Chapter 7
Part 7
In Ireland, perforated hammer-stones are much more abundant than in England. They are usually formed of some igneous or metamorphic rock, and vary considerably in size, some being as much as 10 or 12 inches in length. Sir W. Wilde observes that stone hammers, and not unfrequently stone anvils, have been employed by smiths and tinkers in some of the remote country districts until a comparatively recent period. If, however, these hammers were perforated, there can be but little doubt that they must have been ancient tools again brought into use, as the labour in manufacturing a stone hammer of this kind would be greater than that of making one in iron, which would, moreover, be ten times as serviceable. If, however, the stone hammers came to hand ready made, they might claim a preference. For heavy work, where iron was scarce, large mauls, such as those shortly to be described, might have been in use rather than iron sledges; but the more usual form of stone hammer would probably be a pebble held in the hand, as is constantly the case with the workers in iron of Southern Africa. Even in Peru and Bolivia, the late Mr. David Forbes, F.R.S., informed me that the masons skilful in working hard stone with steel chisels, make use of no other mallet or hammer than a stone pebble held in the hand. The anvils and hammers used in Patagonia[842] in working silver are generally of stone, but the latter are not perforated.
In Germany, as already[843] incidentally remarked, anvils formed of basalt were in frequent use in the sixteenth century.
In Scandinavia and Germany the same forms of hammers as those found in the British Isles occur, both in quartzite and in other kinds of stone. They are not, however, abundant. Worsaae does not give the type in his “Nordiske Oldsager,” and Nilsson gives but a single instance.[844] Lindenschmit[845] engraves a specimen from Oldenstadt, Lüneburg, and another from Gelderland.[846]
In Switzerland they are extremely rare. In the Neuchâtel Museum, however, is a perforated hammer, formed from an oval pebble, and found in the Lake-habitations at Concise; another, 2 inches in diameter, with a small perforation deeply countersunk on each face, has been regarded by M. de Mortillet[847] as a sink-stone for a net.
I have a lenticular mace-head, 3 inches in diameter and 2 inches thick, formed of a silicious breccia from Pergamum. The hole tapers from 3∕4 inch to 1∕2 inch.
The half of a small perforated hammer made of greenstone and polished is recorded to have been found at Arconum,[848] west of Madras. A perforated stone, possibly a hammer, was found in the Jubbulpore district, Central India;[849] and a fine example from the Central Provinces,[850] rather more oval than Fig. 157, has been figured by the late Mr. V. Ball.
In the British Museum is a perforated ball of hard red stone of a different type from any of those which I have described, which came from Peru. It is about 3 inches in diameter, with a parallel hole an inch across. Around the outside are engraved four human faces, each surmounted by a sort of mitre. It may be the head of a mace. |233|
Spherical mace-heads of marble and of harder rocks occur among Egyptian antiquities. They are sometimes decorated by carving.
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In this place perhaps it will be well to mention a class of large hammer-stones, or mauls, as they have been termed, which, though belonging to a period when metal was in use, are in all probability of a high degree of antiquity. They consist, as a rule, of large oval pebbles or boulders, usually of some tough form of greenstone or grit, around which, somewhere about the middle of their length, a shallow groove has been chipped or “picked,” from 3∕4 inch to 1 inch in width. On the two opposite sides of the pebble, and intersecting this groove, two flat or slightly hollowed faces have often been worked, the purpose of which is doubtless connected with the method of hafting the stones for use as hammers. This was evidently by means of a withe twisted round them, much in the same manner as a blacksmith’s chisel is mounted at the present day. In the case of the mauls, however, the withe appears to have been secured by tying, like the haft of one form of Australian stone hatchets (Fig. 105), and then to have been tightened around the stone by means of wedges driven in between the withe loop and the flat faces before mentioned.
A[851] German stone axe seems to have been fastened to its haft in the same manner.
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In many of the Welsh specimens about to be mentioned, the flat faces are absent, and the notch or groove does not extend all round the stone, but exists only on the two sides through which the longer transverse axis of the pebble passes. In this case the wedges, if any, were probably driven in on the flatter side of the boulder.
The ends of the pebbles are usually much worn and broken by hammering, and not unfrequently the stone has been split by the violence of the blows that it has administered. It is uncertain whether they were merely used for crushing and pounding metallic ores, or also in mining operations; but with very few exceptions they occur in the neighbourhood of old mines, principally copper-mines.
In some copper mines at Llandudno,[852] near the great Orme’s Head, Carnarvonshire, an old working was broken into about sixty years ago, and in it were found a broken stag’s horn, and parts of what were regarded as of two mining implements or picks of bronze, one about 3 inches and the other about 1 inch in length. In 1850, another ancient working was found, and on the floor a number of these stone mauls, described as weighing from about 2 lbs. to 40 lbs. each. They had been formed from water-worn boulders, probably selected from |234| the beach at Pen-maen-mawr. One of the mauls in the Warrington Museum[853] is 6 5∕8 inches long, and weighs 3 lbs. 14 ozs. One of basalt, measuring nearly a foot in length, was found in ancient workings at Amlwch Parys Mine,[854] in Anglesea. Others have been discovered in old workings in Llangynfelin Mine,[855] Cardiganshire, and at Llanidan,[856] Anglesea.
A ponderous ball of stone, about 5 inches in diameter, probably used in crushing and pounding the ore, a portion of stag’s horn, fashioned so as to be suited for the handle of some implement, and an _iron_ pick-axe, were found in some old workings in the Snow Brook Lead Mines, Plinlimmon, Montgomeryshire.[857]
Two of these hammer-stones, 4 1∕2 and 5 inches in length, were obtained by the late Hon. W. O. Stanley, within hut circles, possibly the remains of the habitations of copper miners in ancient times, at Ty Mawr, in the Island of Holyhead. Some of these mauls are figured in the _Archæological Journal_,[858] and are of much the same form as Fig. 159, the original of which probably served another purpose. Others of the same character, formed of quartzite, were found at Pen-y-Bonc,[859] Holyhead, and Old Geir,[860] Anglesea. They have also been found at Alderley Edge,[861] Cheshire.
A boulder, like those from Llandudno, but found at Long Low, near Wetton, Staffordshire, is in the Bateman Collection.[862] One from Wigtownshire[863] has been regarded as a weight.
They are of not uncommon occurrence in the south of Ireland,[864] especially in the neighbourhood of Killarney, where, as also in Cork, many of them have been found in ancient mines. They have, in Ireland, been denominated miners’ hammers. One of them is engraved in “Flint Chips.”[865] I have seen an example from Shetland.
They have also been found in ancient copper mines in the province of Cordova,[866] at Cerro Muriano, Villanueva del Rey,[867] and Milagro, in Spain; in those of Ruy Gomes,[868] in Alemtejo, Portugal; and at the salt mines of Hallstatt,[869] in the Salzkammergut of Austria, and at Mitterberg,[870] near Bischofshofen.
A large hammer of the same class, but with a deeper groove all round, has been recorded from Savoy.[871]
They are not, however, confined to European countries, for similar stone hammers were found by Mr. Bauerman in the old mines of Wady Maghara,[872] which were worked for turquoises (if not also for |235| copper ore) by the ancient Egyptians, so early as the third Manethonian Dynasty. It is hard to say whether the grooved stone found by Schliemann at Troy[873] was used as a hammer or a weight.
What is more remarkable still, in the New World similar stone hammers are found in the ancient copper mines near Lake Superior.[874] As described by Sir Daniel Wilson,[875] “many of these mauls are mere water-worn oblong boulders of greenstone or porphyry, roughly chipped in the centre, so as to admit of their being secured by a withe around them.” They weigh from 10 to 40 lbs., and are found in enormous numbers. M. Marcou[876] has given an account of the discovery of some of those mauls in the Mine de la Compagnie du Nord-Ouest, at Point Kievenau, Lake Superior. He describes them as formed of leptynite (quartz and felspar), quartz, and porphyry, and weighing from 5 to 8 lbs. each; and mentions having seen one of quartz weighing about 5 lbs., which was in the possession of some Kioway Indians, and was bound to a handle with a strip of bison skin.
This similarity or identity in form of implements used in countries so wide apart, and at such different ages, does not, I think, point of necessity to any common origin, nor to any so-called “continuity of form,” but appears to offer another instance of similar wants with similar means at command, resulting in similar implements for fulfilling those wants. Grooved hammers for other purposes, as evinced by their smaller size, and a few grooved axes, occur in Scandinavia. An example among one of the lower races in modern times is afforded by a large crystal of quartz, with its terminal planes preserved at both ends, which has been slightly grooved at the sides for the purpose of attaching it to a handle, and was brought by Captain Cook, from St. George’s Sound, where it appears to have been used as a hammer or pick. It is now in the British Museum, and has been described by Dr. Henry Woodward.[877]
Even in Britain the hammer-stones of this form are not absolutely confined to mining districts. Canon Greenwell, in one of the barrows at Rudstone,[878] near Bridlington, found on the lid of a stone-cist two large greenstone pebbles 8 and 9 3∕4 inches long, each with a sort of “waist” chipped in it, as if to receive a withe, and having marks at the ends of having been in use as hammers.
