Britain is remarkable. It seems possible that the celts with an almost semicircular edge, some of which, when the two faces of the blade are not equally convex, are of a gouge-like character, may have answered the same purpose as gouges. It is to be observed that this class of celts is scarce in Denmark, where gouges are abundant; but possibly the ancient inhabitants of that country may have been more of a canoe-forming race than those of Britain, so that, in consequence, implements for hollowing out the trunks of trees were in greater demand among them. The best-formed gouges discovered in England, have, so far as I am aware, been found in the Fen country, where it is probable that canoes would be in constant use.
* * * * *
Two such, found in Burwell Fen, are preserved in the Museum of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, one of which is shown in Fig. 114. The other is rather smaller, being 5 1∕4 inches long and 1 7∕8 inches broad. They are entirely unpolished, with the sides nearly straight and sharp, and one face more convex than the other. At the butt-end they are truncated, or show the natural crust of the flint. The cutting edge at |179| the other end is approximately at right angles to the blade, and is chipped hollow, so that the edge is like that of a carpenter’s gouge.
In Fig. 114A, is shown a fine gouge of white flint in my own collection. It was found in 1871 on the Westleton Walks, Suffolk, and was ceded to me by Mr. F. Spalding. It has been most skilfully and symmetrically chipped out, but both the surface and the edge are left entirely unground. What may be termed the front face is flatter than in the specimens last described. The cutting edge is more rounded.
[Illustration: Fig. 114.—Burwell. 1∕2]
[Illustration: Fig. 114A.—Westleton Walks. 1∕2]
The next specimen, Fig. 115, is less decidedly gouge-like in character. It is of grey flint, and was in the collection of the late Mr. Caldecott, of Mead Street, having been found at Eastbourne, Sussex. The sides are sharp, but rounded towards the butt, which is also round. A large flake has been taken lengthways off the hollow face, and it may be mainly to this circumstance rather than to original design, that the gouge-like character of the implement is due.
Most of the Danish gouges have a rectangular section at the middle of the blade, and the butt-end is usually truncated, and sometimes |180| shows marks of having been hammered, so that these implements were probably used without hafting and in conjunction with a mallet or hammer of wood or stag’s horn. Another and rarer form of gouge with a sharp elliptical section, tapers to the butt, and may have been used for paring away charred surfaces without the aid of a mallet. Some small examples of this class show, however, polished markings, as if from having been inserted in handles.
Under the head of gouges I must comprise a few of those celt-like implements already mentioned, which, without being actually ground hollow, yet, by having one of their faces much flatter transversely than the other, present at the edge a gouge-like appearance, somewhat after the manner of the “round-nosed chisels” of engineers. One of these was discovered in a barrow on Willerby Wold,[627] Yorkshire, by Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., though it was not associated with any burial.
[Illustration: Fig. 115.—Eastbourne.]
It is shown in Fig. 116, and is formed of a light green hone-stone, carefully ground and even polished, and presents a beautifully regular and sharp cutting edge. It would appear to have been intended for mounting as a hollow adze rather than as a gouge, and would when thus mounted have formed a useful tool for hollowing canoes, or for other similar purposes.
In the Greenwell Collection is also another implement of the same character and material, but smaller, being 4 inches long and 2 3∕8 inches |181| broad. It was found at Ganthorpe, Yorkshire. The sides in this case are flat.
The implement shown in Fig. 117 has, when the convex face is seen, much the same appearance as Fig. 68. The other face, however, is slightly hollowed towards the middle longitudinally, and is nearly flat transversely, so that the edge presents a gouge-like appearance. It was found at Huntow, near Bridlington, and is in my own collection. The material is greenstone, the surface of which is somewhat decomposed, and seems in places to have been scratched by the plough or the harrow.
[Illustration: Fig. 116.—Willerby Wold. 1∕2]
[Illustration: Fig. 117.—Bridlington. 1∕2]
A considerable number of gouges of this bastard kind have been found in Ireland, and I have figured one from Lough Neagh.[628] A few of the Irish celts are actually hollowed at the edge, so as to become more truly gouge-like in character.
