and Van Overloop.[1] Some of the stag's-horn sockets are ornamented by having patterns engraved upon them.[2]
In New Guinea and Celebes a plan has been adopted of inserting the stone blade into the end of a tapering piece of wood, which is securely bound round to prevent its splitting. The small end of this fits in a hole in the club-like haft. An example is shown in Fig. 99b,[3] obligingly lent by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. By turning round the pivot an axe is converted into an adze. In some New Guinea and New Caledonia adzes and axes the blade is let into a socket at a nearly right angle to the haft, and either forming part of it or attached to it. Such an adze
Fig. 99c.—New Guinea Adze.
is shown in Fig. 99c, kindly lent by the same Society. A similar method of hafting is in use in the Entrecasteaux Islands.[4]
Some ingenious suggestions as to the probable method of mounting stone implements in ancient times have been made by the Vicomte Lepic.[5] With a polished Danish flint hatchet 8 inches long, hafted in part of the root of an oak, an oak-tree 8 inches in diameter was cut down without injury to the blade.
Another method of hafting, adopted by the Swiss Lake-dwellers for their stone hatchets, is described by Dr. Keller,[6] from whose work I have copied the annexed woodcut, Fig. 100.
- ↑ "Les Ages de la Pierre en Belgique," pl. ix.
- ↑ L'Anthropologie, vol. i. p. 385.
- ↑ Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. xviii. p. 365.
- ↑ Ratzel, "Völkerk," vol. ii. 245, 247, &c.
- ↑ "Les armes et les outils préh. réconst.," Paris, 1872.
- ↑ "Lake-Dwellings," Eng. ed., p. 110. See also pl. x. 16, xi. 2, and xxviii. 24; and Lindenschmit, "Hohenz. Samml.," pl. xxix. 4.