Closely connected in form and character with the mining hammers, though as a rule much smaller in size, and in all probability intended for a totally different purpose, is the class of stone objects of one of which Fig. 159 gives a representation, reproduced from the _Archæological Journal_.[879] This was found in company with two others at Burns, near Ambleside, Westmorland; and another, almost precisely similar in size and form, was found at Percy’s Leap, and is preserved at Alnwick Castle. Another, from Westmorland, is in the Liverpool Museum, and they have, I believe, been observed in some numbers in that district. A stone of the same character, but more elaborately worked, |236| having somewhat acorn-shaped ends, was found by the late Hon. W. O. Stanley, at Old Geir,[880] Anglesea. Others from Anglesea,[881] one of them ornamented, have been figured. They were originally regarded as hammer-stones, but such as I have examined are made of a softer stone than those usually employed for hammers, and they are not battered or worn at the ends. It is, therefore, probable that they were used as sinkers for nets or lines, for which purpose they are well adapted, the groove being deep enough to protect small cord around it from wear by friction. They seem also usually to occur in the neighbourhood either of lakes, rivers, or the sea. A water-worn nodule of sandstone, 5 inches long, with a deep groove round it, and described as probably a sinker for a net or line, was found in Aberdeenshire,[882] and is in the National Museum at Edinburgh; and I have one of soft grit, and about the same length, given me by Mr. R. D. Darbishire, F.G.S., and found by him near Nantlle, Carnarvonshire.
[Illustration: Fig. 159.—Ambleside. 1∕2]
Many of these sink-stones are probably of no great antiquity. With two transverse grooves, they are still in use in Shetland.[883]
The Fishing Indians of Vancouver’s Island[884] go out trolling for salmon in a fast canoe, towing behind them a long line made of tough seaweed, to which is attached, by slips of deer hide, an oval piece of granite perfectly smooth, and the size and shape of a goose’s egg. It acts as a sinker, and is said to spin the bait. A net-sinker, formed of a pebble slightly notched or grooved, is among the antiquities from |237| Lake Erie, engraved by Schoolcraft.[885] Others have been found in the State of New York.[886] See C. Rau’s “Prehistoric Fishing.”[887]
Sink-stones are by no means rare in Ireland, and continue in use to the present day. One of the same class as Fig. 159, but grooved round the long axis of the pebble, is engraved by Sir W. Wilde.[888] Similar stones occur in Denmark, and were regarded by Worsaae[889] as sink-stones, though some of them, to judge from the wear at the ends, and the hardness of the material, were used as hammers. I have seen, in Sweden, the leg bones of animals used as weights for sinking nets.
Another form of sink-stone, weight, or plummet, was formed by boring a hole towards one end of a flattish stone. Such a one, weighing 14 1∕4 oz., was dredged from the Thames at Battersea.[890]
Another, of oval form, pierced at one end, from Tyrie,[891] Aberdeenshire, is in the National Museum at Edinburgh; and a wedge-shaped perforated stone from Culter, Lanarkshire,[892] was probably intended for the same purpose. These may have been in use for stretching the warp in the loom when weaving. They are found of this form with Roman remains.[893]
|238|
CHAPTER X.
HAMMER-STONES, ETC.
Under this head I propose to treat of those implements which have apparently been used as hammers, but which, for that purpose, were probably held in the hand alone, and not provided with a shaft, as the groove or shaft-hole characteristic of the class last described, is absent. At the same time there are some hammer-stones in which there are cavities worked on either face, so deep and so identical in character with those which, in meeting each other, produce the bell-mouthed perforations commonly present in the hammers intended for hafting, that at first sight it seems difficult to say whether they are finished implements, or whether they would have become perforated hammer-heads had the process of manufacture been completed. Certainly in some cases the cavities appear to be needlessly deep and conical for the mere purpose of receiving the finger and thumb, so as to prevent the stone slipping out of the hand; and yet such apparently unfinished instruments occur in different countries, in sufficient numbers to raise a presumption that the form is intentional and complete. There are some instances where, as was thought to be the case with a quartz pebble from Firth,[894] in Orkney, the unfinished implements may have been cast aside owing to the stone having cracked, or to the holes bored on each face not being quite opposite to each other, so as to form a proper shaft-hole.
In other instances, as in Figs. 160 and 161, the battering of the end proves that the stones have been in actual use as hammers. It is of course possible that these cavities may have been worked for the purpose of mounting the stones in some other manner than by fixing the haft in a socket. A split stick may, for instance, have been used, with a part of the wood on each side of the fissure worked away, so as to leave projections to fit the |239| cavities, and have then been bound together so as to securely grasp the pebble. A stone mallet, consisting of a large pebble mounted between two curved pieces of wood, somewhat resembling the hames of a horse collar, and firmly bound together at each end, is still used by the quarrymen of Trichinopoly,[895] in India. Another method of hafting stones, by tying them on to the side of a stick with little or no previous preparation, is practised by the Aymara Indians of Bolivia and Peru.[896] Mr. D. Forbes, F.R.S., in his interesting account of this people, has engraved a pebble thus mounted, which was in use as a clod crusher. One of them is preserved in the Christy Collection. Among the Apaches,[897] in Mexico, hammers are made of rounded pebbles hafted in twisted withes.
[Illustration: Fig. 160.—Helmsley. 1∕2]
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A remarkable hammer-head, found at Helmsley, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, is in the collection formed by Canon Greenwell. It is shown in Fig. 160, and has been made from a rather coarse-grained quartzite pebble, both ends of which have, however, been worn away by use to an extent probably of an inch in each case, or of two inches in the whole pebble. The worn ends are rounded, but somewhat hollow in the middle, as if they had at that part been used for striking against some cylindrical or sharp surface. The funnel-shaped cavities appear almost too deep and too sharp at their edges to have been intended merely to assist in holding the hammer in the hand, and it seems possible that their original purpose may have been in connection with some method of hafting. The hammer has, however, eventually been used in the hand alone, for the wear of the ends extends over the face, quite to the margin of one of the cavities, and at such an angle, that it would have been almost impossible for any handle to have been present. But if the stone be held in the hand, with the middle finger in the cavity, the wear is precisely on that part of the stone which would come in contact with a flat surface, in hammering upon it. What substance it was used to pound or crush it is impossible to determine, but not improbably it may have been animal food; and bones as well as meat may have been pounded with it.
A quasi-cubical hammer-stone, with recesses on two opposite faces, found at Moel Fenlli,[898] Ruthin, Denbighshire, has been figured. It is now in my collection. |240|
The specimen engraved as Fig. 161 has been made from a quartzite pebble, and has the conical depression deeper on one face than the other. It was found at Winterbourn Bassett, Wilts, and is now in the British Museum.
[Illustration: Fig. 161.—Winterbourn Bassett. 1∕2]
In the Norwich Museum is a similar pebble, from Sporle, near Swaffham. It is 3 3∕4 inches long, recessed on each face, with a conical depression, the apex rounded. These cavities are about 1 1∕4 inches diameter on the face of the stone, and about 3∕4 inch in depth. The Rev. W. C. Lukis, F.S.A., had a hammer-stone of this kind, 3 inches long, found at Melmerby, Cumberland. One (6 inches) was found at Langtree,[899] Devon, another (3 1∕8 inches) at Trefeglwys,[900] Montgomeryshire. I have one (3 inches) from Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Coventry, and a thinner example, 2 3∕4 inches, much worn at the ends, from Litlington, Cambs.
A circular rough-grained stone, 3 inches in diameter, with deep cup-like indentations on each face, found on Goldenoch Moor, Wigtownshire,[901] is in the National Museum at Edinburgh; where is also another hammer formed of a greenstone pebble (3 1∕2 inches), with broad and deep cup-shaped depressions on each face, and much worn at one end, which came from Dunning, Perthshire. There are other examples of the same kind in the same museum. Many have, indeed, |241| been found in Scotland. A good example from Machermore Loch,[902] Wigtownshire, and several others,[903] have been figured.
[Illustration: Fig. 161A.—Goldenoch. 1∕2]
That from Goldenoch, shown in Fig. 161A,[904] has a deep recess on each face. Others from Fife[905] have the recess on one face only. In the case of one from the Island of Coll[906] the recesses are at the sides instead of on the faces.