Besides occurring in abundance in Scandinavia, gouges, properly so called, are also found in Northern Germany and Lithuania. They also occur in Russia,[629] Finland, and Western Siberia, and even in Japan and Cambodia. |182|
One of flint, 5 inches long, from the neighbourhood of Beauvais (Oise), is in the Blackmore Museum. The same form has also been found in Portugal[630] and Algeria.[631]
A stone implement,[632] “a square chisel at one end and a gouge at the other,” was found in one of the Gibraltar caves.
In North America,[633] including Canada and Newfoundland, gouges formed of other varieties of stone than flint are by no means uncommon, and among the Caribs of Barbados, where stone was not to be procured, we find gouge-like instruments formed from the _columella_ of the large _Strombus gigas_. On the western coast of North America, mussel-shell adzes are still preferred by the Ahts[634] to the best English chisels, for canoe-making purposes.
Some narrow bastard gouges, almost semicircular on one face and flat transversely on the other, but not hollowed, have been found in the Swiss Lake-settlements. I have one of diorite, 5 3∕4 inches long and 1 inch broad, from Sipplingen. The butt is roughened as if for insertion in a socket. A similar form is found in Germany. I have a specimen 9 1∕2 inches long found in the neighbourhood of Mainz.
A bastard form of gouge, mounted as an adze, is in use in the Solomon Islands. One tied to its haft with rattan is in the Christy Collection.
|183|
CHAPTER VIII.
PERFORATED AXES.
I now come to a very important class of antiquities, the stone axes and axe-hammers with a hole for the insertion of a shaft, like the ordinary axes and hammers of the present day. As to the method by which these shaft-holes were bored, I have already spoken in a previous chapter. I have also mentioned that many of them appear to belong to a time when bronze was already in use, at all events for knife-like daggers, and that they have in many countries shared with the more simply-formed celts the attribution of a heavenly origin as thunderbolts, together with the superstitious reverence due to their supernatural descent. I have, therefore, but little here to add beyond a classification and description of the various forms; but I may mention that the name by which such implements were “popularly known in Scotland almost till the close of last century was that of the Purgatory Hammer,” buried with its owner that he might have the wherewithal “to thunder at the gates of Purgatory till the heavenly janitor appeared.”[635]
They are for the most part made from metamorphic or volcanic rocks, and occasionally from quartzite, but I have never seen a British perforated axe made from ordinary flint, though hammers of this material are known. Stukeley,[636] indeed, mentions that in cleansing the moat at Tabley, near Knutsford, “they found an old British axe, or some such thing, made of large flint, neatly ground into an edge, with a hole in the middle to fasten into a handle; it would serve for a battle-axe.” Stukeley was probably mistaken as to the material; but there are in the Museum at Copenhagen one or two flint axes ground to an edge, the |184| shaft-holes in which are natural, and no doubt led to the stones being selected for the purpose to which they were applied. An artificially-perforated French specimen will subsequently be mentioned. Flints both naturally and artificially perforated, have also been occasionally converted into hammers and maces.
In Scandinavia and Northern Germany, perforated axes and axe-hammers are frequently known as Thor’s hammers, as already mentioned,[637] and some authors have maintained that they were in use for warlike purposes so late as eight or ten centuries after our era. Kruse,[638] however, has urged that though found in the neighbourhood of graves of the Iron Age in Livonia and Courland, they are never found in the graves themselves, and that their use is not mentioned in any ancient histories.
The principal forms may be classified as follows:—
1. Double-edged axes, or those with a cutting, or but slightly blunted edge at either end.
2. Adzes, or implements with the edge at right angles to the shaft-hole.
3. Axes with the edge at one end only, the hole being near the other end, which is rounded. These shade off into—
4. Axe-hammers sharp at one end, and more or less hammer-like at the other, the shaft-hole being usually near the centre.
