Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/102

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PREHISTORIC BRITAIN

for the manufacture of piercing implements than flint. Hence, the rapid disappearance of the laurel-leaf blades, which gave place to a series of improved weapons made of bone and horn—daggers, long cylindrical lance-heads, barbed harpoons, and quite a number of small dart-points to be affixed to light wooden shafts. The new lance-heads thus requisitioned consisted of flat or conical rods, pointed at the distal end, and adapted at the other for attachment to the shaft by several mechanical processes. Sometimes the proximal end had a wedge-shaped slit into which the shaft penetrated—an enlarged example of the typical Aurignacien point. This process was sometimes reversed by making the slit in the shaft. In other cases the attached end of the lance-head terminated in a slanting splay, so as to be spliced with a corresponding one in the shaft. Others had the proximal end terminating in a blunt cone, so as to form a loose joint—in which case the blunt end of the head had either a circular ridge, or two projecting lobes, or a small perforation placed a little above the cone, which served for the attachment of a string when the head of the spear was intended to remain m the animal's body. When spearing salmon the string was attached to a float which indicated the position of the wounded fish. These arrangements were, perhaps, more applicable to the barbed harpoons, of which so many beautiful specimens were found by Lartet and Christy on the Magdalénien stations