In some cases the depressions are shallower, and concave rather than conical. I have a flat irregular disc of greenstone, about 2 1∕4 inches diameter and 5∕8 inch thick, thinning off to the edges, which are rounded, and having in the centre of each face a slight cup-like depression, about 5∕8 inch in diameter. It was found in a trench at Ganton, Yorkshire. In the Greenwell Collection is a somewhat larger disc of sandstone, worn on both faces and round the whole edge, and with a slight central depression. It was found in a cairn at Harbottle Peels, Northumberland. In form, these instruments are identical with the _Tilhuggersteene_[907] of the Danish antiquaries, and it is possible that some of them, especially those of the circular form, may have been used for the purpose of chipping out other kinds of stone implements.
The type is not of uncommon occurrence in Ireland.[908] It is rare in France, but a broken example from the neighbourhood of Amiens is in the Blackmore Museum.
I have a specimen which might be mistaken for Danish or Irish, but which was brought me from Port Beaufort, Cape of Good Hope, by Captain H. Thurburn, F.G.S. It must have been in use there at no very remote period.
An oval stone, with what appears to be a cup-shaped depression on one face, 3∕8 inch deep, is engraved by Schoolcraft[909] as a relic of the Congarees. Another, from the Delaware River, of the Danish form, is described by Nilsson[910] as a tool for making arrow-points. He also engraves one from Greenland. Other so-called hammer-stones in the same plate are more probably “strike-a-light” stones, and under any circumstances belong to the Early Iron Period. Abbott[911] and Rau[912] also describe Indian hammer-stones, some like Fig. 161.
Highly polished, and deep cup-shaped or conical depressions are occasionally to be observed occurring on one or both faces of large pebbles, usually of quartz, and sometimes in two or three places on |242| the same face. Though very similar to the hollows on the hammer-stones, they are due to a very different cause, being merely the results of stone bearings or journals having been employed, instead of those of brass, for the upright spindles of corn mills. It seems strange that for such a purpose stone should have gone out of use, it being retained, and indeed regarded as almost indispensable for durability, in the case of watches, the pivot-holes of which are so frequently “jewelled.”
[Illustration: Fig. 162.—St. Botolph’s Priory. 1∕2]
Fig. 162, which I have reproduced from the Sussex Archæological Collections[913] on the same scale as the other figures, shows a pivot-stone of quartzite (?) found in the ruins of St. Botolph’s Priory, Pembrokeshire, a few yards from a pebble (4 1∕2 inches) of similar material, in which a hole had been bored to the depth of half an inch apparently by the friction of the pointed end of the smaller pebble. Another pivot-stone of the same kind was found at Bochym,[914] Cornwall. Such socket-stones were, until recently, in use in Scotland[915] and Piedmont[916] for the iron spindles of the upper mill-stones of small water-mills. Pivot-stones with larger socket-stones were also used for field-gates. Similar socket-stones occur in Switzerland,[917] and have puzzled Dr. Keller.
A stone, with a well-polished cavity, found on the site of an old mill near Carluke, Lanarkshire,[918] was exhibited at Edinburgh in 1856. Another was found in Argyllshire; and I have seen other specimens from Ireland. The socket of the hinge of the great gate at Dunnottar Castle is said to have consisted of a similar stone. Stones with highly-polished hollows in them, in which apparently the ends of drill-sticks revolved, are common on the site of ancient Naukratis.[919]
[Illustration: Fig. 163.—Bridlington. 1∕2]
As has already been observed at page 223, it is by no means uncommon to find portions of polished celts which, after the edge has been by some means broken away, have been converted into hammers. Very rarely, there is a cup-like cavity worked on either face in the same manner as in the celts shown in Figs. 87 and 88. A specimen of this character, from the neighbourhood of Bridlington, is shown in Fig. 163. It is of close-grained greenstone, and, to judge from the thickness of the battered end, the celt, of which this originally formed the butt, must have been at least half as long again as it is in its present form. The cavities have been worked out with some kind of pick or pointed tool, and from their position so near the butt-end, it seems probable that they did |243| not exist in the original celt, but were subsequently added when it had lost its cutting edge, and was destined to be turned into a hammer-stone. In the Greenwell Collection is a similar specimen, 4 inches long, found at Wold Newton, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. In the celts with cup-shaped depressions on their faces, but still retaining their edge, the depressions are nearer the centre of the blade.
This hollowing of a portion of the surface is sometimes so slight as to amount to no more than a roughening of the face, such as would enable the thumb and fingers to take a sufficiently secure hold of the stone, to prevent its readily falling out of the hand when not tightly grasped; a certain looseness of hold being desirable, to prevent a disagreeable jarring when the blows were struck. If, as seems probable, many of these hammers or pounders were used for the purpose of splitting bones, so as to lay bare the marrow, we can understand the necessity of roughening a portion of the greasy surface of the stone, to assist the hold.
[Illustration: Fig. 164.—Bridlington. 1∕2]
In Fig. 164 I have represented a large quartz pebble found in Easton Field, Bridlington, which has the roughened depression on both faces rather more strongly marked than usual, especially on the face here shown. It is more battered at one end than the other, and has evidently been long in use. It shows some traces of grinding at the lower end in the figure, as if it had been desirable for it to have a sort of transverse ridge at the end, to adapt it to the purpose for which it was used.
Canon Greenwell found in a barrow at Weaverthorpe,[920] Yorkshire, a hammer-stone of this kind, but nearly circular in form. It is a flat quartz pebble, about 1 3∕4 inches in diameter, battered all round, and broken at one part, and having the centre of one face artificially roughened.
A round hammer (2 1∕2-inches), with depressions on each face, was found at Gatley,[921] Cheshire. Hammer-stones of the same character occurred abundantly on the site of ancient Naukratis.[922] The _wallong_,[923] or stone used by the Australian natives for grinding nardoo seeds on the _yow wi_, a large flat stone, is curiously like Fig. 164.
[Illustration: Fig. 165.—Bridlington. 1∕2]
To the same class, belongs the hammer-stone shown in Fig. 165, found at Huntow, near Bridlington. It has been made from a quartz pebble, of the original surface of which but little remains, and has a |244| well-marked depression about 1∕8 inch deep in the centre of each face. The periphery is much worn away by use.
A fine-grained sandstone pebble, in form like a small cheese, about 3 inches in diameter, having the two faces smooth and perfectly flat, was found at Red Hill,[924] near Reigate, and was regarded as a muller or pounding-stone used possibly in husking or bruising grain; or even for chipping flint, its surface bearing the mark of long-continued use as a pestle or hammer.[925] “Precisely similar objects have been found in Northumberland, and other parts of England.”
Canon Greenwell informs me that about twenty such, differing in size and thickness, were found on Corbridge Fell, together with several stone balls. He thinks they may possibly have been used in some game. A paper on the stone hammer and its various uses has been published by Mr. J. D. McGuire.[926]
The circular stone from Upton Lovel Barrow,[927] engraved by Sir R. Colt Hoare, appears to be a hammer or, more probably, a rubbing-stone, but it is worn to a ridge all round the periphery. I have a precisely similar instrument from Ireland. Other mullers from Wiltshire[928] barrows have been figured by Dr. Thurnam. Several such discoidal stones, somewhat faceted on their periphery, were found by the late Hon. W. O. Stanley, in his examination of the ancient circular habitations in Holyhead Island, and some have been engraved.[929]
An almost spherical stone, but flattened above and below, where the surface is slightly polished, was found in Whittington Wood, Gloucestershire, and exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries in 1866.[930] It is of quartzite, about 3 inches in diameter. Another, of the same size, of depressed, spherical form, was found in Denbighshire,[931] and another flat disc of quartz in Aberdeenshire.[932]
Pebbles that have been used in this way, as pounders or mullers, belong to various ages and different degrees of civilization. Some well worn have been found in Yorkshire[933] barrows and elsewhere.[934] One from Philiphaugh,[935] Selkirkshire, has been figured. I have one such, worn into an almost cubical form, which was found with Roman remains at Poitiers, and I have seen several others said to be of Roman date. A pounding-stone of much the same form as Fig. 165, found on the summit of the Mont d’Or, Lyonnais,[936] has been engraved by M. Chantre, with others of the same character. I have seen examples in Germany.
I have a flat granite pebble, about 3 1∕2 inches by 3 inches, the sides straight, the ends round, and with well-marked circular depressions in each face, from Cayuga County, New York. It has certainly been used as a hammer-stone. Such mullers are by no means uncommon in North America. Some of the American[937] stone discs, which are |245| occasionally pierced, appear to have been more probably used in certain games.
