Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/114

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106
PREHISTORIC BRITAIN

with the result that there was a consensus of opinion among the members that his discoveries proved that the interval between the two civilizations, in that locality, had been of short duration. The precise data are as follows:

Above a stratum containing relics characteristic of the Reindeer Age, but beneath deposits with relics equally characteristic of the Neolithic period, Piette describes two beds, the combined depth of which amounted to four feet, which yielded the relics supposed to indicate a transition period. The lower of these two beds was composed chiefly of ashes and wood-charcoal intermingled with some fallen rocks. The thickness of this bed was 251/2 inches, and among its contents the following worked objects were found: flint knives and scrapers, a number of perforated deer teeth, arranged as if they had formed a necklet, also perforated teeth of various other animals; pins, polished pointers, and spatulæ of bone; barbed harpoons made of stag-horn, some being perforated at the butt-end with an oval or round hole, and others with barbs on one side only; also a large number of pebbles of quartz or schist—such as could be picked from the bed of the river—some "round-nosed" and pestle-shaped, showing usage markings at one end, and others, flat and oblong, having various devices painted on them with peroxide of iron (Fig. 19). The fauna was represented by bones of the stag, roebuck, chamois, ox, horse, com-