them are as struck from the nodules, having the sharp smooth edges resulting from the original conchoidal fracture; and these have mostly an elongated or blade-like shape (see woodcut, fig. 10). Ten or twelve of a round form have been carefully chipped by repeated blows at the edges, by which means a serrated edge has been obtained;[1] more useful, perhaps, than a smooth edge for dividing the coarse and gristly fibres of the food.[2] The regularly serrated edge of one of the oblong flakes may be compared to that of a saw, very similar to one figured in the Proceedings of the Society;[3] the chief difference being that the teeth of the saw in our example are not so deep or defined. Only one of the flint implements had been ground at the edges; and this is a beautiful thin ovoidal knife, three and a half inches long, which may have been used for flaying the animals slaughtered for the funeral feast (see woodcut, fig. 13). A portion of a whetstone, on which it may have been ground, was found at no great distance from skeleton No. 4. It was of Pennant or coal-measure sandstone, probably from the valley of the Somersetshire Avon.
The quantity of coarse native pottery was very remarkable. At first it was thought that the heaps in the angles of the chamber would prove to be the fragments of vases, deposited entire when the funeral rites were completed. This, however, was not the case, and whence the fragments came, and why here deposited, must be matter of conjecture. They at least remind us of the "shards, flints, and pebbles," which our great dramatist connects with the graves of suicides (Hamlet, v. 1), and the use of which in mediæval times may have been a relic of paganism. That the fragments found in the chamber were those of domestic vessels required for the funeral feast, is by no means clear; for in such case, had the mass of fragments been deposited, it would have been possible to have recon-
- ↑ These are the implements referred to in a preceding note, p. 413. In excavating what was probably a hut-circle, about two miles from Kennet, Dean Merewether, in 1849, found numerous flint objects of this description, two of which he has figured in the Salisbury Volume of the Archæological Institute, p. 106. He describes them as "pieces of flint of about 112 inch across, evidently chipped into form, as if to be held in the hand or fastened to some handle."
- ↑ Knives were but little used for this purpose by the rude Celtic tribes, down to a late period. In the century before our era, Posidonius describes those of South Gaul, in their feasts, as "taking up whole joints, like lions, biting off portions, and if any part proved too hard to be torn off by the teeth, they cut it with a small knife, which they had beside them in a sheath."—Athenæus, lib. iv. c. 86. The knife, μαχαίριον, referred to by Posidonius, was probably of bronze; but at an earlier period, and by the ruder tribes, knives of flint would doubtless be those employed. Rough flakes and implements of this material, Worsaae tells us, are found in Denmark among heaps of the broken bones of animals, shells of oysters, &c, the remains, no doubt, of the feasts of the primitive Scandinavian people. Athenæum, Dec. 31, 1859.
- ↑ Found at Brighthampton, Oxon. See Proceedings, vol. iv. p. 233.