Cup-shaped cavities occasionally occur on stones which have not apparently been intended for use as hammers. In the soil of one of the barrows at Rudstone, near Bridlington, Canon Greenwell found a fragment of a greenstone pebble, nearly flat on one face, in which a concave depression, about an inch over and 1∕4 inch deep, had been picked. In the National Museum at Edinburgh is a subquadrate flat piece of grit, 1 inch thick and about 3 1∕2 inches long, on each face of which is a cup-shaped depression about 1 1∕4 inches in diameter. It does not appear to have been used as a hammer. Mr. James Wyatt, F.G.S., had a piece of close-grained grit, in shape somewhat like a thick axe-head, 4 1∕2 inches long, 3 inches wide, and 3 inches thick, with four concave depressions, one on each face and side, found at Kempston Road, near Bedford. What purpose these hollows fulfilled, it is difficult to guess. The stones in which they occur may, however, have been used as anvils or mortars on which to hammer or pound; or the cavities may have served to steady objects of bone, stone, or wood in the process of manufacture. Anvil stones, with pits worn on their faces, probably by flints having been broken upon them, have been found in Scotland.[938] A sandstone[939] with a concave depression on each of its six faces has been regarded by Mortillet as a grindstone for fashioning stone buttons or the convex ends of other implements. I have seen analogous cavities produced, on a larger scale, on blocks of granite which have been used as anvils, on which to break road materials. The cup and ring cuttings[940] common on ancient stone monuments, especially in Scotland, do not come within my province. Flat stones, with cup-shaped markings upon them, sometimes as many as seven on a stone, were found in considerable abundance in some of the Yorkshire[941] barrows examined by Canon Greenwell.
The stones with cup-shaped[942] depressions in them, found in the caves of the Reindeer Period in the south of France, have the hollows, in nearly all instances, upon one of their faces only, and have therefore more probably served as mortars than as hammers. The pebbles, from the same caves, which have been used as knapping or chipping stones, are usually left in their natural condition on the faces, though worn away at the edges, sometimes over the whole periphery. A very few of the hollowed stones show signs of use at the edges.
Stones with cup-shaped[943] depressions, like those from the French caves, are in use in Siberia for crushing nuts and the seeds of the Cembro Pine; and among the natives of Australia[944] for pounding a bulbous root called _bellilah_, and the roasted bark of trees and shrubs for food. Some Carib examples of the same kind are in the Ethnological Museum at Copenhagen, as well as some from Africa, used in the preparation of poison. |246|
Some of the so-called corn-crushers[945] and mealing-stones from the Swiss Lake-dwellings have shallow depressions on the faces, but for the most part they belong to the class to be subsequently described. I have one of granite, from Nussdorf, with a depression on one face, in which the thumb can be placed, while the forefinger lies in a groove, like that of a pulley, which extends about half-way round the stone. The opposite part of the edge is much worn by hammering. It approximates in form to the pulley-like stones to which the name of sling-stones has been given, but the use of which is at present a mystery.
A hammer-stone, curiously like that which I have engraved as Fig. 165, is among those found in the settlements of the Lac du Bourget,[946] by M. Rabut. This or a similar one is in the British Museum. Another from Picardy[947] has been figured.
[Illustration: Fig. 166.—Scamridge. 1∕2]
A hammer-stone, if so it may be called, of bronze, is among the antiquities from Greenland in the Ethnological Museum at Copenhagen.
Occasionally the depression is reduced to a minimum, and consists of merely a slight notch or roughening on one or both faces of the pebble which has served as a hammer or pounding-stone.
The irregular, flat greenstone pebble, worn away at both ends, shown in Fig. 166, has on one face only a notch, apparently intended to receive the thumb. It was found at Scamridge, Yorkshire, and is in the Greenwell Collection. It will be observed that it is worn into a curved ridge at one end. In the same collection is an oval quartzite pebble (4 1∕2 inches), battered at both ends, and with a slight diagonal ridge at that most worn away. This was found in a barrow at Weaverthorpe,[948] with an unburnt body. I have a flat greenstone pebble from |247| Scamridge, Yorkshire, worn away at one end to a curved ridge somewhat oblique to the faces of the pebble, one of which is slightly polished as if by constant rubbing. There is in the Greenwell Collection a granite pebble (3 1∕2 inches), from the same place, battered at one end, and the other much worn away by use, which also has one face flat and slightly polished. In the camp at Little Solsbury Hill,[949] near Bath, I found two quartzite implements of rudely quadrangular prismatic form, each having one end worn away to a ridge. Another quartzite pebble, rubbed to an obtuse edge at one end, was found by General Pitt Rivers, F.R.S.,[950] within an ancient earthwork at Dorchester, Oxfordshire.
A hammer-stone of close-grained grit, having a ridge all round the periphery, was found in Anglesea.[951] Others with ridged ends have occurred in crannogs at Lochlee,[952] Ayrshire, and in Wigtownshire.[953] Some of them seem to belong to the Iron Age.
Among the specimens just described, there are three peculiarities which, though not occurring together on all, are worthy of notice—the notch on the face, the ridge at the end, and the polished face.
There can be no doubt of the notch on the face being, like the cup-shaped depressions, merely intended as an aid in holding the stone. On the hammer-stones discovered by the late Mr. J. W. Flower, F.G.S., in a post-Roman kjökken-mödding, in the island of Herm,[954] there were usually one or two rough notches or indentations on each face, exactly adapted to receive the ends of the thumb and some of the fingers; and, curiously enough, I have a pebble notched in precisely the same manner from Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, and no doubt intended for a hand-hammer or pounder.
In the same kjökken-mödding at Herm were several[955] celt-like implements of porphyry and greenstone which, instead of an edge, had the end blunt, but with a ridge obliquely across it, as on these pebbles. Somewhat similar pounding-stones have been found by the late Hon. W. O. Stanley, at Pen-y-Bonc,[956] Holyhead, in some instances provided with a depression fitting the thumb or finger, and several having the ridge at the end.
The same sort of ridge occurs on pounding-stones from Denmark, Portugal,[957] Spain,[958] Ireland, and elsewhere, and occasionally extends all round the stone when it happens to be disc-shaped, like those already mentioned from Upton Lovel and elsewhere. Hammer-stones worn to a ridge are also found in Egypt.[959] It would appear that the face of the hammer was ground away, either by a rocking motion on a flat stone, or by the blows given with it being administered alternately from the right and from the left, so as to keep any matter that was being pounded with it from being driven out of position. |248|
I have, lastly, to notice the more or less polished condition of one of the faces of these stones, which may be due to their being used for grinding the material already pounded by their edges to a finer powder on the slab, which served instead of a mortar. One of the flat pebbles found in the Cave of La Madelaine, Dordogne, appears to have served as a muller for grinding the hæmatite used as paint.
Sometimes these hammer-stones are mere pebbles without any previous preparation, and indeed it is but natural that such should have been the case. Canon Greenwell has found pebbles of quartz and greenstone, worn and battered at the ends, accompanying interments on the Yorkshire Wolds, and such are also occasionally present on the surface, though they are, of course, liable to escape observation. A quartzite pebble that has served as a hammer-stone, and is much worn and fractured by use, was found at Ty Mawr, and is figured in the _Archæological Journal_,[960] as are also several from hut-circles in Holyhead and Anglesea.[961] A large sarsen-stone pebble, weighing 4 3∕4 lbs., and which had obviously been used as a hammer, was found in the Long Barrow, at West Kennet,[962] Wiltshire. A large conical sort of muller of sarsen-stone,[963] weighing 12 1∕2 lbs., was discovered with twenty-two skeletons, various animal remains, and pottery, in a large cist, in a barrow near Avebury. Mr. G. Clinch has a hammer from West Wickham, made from a nearly cylindrical quartz pebble, much worn at both ends, one of which is more rounded than the other.
[Illustration: Figs. 167 and 168.—Yorkshire Wolds. 1∕2]
On the Downs of Sussex, in the pits of Cissbury, in Yorkshire, Suffolk, Dorsetshire, and other counties, hammer-stones of flint, apparently used for chipping other flints, have been found, but from their rudeness it seems hardly worth while to engrave any specimens. At Grime’s Graves the hammer-stones consisted principally of quartzite pebbles, though some were of flint. In many instances the hammers made of flint seem to be cores from which flakes have been struck, but which, proving to be of refractory stone, have been found more serviceable as hammers. Some of the cores found at Spiennes, near Mons, have been thus used, as well as fragments of celts. Some of the hammer-stones from the French caves consist also of such cores. Stone mullers are in common use in most countries at the present day, for grinding paint and similar purposes. They occur at the Cape of Good Hope,[964] but were there, no doubt, originally intended for other uses.