To the weapons of the first of these classes the name of Amazon Axe has been applied by Professor Nilsson;[639] but the Scandinavian axes expanding considerably at the cutting ends, resemble the _Amazonia securis_ of classical sculpture more than do the English specimens.
* * * * *
Fig. 118 represents a beautifully formed axe of the first class, in my own collection. It is of greenstone, and was found near Hunmanby, Yorkshire. The two sides are concave longitudinally, so that it expands towards the edges. They are also slightly concave transversely. The angles are rounded, and the edges are blunt, especially that at the shorter end. The shaft-hole is oval, and tapers slightly from each end towards the middle. It would appear to have been worked out with some sort of chisel, and to have been afterwards made smoother by grinding.
A broader weapon of granite, expanding more at the ends (5 1∕2 inches) was found in the Tay,[640] near Newburgh, Fife. A flatter specimen of porphyritic stone (4 inches) was found on the shore of Cobbinshaw Loch,[641] West Calder, Midlothian, in 1885. |185|
A specimen of nearly the same type, found near Uelzen, Hanover, is engraved by von Estorff;[642] another from Sweden, by Sjöborg.[643]
In the Museum at Geneva is a very similar axe of greenstone (5 1∕4 inches), found in the neighbourhood of that town. One of serpentine, much longer in its proportions (9 1∕4 inches), and with an oval shaft-hole, is in the Museum at Lausanne. It was found at Agiez, Canton de Vaud.
[Illustration: Fig. 118.—Hunmanby. 1∕2]
In the _Collections_[644] published by the Sussex Archælogical Society is a figure, obligingly lent to me, of a beautiful axe-head of this class (Fig. 119) found with the remains of a skeleton, an amber cup (Fig. 307), a whetstone (Fig. 186), and a small bronze dagger with two rivet holes, in an oaken coffin in a barrow at Hove, near Brighton. The |186| axe-head is said to be formed of some kind of ironstone, and is 5 inches long. The hole is described as neatly drilled. A weapon of the same kind (3 1∕2 inches) blunter at the ends and described as a hammer, was found with a deer’s-horn hammer, and a bronze knife in a barrow at Lambourn, Berks.[645] A small black stone axe-head of nearly similar form was found near the head of a contracted skeleton at a depth of 12 feet in a barrow in Rolston Field, Wilts.[646] A somewhat similar specimen, with the sides faceted and blunt at one end, has been engraved as having been found in Yorkshire.[647] It is, however, doubtful whether, like many other objects in the same plate, it is not foreign. The original is now in the Christy Collection.
A double-edged axe-head of basalt, injured by fire, and 4 1∕2 inches long, was found by the late Mr. Bateman, in a large urn with calcined bones, bone pins, a tubular bone laterally perforated, a flint “spear-head,” and a bronze awl, in a barrow near Throwley, Derbyshire.[648] This was the only instance in which he found a perforated stone axe accompanying an interment by cremation.
An axe-head of basalt, with a double edge to cut either way, was also dug up in the neighbourhood of Tideswell, Derbyshire.[649]
[Illustration: Fig. 119.—Hove. 1∕2]
A specimen of this kind (5 inches), edged at both ends, but “the one end rather blunted and lessened a little by use,” was found near Grimley, Worcestershire, and is figured by Allies.[650]
I have a specimen (5 1∕8 inches), much weathered, which is said to have come from Bewdley in that county, but which may be that from Grimley.
