Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/165

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CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH THEY HAVE BEEN FOUND.
143

their abundance, I may mention that the late Mr. Bateman[1] records the discovery of upwards of thirty, at fourteen different localities within a small district of Derbyshire. Numerous discoveries in Yorkshire are cited by Mr. C. Monkman.[2]

Dr. Joseph Stevens has recorded several from the Thames near Reading,[3] and a very large number of those in my own and various public collections I have had to leave unnoticed for want of space.

The circumstances under which stone celts of various forms have been discovered must now be considered, with a view of throwing some light on their antiquity, and the length of time they have remained in use. And it must at the outset be confessed that we have but little to guide us on these points. We have already seen that they have been found with objects of bronze; for in the barrow on Upton Lovel Down,[4] examined by Sir R. Colt Hoare, flint celts, both rough and polished, were discovered in company with a perforated stone axe, and a bronze pin, though in this instance there were two interments. The Ravenhill tumulus, near Scarborough,[5] is more conclusive; for in it was an urn containing burnt bones, a broken flint celt, flint arrow-heads, and a beautiful bronze pin one and a-half inches long. The evidence of other recorded cases is but weak. Near Tynewydd, in the parish of Llansilin, Denbighshire,[6] a green- stone celt and a bronze socketed celt were found together in moving an accumulation of stones, which did not, however, appear to have been a cairn. In another instance,[7] three stone celts, one roughly chipped, the others polished, are stated to have been found with a bronze socketed celt in the parish of Southend, Kintyre, Argyllshire. At Campbelton, in the same district,[8] were found two polished stone celts, and with them, on the same spot, two stone moulds for casting looped spear-heads of bronze.

Though there may be doubts as to the true association of stone celts with instruments of bronze in some of these cases, the presumptive evidence is strong of their having remained in use, as might indeed have been reasonably expected, after the introduction of bronze for cutting-tools. By the time bronze knife-daggers had become common, perforated battle-axes had also come to form part of a warrior's ordinary equipment. These are often found with the daggers in graves, and there can be no doubt of the ordinary form of stone hatchet having preceded that with a shaft-hole. There are, however, a number of facts in connection with the occurrence of the ordinary
  1. "Vest. Ant. Derb.," p. 6.
  2. Journ, Ethn. Soc., vol. ii. p. 157.
  3. Arch. Assoc. Journ., vol. xxxix. p. 344.
  4. "South Wilts," p. 75. Arch., vol. xv. p. 122.
  5. Arch. Assoc. Journ., vol. vi. p. 3.
  6. Arch. Journ., vol. x. p. 161.
  7. Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. iv. p. 396.
  8. Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. vi. 48.