The general character of the chipped flint hammer-stones will be gathered from Figs. 167 and 168, both from the Yorkshire Wolds. |249| Neither of them shows any trace of the original surface or crust of the flint from which it has been fashioned. The larger one has been chipped with numerous facets somewhat into the shape of a broad bivalve shell, and is much battered round the margin. Fig. 168 is much smaller than usual, and is more disc-like in character.
[Illustration: Fig. 168A.—Culbin Sands. 1∕2]
A large number of discoidal stones, formed from flattish quartzite pebbles, have been found on the Culbin Sands,[965] Elginshire. By the kindness of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, one of them is shown in Fig. 168A. They may be hammer-stones, but show no traces of use.
[Illustration: Fig. 169—Bridlington. 1∕2]
More commonly, perhaps, the form is approximately spherical. Fig. 169 is, however, a more symmetrical specimen than usual. It was found by Mr. E. Tindall at Grindale, near Bridlington, and its surface is battered all over by continual pounding. I have others of similar character from Icklingham, Suffolk; Jordan Hill, Weymouth; and elsewhere. Two from Old Geir, Anglesea, are engraved in the _Archæological Journal_.[966]
Others were found in a tumulus at Seaford,[967] and at Mount Caburn,[968] Sussex.
Numerous rude hammer-stones have been found at Carnac,[969] Brittany.
One of chert, 3 inches in diameter, was found in the Isle of Portland,[970] and several have been found in Dorsetshire[971] which were supposed to have been used in fashioning flint implements; and balls of chert, 2 1∕2 inches and 2 1∕4 inches in diameter, found at West Coker, Somersetshire,[972] and another from Comb-Pyne, Devonshire,[973] have been thought to have been “intended for the sling, or else to be tied up in a leather thong attached to a staff, and employed as a sort of mace.” |250|
A globular nodule of flint, one pound in weight, and chipped all over, found with numerous flint flakes in the long-chambered barrow at West Kennet,[974] appeared to Dr. Thurnam to have been used in their production. Several others found together in the parish of Benlochy,[975] near Blairgowrie, were regarded as sling-stones. A lump of red flint found in a barrow near Pickering,[976] in company with a flint spear-head and two arrow-heads at the right hand of a skeleton, was considered by Mr. Bateman to have been used as a hammer for chipping other flints. A more highly-decorated class of stone balls will be described at a subsequent page. Stone balls, such as were in common use for cannon in the Middle Ages, and those thrown by catapults and other military engines, do not come within my province.
* * * * *
Judging from the battered surface of the spherical stones now under consideration, there can be no doubt of their having been in use as hammers or pounders; but they were probably not in all cases used merely for fashioning other implements of stone, but also for triturating grain, roots, and other substances for food, in the same manner as round pebbles are still used by the native Australians.[977] One such root, abundant in this country, is a principal article of food consumed by the Ahts[978] of North America, among whom “the roots of the common fern or bracken are much used as a regular meal. They are simply washed and boiled, or beaten with a stone till they become soft, and are then roasted.” In New Zealand also fern roots are pounded for food, with pestles of basalt. The corn-crushers and mealing-stones found in the Swiss Lake-dwellings have evidently been intended for the purposes which their names denote; and at the present day among many savage tribes, the only form of mill that is known is that of a flat or slightly concave bed-stone, with a stone rolling-pin or muller. Among the Kaffirs[979] and in West Africa the mill is of this character, the bed-stone being large and heavy, slightly hollowed on its upper surface; the muller, a large oval pebble which is used with a peculiar rocking and grinding motion. The corn (maize or millet) is often boiled before grinding. In Abyssinia[980] the bed-stone of gneiss or granite is about 2 feet in length and 14 inches in width. The face of this is roughened by beating it with a sharp-pointed piece of harder stone, such as quartz or hornblende, and the grain is reduced to flour by repeated grinding or rubbing |251| with a stone rolling-pin. Such mealing-stones are also in use in South America.[981] They have been occasionally found in Britain, and the annexed figure shows a pair found in a hut-circle at Ty Mawr,[982] in the island of Holyhead. Others have been found in Anglesea.[983] Similar specimens have been obtained in Cambridgeshire and Cornwall, and Mr. Tindall had a pair found near Bridlington. A mealing-stone with the muller was found in Ehenside Tarn,[984] Cumberland. I have myself found a muller at Osbaston, Leicestershire. A pair of stones from the Fens[985] is in the museum of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society. Some large blocks of flint, having a flat face bruised all over by hammering, have also been found in the Fens, and may have served as mealing-stones.
[Illustration: Fig. 170.—Holyhead.]
The same form of mill is found also in Ireland,[986] and not improbably remained in occasional use until a comparatively late period. Fynes Moryson[987] mentions having seen in Cork “young maides, stark naked, grinding corne with certaine stones, to make cakes thereof;” and the form of the expression seems to point to something different from a hand-mill or quern, which at that time was in common use in England. The name of saddle-quern has been given to this form of grinding apparatus. In the Blackmore Museum is one from the pit-dwellings at Highfield,[988] near Salisbury, which are not improbably of post-Roman date; and in the British Museum is one found near Macclesfield. |252|
They are also known in Scotland. One of granite, found near Wick,[989] is in the National Museum at Edinburgh; as is also another, 20 inches by 12 inches, with a rubber 12 inches by 8 inches, found in a cave near Cullen, Banffshire.[990]
They likewise occur in Shetland.[991] Mr. J. W. Cursiter has a long narrow muller with a curved back, in which are five grooves to receive the fingers, so as to give it the appearance of being a fragment of an ammonite.
Saddle-querns of the same character occur also in France.[992] I have a small example from Chateaudun. One from Chassemy[993] (Aisne) has been figured.
Some were likewise found in the Genista Cave at Gibraltar.[994] They are common in West Prussia and in the Island of Rügen, as well as in Scandinavia generally.
A German saddle-quern, from the ancient cemetery at Monsheim, has been engraved by Lindenschmit.[995] Others are mentioned by Klemm.[996] MM. Siret have also found them in their explorations in Spain.
It will have been observed, in the instances I have cited, that the movable muller or grinding-stone is not spherical, but elongated; but what is possibly the more ancient form approached more closely to a pestle and mortar in character, and consisted of a bed-stone with a slight concavity in it, and a more or less spherical stone for a pounder.
* * * * *
A grinding-stone of granite, with a cavity, apparently for bruising grain by a globular stone, was found in Cornwall,[997] and undressed slabs with concavities of the size and shape of an ordinary soup-plate, are of frequent occurrence in the Hebrides.[998] Others have been found in company with stone balls, in the ancient habitations in Anglesea.
Fig. 171 shows a trough of stone, found at Ty Mawr,[999] Holyhead, by the late Hon. W. O. Stanley, who kindly lent me the wood-cuts of Figs. 170 and 171. The cylindrical grinding-stone or muller was found within it, and has a central cavity on each face, to give the hand a better hold in grinding. A similar appliance was found at Pen-y-Bonc[1000] in the same island.
A triturating trough from Cleveland[1001] has been figured. |253|
They have been found in Cornwall[1002] and in Ireland.[1003]
Others have been discovered in Brittany.
Hand-mills of granite formed in much the same manner have been in use until lately in Brandenburg. The lower stones are described as from 2 feet to 4 feet long, and nearly as wide, with channels, after long use, as much as 6 inches deep; the mullers are either spherical or oval, and of such a size that they can be held in the hand.[1004]
A large sandstone, with a small bowl-shaped concavity worked in it, was found near burnt bones, in a barrow at Elkstone,[1005] Staffordshire; and two others in barrows near Sheen.[1006] Another, with a cup-shaped concavity, 2 1∕2 inches in diameter, occurred in a barrow near Pickering;[1007] and in other barrows were found sandstone balls roughly chipped all over, from 4 inches to 1 inch in diameter, in one instance associated with a bronze dagger. A ball of sandstone, 2 1∕2 inches in diameter, was found with flint instruments accompanying a contracted skeleton in a barrow near Middleton.[1008] A round stone like a cannon-ball was also found in a barrow near Cromer,[1009] and three balls of stone, from 2 1∕4 inches to 1 3∕4 inches in diameter, were picked up in a camp at Weetwood,[1010] Northumberland.
[Illustration: Fig. 171.—Ty Mawr.]
Mealing-stones, both flat and hollowed, were found in Schliemann’s[1011] excavations at Troy.
In grinding and pounding a considerable amount of grit must have been worn off the stones and been mixed with the meal. The usual worn condition of the teeth in the skulls from ancient barrows may be connected with this attrition. Mr. Charters-White,[1012] by examination of |254| some teeth from a long barrow at Heytesbury, Wilts, was able to show the presence of grains of sand of different kinds in the dental tartar.