An example, 5 inches long, engraved in the Salisbury volume[651] of the Archæological Institute, from a barrow on Windmill Hill, Abury, Wilts, is described as double-edged.[652]
The Danish and German axe-heads of this form have usually, but not always, one edge much more blunted than the other. Occasionally there is a ridge on each side at the blunt end, which shows that this thickening was intentional. A fine double-edged axe-head of this form from Brandenburg is engraved in the “Horæ Ferales.”[653] The double-edged form is found also in Finland.[654]
The form likewise occurs in France, but the faces are usually flatter. I have one from the Seine at Paris (5 1∕2 inches). Another from the |187| department of the Charente is engraved by de Rochebrune;[655] and a third from the department of Seine et Oise is in the Musée de St. Germain.[656] A fine example of the same form is in the Museum at Tours, and another in that of Blois. In the collection of M. Reboux[657] was a curious implement from the Seine, formed of flint, pointed at each end, and perforated in the middle. Another, in flint, from Mesnil en Arronaise[658] (Somme) (8 1∕2 inches), has been figured. The perforations may be natural, though improved by art. In my own collection is one of the finest specimens that I have ever seen. It is also from the Seine at Paris. It is 9 3∕4 inches long, and slightly curved in the direction of its length; on either side there is a long sunk lozenge, in the centre of which is the cylindrical shaft-hole, and the ends expand into flat semicircular blades about 2 1∕4 inches across. The material is a hard basaltic rock, and the preservation perfect. It was found in 1876.
A stone axe in the Museum of the Royal Institution at Swansea, and found at Llanmadock, in Gower, has been kindly lent me for engraving, and is shown in Fig. 120. It expands at the sharper end much more suddenly and to a much greater extent than does that from Hunmanby. The edge at that end, which is almost semicircular in outline, has suffered from ill-usage since it was discovered; the material of which it is made being felspathic ash, the surface of which has become soft by decomposition. The other and narrower end is flattened to about half an inch in width. The implement has already been engraved on a smaller scale.[659]
In Bartlett’s “History and Antiquities of Manceter, Warwickshire,”[660] is engraved an axe of the same character as this, but expanding at the blunter end almost as much, as it does at the edge, which is described as being very sharp. It is said to have been formed of the hard blue stone of the country, but “from age or the soil in which it has lain” to be “now coloured with an elegant olive-coloured patina.” It was found on Hartshill Common, in 1770, where a small tumulus had been cut through, “the bottom of which, was paved with brick, which by the heat of the fire had been nearly vitrified.” There is probably some mistake as to the bricks.
Another axe-head like Fig. 120, 8 inches in length, and more distinctly hammer-like at the narrow end, was found in the parish of Abernethy, Perthshire, and has been engraved by Wilson.[661]
In character these axes with expanded ends more nearly resemble some of the Scandinavian and North German types than do most of the other British forms. Broken stone axes expanding at the edge have been found on the site of Troy.
In the Museum of the Leeds Philosophical Society is a double-edged axe-head of a larger and coarser kind, which, is said to have been found near Whitby. Its authenticity was strongly vouched for by the late Mr. Denny, but I fear that it is a modern fabrication.
An implement of the same form, from Gerdauen, East Prussia, is |188| preserved in the Berlin Museum; and another of greenstone was found at Hallstatt.[662] A singular variety from the same spot has the edge at one end at right angles to that at the other.
[Illustration: Fig. 120.—Llanmadock. 1∕2]
A small sketch of a very remarkable curved blade, pointed at one end and with an axe-like edge at the other, is given in the _Journal of the Archæological Association_.[663] It is of greenstone, 11 inches long and 2 1∕2 inches across, and was found in Guernsey. By the kindness of the late Rev. W. C. Lukis, F.S.A., of Wath, I am enabled to give an engraving of the type in Fig. 121. A number of specimens have been found in the Channel Islands, to which the form seems peculiar.
* * * * *
The second class into which I proposed to divide these implements consists of adzes, or blades having the edge at right angles to the shaft-hole. Apart from a short notice by Mr. Monkman, I believe that attention was for the first time called in the former edition of this book, to the occurrence of this form in Britain. |189|
* * * * *
The specimen I have selected for engraving, as Fig. 122, gives a good idea of the typical character. It is of greenstone, with the shaft-hole tapering inwards from both faces, one of which is less convex than the other. It was found at Fireburn Mill, near Coldstream, Berwickshire, and is in the Greenwell Collection. In the same collection is another of similar character, but having the butt-end broken off and the edge more circular, found at Willerby Carr, in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
[Illustration: Fig. 121.—Guernsey. 1∕2]