Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/150

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PREHISTORIC BRITAIN

sling-stone, which may be a smooth pebble from the brook, or a flint nodule roughly chipped into a lenticular, discoidal, or globular shape. Hundreds of ovate pellets of clay, generally of the size of a pigeon's egg, burnt and unburnt, have been found on the site of the lake-village of Glastonbury, and are regarded as sling-bolts, or perhaps fire-bolts. Similar clay pellets have been dug up on the site of Ardoch Camp associated with Roman pottery and other Roman remains.

In summing up a critical review of the different theories held in regard to the remarkable series of ornamental stone balls found in Scotland—and only in Scotland—I came to the conclusion that their chronological range extended from the end of the Stone Age down to the end of Paganism in Britain. Their geographical distribution seems to me to have an ethnographical significance. Thus of 111 specimens dealt with, no fewer than 56 were traced to Aberdeenshire, and the rest to the eastern districts of Scotland, chiefly north of the Firth of Forth—the exceptions being three from Lanarkshire, two from the counties of Dumfries, Argyll and Wigtown, one from Islay, and one from Ireland. Now the Scottish area thus defined strikingly coincides with what we know of the home of that most obscure of all the people who formerly inhabited North Britain, viz. the Picts or Caledonians.

Dress and Ornament.—We have no knowledge of any phase of humanity in which the