* * * * *
There are two other forms of grinding apparatus still in use—the pestle and mortar, and the rotatory mill—both of which date back to an early period, and concerning which it will be well to say a few words in this place. The ordinary form of pestle—a frustum of a very elongated cone with the ends rounded, is so well known that it appears needless to engrave a specimen on the same scale as the other objects. In Fig. 172 is shown one of a more than usually club-shaped form, 11 inches long, found in Holyhead Island.[1013]
[Illustration: Fig. 172.—Holyhead.]
[Illustration: Fig. 173.—Pulborough.]
* * * * *
This cut originally appeared in illustration of an interesting paper by Mr. Albert Way, F.S.A., on some relics found in and near ancient circular dwellings in Holyhead Island, in which paper some of the other discoveries about to be mentioned are also cited. A pestle like a small club, 9 1∕4 inches long, was found in a gravel-pit near Audley End,[1014] with a Roman cinerary urn. Another, of grey granite, more cylindrical in form, and flatter at one end, 11 1∕2 inches long and 2 inches in diameter, was found at Pulborough,[1015] Sussex, and is engraved in Fig. 173. A limestone pestle of the same character, 12 inches long and 2 1∕2 inches in diameter, found at Cliff Hill, is in the museum at Leicester. A fine pestle of granite or gneiss (12 5∕8 inches) from Epping Forest[1016] has been figured, as has been a shorter one from a barrow at Collingbourn Ducis,[1017] Wilts. Another of greenstone, probably a naturally-formed pebble, 10 1∕4 inches long and 2 1∕2 inches in diameter, rounded at both ends, was found with three porphyry celts in a cairn at Daviot,[1018] near Inverness. It is now in the National Museum at |255| Edinburgh. Another of greenstone, 16 inches long, was found near Carlisle[1019]; and the late Mr. J. W. Flower, F.G.S., had one of the same material 10 inches long, tapering from 2 inches in diameter to 1 1∕4 inches, found in Hilgay Fen, Norfolk. A similar pestle-like stone, 6 inches long, found in Styria, is engraved by Professor Unger.[1020] Another of the same length was among the objects found in the Casa da Moura,[1021] Portugal. Many pestles, more or less well finished in form, have been discovered by the late Dr. Hunt, Dr. Mitchell, Mr. Petrie, Mr. Long, and others in the Orkney and Shetland Isles, and in different parts of Scotland.
Those who wish to make themselves thoroughly acquainted with the different circumstances of these discoveries, and with the various forms of rough implements brought to light, will have to consult the original memoirs[1022] which have been written concerning them. Both in cists or graves, and in the remains of ancient circular habitations, have numerous hammer-stones and pestles been found, associated with various other articles manufactured from stone and bone. Some of these are extremely rude, and appear hardly deserving of the names of spear-heads, knives, chisels, battle-axes, &c., which have been bestowed upon them. There can, however, be no doubt of their being of human manufacture, whatever purpose they may have served. A few well-formed and polished stone celts were found in company with the objects of this class in the “Underground House of Skaill,” Orkney, which, however, was not, strictly speaking, subterranean. In the building, and in the midden around it, were very great numbers of oval sandstone pounding-stones and of large sandstone flakes, probably knives of a rude kind, a pebble with a groove round it like a ship’s block, and a few celts. In Shetland these rude stone implements have been found with human skeletons interred in cists, sometimes with polished weapons.[1023] A very curious implement, somewhat T-shaped, with pointed extremities, and grooves round the transverse part, was found in the broch of Quoyness,[1024] Sanday, Orkney, and has been figured.
Many of the pestle-like stones are merely chipped into a somewhat cylindrical form, but others have been picked or ground all over, so as to give them a circular or oval section. The ends in many instances are more or less splintered, as if by hammering some hard substance rather than by pounding, and the exact purpose to which they were applied it is extremely difficult to divine.
Four of them are shown, on a small scale, in Figs. 174 to 177.
[Illustration: Fig. 174.—Shetland. 20 1∕2 in.]
[Illustration: Fig. 175.—Shetland. 19 in.]
[Illustration: Fig. 176.—Shetland.]
[Illustration: Fig. 177.—Shetland.]
[Illustration: Fig. 178.—Shetland. 21 in.]
Some are more club-like[1025] in character, as in Fig. 178, and are even occasionally wrought to a handle at one end, as was the case |256| with one found in the heart of a burnt stone tumulus at Bressay[1026] (Fig. 179), so as to give them much of the appearance of the short batlet or batting-staff used in the primitive mode of washing linen, such as is still so commonly practised in many parts of the Continent. Nearly similar rough instruments have been found at Baldoon,[1027] Wigtownshire. Is it possible that these stone bats can have served a similar purpose? In the Northern counties[1028] a large smooth-faced stone, set in a sloping position by the side of a stream, on which washerwomen |257| beat their linen, is still called a battling-stone,[1029] and the club is called a batter, batlet, battledore, or battling-staff. Such clubs may also have been used in the preparation of hemp and flax.
[Illustration: Fig. 179.—Shetland.]
A stone club, from St. Isabel,[1030] Bahia, Brazil, is described as 13 3∕8 inches long, 2 1∕2 inches wide, and 1 1∕4 inch thick. It may, however, be a celt, like the supposed clubs from Lancashire[1031] and Cumberland.
There can be no doubt of several of the pestles, though probably not all, belonging to the same period as stone implements of other forms. The mortars in which they were used, were probably merely depressions in blocks of stone, or even of wood. Some rude mortars have, as already mentioned, been found in Holyhead Island, and Anglesea, but it is uncertain to what age they belong. A portion of a mortar of granite, with a channelled lip, found with fragments of urns and calcined bones in a grave at Kerris Vaen, Cornwall, is engraved in the _Archæologia Cambrensis_.[1032]
Very similar stone pestles to those from Orkney were in use among the North American Indians[1033] for pounding maize, and some are engraved by Squier and Davis.[1034]
They also employed[1035] a small form of mortar for pounding quartz, felspar, or shell, with which to temper the clay for pottery. Stone mortars and pestles were in use among the Toltecs and Aztecs in making tortillas, and are found in South Carolina,[1036] and elsewhere in the United States. Among the ancient Pennacooks[1037] of the Merrimac valley, the heavy stone pestle was suspended from the elastic bough of a tree, which relieved the operator in her work; and among the Tahitians[1038] the pestle of stone, used for pounding the bread fruit on a wooden block, is provided with a crutch-like handle.
Some large circular discs of stone, apparently used for grinding, and others with deep cup-shaped depressions in them, found on Dartmoor, and probably connected with some ancient metallurgical operations on the spot, have been engraved and described in the _Transactions of the Devonshire Association_.[1039] |258|
The hand-mill formed with an upper rotatory stone is a mere modification of the pestle and mortar, and dates back to a very early period, though it has continued in use in some parts of the British Isles even unto our own day. The name quern, by which such mills are usually known, occurs in closely similar forms, in all the Teutonic dialects. In Anglo-Saxon it appears under the form Cweorn or Cwyrn, and in modern Danish as Qværn. An excellent example of this instrument, which had been, up to 1850, in use in the cabin of a Kilkenny peasant, was presented by the Rev. J. Graves to the Archæological Institute, and is described and engraved in their Journal.[1040] The upper stone is of granite, the lower of millstone grit. The lower stone is recessed to receive the upper, and has a central depression, in which a small block of oak is fixed, from which projects a small pin—also of oak—to carry the upper stone. This is about 2 feet in diameter, and is perforated at its centre with a hopper-like hole, across the bottom of which a small bar of oak is secured, having a recess in it to receive the pin, but only of such a depth as to keep the upper stone at a slight distance from the lower. Through the upper stone, and near its verge, a vertical hole is drilled to receive a peg, which forms the handle for turning it. When in use it is worked, as in ancient times among the Jews, by two women seated opposite each other, who alternately seize and propel the handle, so as to drive the stone at considerable speed. The corn, highly dried, is fed by handfuls into the hopper in the runner or upper stone, and the meal passes out by a notch in the rim of the nether stone. Pennant,[1041] in his “Tour in Scotland,” describes querns as still in use in the Hebrides in 1772. They were said to cost about fourteen shillings, and to grind a bushel of corn in four hours, with two pair of hands. He gives a representation of a quern at work, with a long stick, hanging from the branch of a tree, inserted in the hole in the runner, so as to form the handle. A somewhat similar method of driving the hand-mill indoors, taken from a German MS. of the fourteenth century, has been reproduced from a work by Drs. Von Hefner and Wolf in the _Archæological Journal_.[1042]
A sketch of a hand-mill in use at the present day, at Abbeville, is given in C. Roach Smith’s “Collectanea Antiqua.”[1043]
Even in the neighbourhood of water-mills, when the charge for grinding was at all high, we find these hand-mills in use in mediæval times. Such use, by the townsmen of St. Albans, was, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, a fruitful source of litigation between them and the abbots, who claimed the monopoly of grinding for their tenants.[1044] Thirteen of these, however, maintained their right of using hand-mills, as having been enjoyed of old, and some claims were raised to the privilege of grinding oat-meal only, by means of a hand-mill.
