Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/150

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128
POLISHED CELTS.
[CHAP. VI.

faces being flatter, the blade thinner, and also wider in the middle in proportion to the edge, it being 51/2 inches long, 21/4 inches wide in the middle, and 11/2 inches at the edge, and rather less than an inch in thickness. The material is a Serpula limestone, and the celt was no doubt formed from a travelled block, as it was found in a Boulder-clay district at Troston, near Bury St. Edmunds. I have a much heavier implement from the same locality, and formed of the same kind of stone. It is 10 inches long, and rather wider in proportion than Fig. 72. It does not narrow towards the edge, but in section and general form may be classed with the specimen there figured.

A large celt, 10 inches long, of the same section, but thinner proportionally, and with straighter and more parallel sides, in outline more like Fig. 79, was found at Pilmoor, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, and forms part of the Greenwell Collection. It is of clayslate. Another in the same collection, and from North Holme, in the same Riding (10 inches), is broader and flatter, with the sides somewhat more square, and the edge more curved. One face is somewhat hollowed towards one side, possibly to grind out the trace of a too deep chip. A third is from Barmston, in the East Riding (101/2 inches), and a beautiful celt of hornblendic serpentine (l05/8 inches), oval in section and pointed at the butt, was found at Cunningsburgh,[1] Shetland, and another of diorite (101/8 inches), rather broader in its proportions than Fig. 72, on Ambrisbeg Hill,[2] Island of Bute. An analogous form from Japan is in the museum at Leyden.


Fig. 73.—Forfarshire. 1/2
A long narrow chisel-like celt, with an oval section, is given in Fig. 73. The original is of dark greenstone, and was found in Forfarshire. It is in the National Museum at Edinburgh. I have a larger celt of the same form (51/2 inches), formed of a close-grained grit, and found at Sherburn, Yorkshire. Messrs. Mortimer have another of schist (41/2 inches), from Thixendale, Yorkshire. This form occurs, though rarely, in Ireland.

A much larger celt, of metamorphic rock, 81/2 inches long, 3 inches broad at the edge, and 13/4 inches at the butt, 13/8 inches thick, was found on Throckley Fell, Northumberland, and is in the Museum at Newcastle.

Fig. 74 gives a shorter form of implement truncated at the butt. The original, which is in my own collection, is formed of green- stone, and was found at Easton, near Bridlington. It is carefully polished towards the edge, but at the butt it is roughened, apparently with the intention of rendering it more capable of adhesion to its socket. The celt from Malton, Fig. 81, is roughened in a similar manner, and the same is the case with many of the hatchets from the Swiss lake-dwellings, which have been frequently found still fixed in their sockets of stag's horn.
  1. Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. xv. p. 245.
  2. P.S.A.S., vol. xxvii. p. 370.