It seems probable that these mediæval hand-mills were of large size, and with a comparatively flat upper stone, like the modern Irish form, which is sometimes 3 feet 6 inches in diameter. One, 3 feet in diameter, found near Hollingbourne,[1045] Kent, was probably of no great antiquity. |259| The same may be said of a six-sided quern, with an iron pivot, found in Edinburgh.[1046] A quern, found at West Coker,[1047] Somerset, with a fleur-de-lis over the passage by which the meal escaped, has been assigned to the thirteenth century. The lower stone of a quern accompanied an apparently Saxon interment at Winster,[1048] Derbyshire. It was of the beehive[1049] shape, and made of millstone grit. Similar querns, with iron pins, have been found at Breedon,[1050] Leicestershire, as well as others with the upper stone more conical. One of this class was also found near Rugby.[1051] They frequently accompany Roman[1052] remains, but these are generally of smaller size, and of a more hemispherical form, the favourite material being the Lower Tertiary conglomerate, or Hertfordshire pudding-stone. Those of Andernach lava, from the Rhine, are usually flat.
A complete quern was found at Ehenside Tarn,[1053] Cumberland. The upper half of another was in a post-Roman circular dwelling, near Birtley,[1054] Northumberland.
Querns of various forms are of frequent occurrence in Wales, especially in Anglesea. An upper stone from Lampeter,[1055] Cardiganshire, has a semicircular projection at the margin round the hole for the handle. In some districts[1056] they have been in use until quite recent times.[1057]
In Scotland, querns are of frequent occurrence in the ancient brochs and hill forts. In one of the former, at Kettleburn,[1058] Caithness, a stone in preparation for a quern was found; in another, in Aberdeenshire, an upper stone, 18 inches in diameter, was discovered. Another stone of the same size, surrounded by four border stones to prevent the scattering of the grain in grinding, was discovered in a subterranean chamber in a hill fort at Dunsinane,[1059] Perth. A curious pot-quern, the lower stone decorated with a carved human face, was found in East Lothian, and is engraved by Wilson.[1060]
Some interesting notices of Scottish querns have been given by Sir Arthur Mitchell.[1061]
The upper stone, ornamented with raised lines, shown in Fig. 180, from a cut kindly lent me by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, was found in trenching a moss in the parish of Balmaclellan, New Galloway, with some curious bronze objects of “late-Celtic” workmanship.[1062]
An upper stone (18 inches), ornamented in a nearly similar way, was found near Stranraer,[1063] Wigtownshire, and another, with a tribrach instead of a cross, at Roy Bridge,[1064] Inverness-shire. |260|
Some ornamentally carved upper stones of querns, one of them with spiral and leaf-shaped patterns upon it, much like those on the bronze ornaments of the “late-Celtic” Period, have been discovered in Anglesea.[1065]
[Illustration: Fig. 180.—Balmaclellan.]
Querns of green sandstone are stated, by Sir R. Colt Hoare,[1066] to be numerous in British villages and pit-dwellings in Wiltshire, as indeed they are in other counties,[1067] though formed of various kinds of grit. They rarely occur in barrows, though burnt granite querns have been found with burnt bones in cromlechs in Jersey.[1068]
Some observations on querns by the Rev. Dr. A. Hume, are published in the _Archæologia Cambrensis_.[1069] As these utensils belong, for the most part, to Roman and post-Roman times, I have thought it needless to enter into any more minute description of their forms, or of the circumstances under which they have been found.
|261|
CHAPTER XI.
GRINDING-STONES AND WHETSTONES.
Before proceeding to the consideration of other forms of implements, it will be well to say a few words with regard to those which have served for grinding, polishing, or sharpening tools and weapons, and more especially such as there is every reason to suppose, were employed to give an edge or finish to other materials than metal, though the whetstones of the Bronze Period must not be passed by unnoticed.
I have already mentioned the fact that the grindstones on which stone celts and axes were polished and sharpened, were not like those of the present day, revolving discs against the periphery of which the object to be ground was held; but stationary slabs on which the implements to be polished or sharpened were rubbed. Considering the numbers of polished implements that have been discovered in this country, it appears not a little remarkable that such slabs have not been more frequently noticed, though not improbably they have, from their simple character, for the most part escaped observation; and even if found, there is usually little, unless the circumstances of the discovery are peculiar, to connect them with any particular stage of civilization or period of antiquity. In Denmark and Sweden, however, these grinding-stones, both of the flat and polygonal forms already described, are of comparatively frequent occurrence. Specimens are figured by Worsaae,[1070] Sophus Müller, and others, and were also given by Thomsen,[1071] so long ago as 1832. He states that they have been found in Scandinavia, in barrows and elsewhere in the ground, with half-finished stone celts lying with them, so that there can be no doubt as to the purpose for which they were intended. They are also described by Nilsson[1072] and Montelius.[1073] |262| Both slabs and prismatic pieces of sandstone have been found in the Swiss Lake-dwellings,[1074] several of the former with concavities on one or both faces, resulting from stone hatchets having been ground upon them.[1075]
* * * * *
In France the discovery of numerous ‘_polissoirs_’ has been noticed, some of them of very large dimensions. They are abundant in the Departments of la Charente[1076] and la Dordogne,[1077] and some fine examples are in the Museum of Troyes (Aube). One, nearly 3 feet long, with hollows of different characters, apparently for grinding different parts of tools and weapons, is figured by M. Peigné Delacourt;[1078] an oval concavity upon it is 2 feet 3 inches long by 1 foot wide, and seems well adapted for grinding the faces of large celts. Another fine example was in the possession of Dr. Léveillé,[1079] at Grand Pressigny, and a large specimen, also from Poitou, is in the Musée de St. Germain. Several have been found in Luxembourg[1080] and Belgium.
Flat grinding-stones of smaller dimensions have been found in the turbaries of the Somme and in the Camp de Catenoy.[1081] A narrow sharpening stone 5 inches long is recorded to have been found with stone hatchets and other implements in the Cueva de los Murciélagos, in Spain.[1082] _Polissoirs_ have also been observed in India.[1083]
The Carreg y Saelhau,[1084] or Stone of the Arrows, near Aber, Carnarvonshire, has numerous scorings upon it, a quarter or half an inch in depth; and, though doubtless used for sharpening tools and weapons of some kind, it seems to belong to the metallic age. Canon Greenwell informs me that he observed a rock close to a camp on Lazenby Fell, Cumberland, with about seventy grooves upon it from 4 to 7 inches long and about 1 inch wide and deep, pointed at either end, as if from sharp-ended tools or weapons having been ground in them. The grooves are in various directions, though sometimes in groups of four or five together, which are parallel with each other. In the course of his investigations in the barrows on the Yorkshire Wolds[1085] he has found a few of the flat slabs for grinding or polishing, though of small size. One of them, formed of a flat piece of red sandstone about 4 1∕2 inches by 3 1∕2 inches, with both faces bearing marks of having been in use for grinding, lay close to a deposit of burnt bones. Another somewhat similar fragment of sandstone (2 3∕4 inches by 2 1∕2 inches), which also bore traces of attrition, was found in a barrow at Helperthorpe.
In another barrow at Cowlam,[1086] Yorkshire, E. R., was a rough piece |263| of grit, 2 1∕4 inches long, with one end slightly hollowed, apparently by grinding celts, and a large flat compact laminated red sandstone pebble about 8 3∕4 inches by 3 inches, with both faces ground away, the one being evenly flat and the other uneven. In the same barrow occurred one of the flint rubbers to be subsequently described, and also a quartzite pebble (2 1∕2 inches long) that had been used as a hammer-stone. A portion of a whetstone of Pennant or Coal-measure sandstone was found in the long barrow at West Kennet, Wiltshire,[1087] in which also occurred a thin ovoidal knife of flint, ground at the edges.
I have in my own collection a very interesting specimen of this kind from Burwell Fen, near Cambridge. It is a thin slab of close-grained micaceous sandstone, about 5 1∕2 by 4 inches, slightly hollowed and polished on both faces by grinding. With it were found two celts of flint, 4 1∕2 and 5 inches long, of pointed oval section, one of them polished all over, and the other at the edge only, which in all probability had been sharpened on this very stone. In the same place were two long subangular fragments of greenstone of the right form, size, and character to be manufactured into celts, and which had no doubt been selected for that purpose.
A grinding-stone with a celt lying in it, found at Glenluce,[1088] Wigtownshire, has been figured.
On the Sussex Downs I have found flat pebbles 3 or 4 inches long, which have evidently been used as hones, but whether for stone or metallic tools it is impossible to say. Fragments of polished celts and numerous flakes and “scrapers” of flint were, however, in their immediate neighbourhood. Among the modern savages of Tahiti[1089] who used hatchets of basalt, a whetstone and water appear to have been always at hand, as constant sharpening was necessary. It seems probable therefore that there must have been a constant demand for such sharpening-stones in this country, and that many of them ought still to exist. With flint hatchets, the constant whetting was, however, no doubt less necessary than with those of the different kinds of basalt. Their edges, if carefully chipped, will indeed cut wood without being ground at all.
* * * * *
Mr. Bateman mentions “a flat piece of sandstone rubbed hollow at one side” as having been found in a barrow at Castern, Staffordshire,[1090] but it is uncertain whether this was a grindstone. It may have been used only as a mortar, for with it was a round piece of ruddle or red ochre, “which from its abraded appearance must have been in much request for colouring the skin of its owner.”[1091] In a barrow on the West Coast of Kintyre, there also occurred a piece of red Lancashire or Westmoreland iron-ore or hæmatite worn flat on the side, apparently by having been rubbed upon some other substance. Nodules of ruddle are also said to |264| have occurred, interspersed with the charcoal in a barrow at Broad Down, near Honiton.[1092]
In one of the ancient habitations in Holyhead,[1093] was a large stone 11 inches long, probably used for grinding hæmatite, with which it was deeply tinged; and a small stone box found with celts and other relics at Skara, Skaill, Orkney,[1094] contained a red pigment.
[Illustration: Fig. 180A.—Lamberton Moor.]
There can be little doubt of this red pigment having been in use for what was considered a personal decoration by the early occupants of Britain. But this use of red paint dates back to a far earlier period, for pieces of hæmatite with the surface scraped, apparently by means of flint-flakes, have been found in the French and Belgian caves of the Reindeer Period, so that this red pigment appears to have been in all ages a favourite with savage man. The practice of interring war-paint with the dead is still observed among the North American Indians.[1095]
“The paints that warriors love to use Place here within his hand, That he may shine with ruddy hues Amidst the spirit land.”
* * * * *
Some few of the grinding-stones found in this country resemble those of polygonal form found in Denmark,[1096] in so far as they are symmetrically shaped and have been used on all their faces. One 13 1∕2 inches long, found on Lamberton Moor,[1097] Berwickshire, is shown in Fig. 180A., kindly lent by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
In the Christy Collection is such a sharpening-stone, nearly square in section, about 9 1∕4 inches long, and of the form shown in Fig. 181. Both the faces and sides are worn slightly concave, as if from grinding convex surfaces such as the edges of celts, though it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty that this was really the purpose to which it was applied. It is said to have been found near Barcoot, in the parish of Dorchester, Oxon, in 1835, not far from a spot where a |265| stone celt had been found a few years previously. In the same collection is a Danish whetstone of precisely the same character, but rather broader at one end than at the other.
[Illustration: Fig. 181.—Dorchester. 1∕2]
A grinding-stone, 26 inches long, was found at Ehenside Tarn,[1098] Cumberland.
[Illustration: Fig. 182.—Rudstone. 1∕1]
In Fig. 182 is shown, full size, a very curious object formed of compact mica-schist, which has the appearance of having served as a whetstone or hone. It has been ground over its whole surface. The flatter face is towards the middle somewhat hollowed—rather more so than is shown in the section—and shows some oblique scratches upon it as if from rubbing a rather rough object upon it. It was found in 1870 by Canon Greenwell, with other relics accompanying an unburnt body in a barrow at Rudstone, near Bridlington.[1099] About midway between the head and the knees was a series of articles in this descending order. On the top was this whetstone—if such it be—resting on a carved jet ring, like Fig. 372, which lay on the boss of a large jet button. Below this was another jet button, like Fig. 371, face downwards. Close by lay a half-nodule of pyrites and a round-ended flint flake, which will be subsequently noticed. Nearer the face was a dagger-knife of bronze, with three rivets through it, and two more for fastening together the two plates of ox-horn of which the hilt had been composed. The whetstone may have been that used for sharpening this instrument.
An instrument of slate of nearly the same |266| form was found in a cairn at Penbeacon,[1100] Dartmoor, and was regarded by Mr. Spence Bate as a tool used in fashioning clay vessels. Dr. Thurnam[1101] has suggested that if covered with leather these stones may have served as bracers or arm-guards for archers.
Two pieces of a dark-coloured slaty kind of stone, of nearly the same form and size as the Yorkshire specimen, and lying parallel with each other, were found by Sir R. Colt Hoare[1102] at the feet of a skeleton, together with a little rude drinking-cup, in a barrow near Winterbourn Stoke. A stud and ring of jet, probably of the same character as those from Rudstone, and a piece of flint rudely chipped, as if intended for a dagger or spear, were also found. No bronze objects were discovered, but the cist appears to have been imperfectly examined.
[Illustration: Fig. 183.—Fimber. 1∕2]
* * * * *
I have already mentioned[1103] that in grinding and polishing the concave faces of different forms of perforated stone axes, it is probable that stone rubbers were used in conjunction with sand. Even the smaller flat and rounded faces may have been wrought by similar means. That rubbers of some kind must have been used, is, I think, evident from the character of the surfaces, especially of those which are hollowed; and the most readily available material for the formation of such rubbers, was doubtless stone. There is therefore an _à priori_ probability of such stone grinding-tools having been in use; and if we find specimens which present the conditions which such tools would exhibit, we are almost justified in assuming them to have served such purposes. Now in the collection of Messrs. Mortimer, of Driffield, Yorkshire, are several pieces of flint and portions of pebbles of schist, flint, and quartz found in that neighbourhood, which are ground at one end into a more or less rounded form, and exhibit striæ running along, and not across, the rounded surface. They have, in fact, all the appearance of having been used with coarse sand for grinding a concavity in another stone, such, for instance, as the concave face of the stone axe shown in Fig. 125. I am indebted to their kindness for the specimen shown in Fig. 183, which consists of a short piece of a conical nodule of flint, the large end of which has been used for grinding in ancient times, the striated face being now considerably weathered. In the Greenwell Collection is a rubber of the same kind from Weaverthorpe on the Yorkshire Wolds. Mr. H. S. Harland[1104] has found other specimens in Yorkshire, of which he has kindly given me several. Polishers[1105] are also found in Scotland. A polisher of somewhat similar character, but made of serpentine, was found in the |267| Lago di Varese, near Como, where a number of stone implements were also discovered.
At a later period larger rubbers of the same kind were used to smooth the flutings of Doric columns. I have seen some among the ruins of the temples at Selinunto, in Sicily.
Some long narrow rubbers, apparently intended for grinding out the shaft-holes of perforated axes, have been found in the Swiss Lake-dwellings; and I have a slightly conical stone, about an inch in diameter, from Mainz, which may have been used for the same purpose.
* * * * *
In the barrow at Cowlam, already mentioned, besides the grinding-stones of grit, there was a piece of flint roughly chipped into a cubical form, and having one face partly ground smooth. It may have been used for polishing the surfaces of other stone implements, or possibly merely as a muller. It is shown in Fig. 184. The striæ run diagonally of the square face.
In the collection formed by Canon Greenwell, is also a sandstone pebble, 2 1∕2 inches in diameter, which has been “picked” into shape, and has one face smooth as if used for grinding. It was found in a barrow on Ganton Wold, East Riding. A roughly conical piece of oolitic sandstone, 2 1∕2 inches high, in places “picked” on the surface, and with the base apparently used for grinding, was found with a contracted body and some flint flakes, in another barrow on Ganton Wold.[1106]
[Illustration: Fig. 184.—Cowlam. 1∕2]
[Illustration: Fig. 185.—Amesbury. 1∕2]
In the Wiltshire barrows several rubbing-stones (or what appear to be such) of a peculiar form have been found, of which one is shown in Fig. 185. It is of close-grained grit, possibly from the Lower Greensand, and was discovered with two others in a harrow on Normanton Down, near Amesbury. Two more were in the collection of the late Rev. Edward Duke, of Lake, near Salisbury, to whose kindness I am indebted for the loan of the specimen. Both are now in the British Museum. These instruments vary but little in shape, size, or character, being usually of a truncated half-ovoid form, with a rounded groove along the flat surface, and are formed of sandstone.