Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/228

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206
PERFORATED AXES.
[CHAP. VIII.

vailed here as in Denmark. In that country numerous specimens have been found, finished in all respects except the boring, and in many instances this has been commenced though not completed. It would appear from this circumstance that the process of boring was one which required a considerable amount of time, but that it was most satisfactorily performed after the instrument had been brought into shape; the position of the hole being adjusted to the form of the implement, and not the latter to the hole. In the extensive Greenwell Collection is the cutting end of an axe which has been broken half-way across the hole, which, though commenced on both faces, was never finished. The conical, cup-shaped depressions produced by the boring instrument, extend to some depth in the stone, but are still 1/4 inch from meeting. The fragment is 31/8 inches long, and was found at Sprouston, near Kelso.


Fig. 135.—Cowlam. 1/2

In the same collection is a small unfinished axe -head of greenstone, 4 inches long, in which the hole has not been commenced. It was found at Coxwold, in the North Riding of Yorkshire.

An unpierced axe-head of greenstone, 4 inches long, in form much like Fig. 136, but with the hollowed face shorter, was found in a grave in Stronsay, one of the Orkney islands, and is now in the National Museum at Edinburgh. There are slight recesses on each face, showing the spots at which the perforation was to have been commenced.

A perforated axe of serpentine, of the same character as Fig. 134, but wider at the butt, was found in the Thames, and is now in the British Museum. It is 4 inches long and has the peculiarity of being much thicker at the cutting end than at the butt; the two sides tapering from 11/2 inch at the edge to 3/4 inch at the butt.

A similar feature is to be observed in another axe of hornblende schist (53/4 inches), and of rather more elongated form than Fig. 134, found at Cawton, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, and in the Greenwell Collection.

A partially-finished axe-head, with one side and about two-thirds of the width of the faces worked into form, is engraved in the "Horæ Ferales."[1] It is not a British specimen, but its place of finding is unknown. Perforated hammers, in form much like Fig. 134 and 135, occurred among the early remains at Troy.[2]

A rather more elaborate form, having the two sides curved longi-
  1. Pl. iii. 24.
  2. Schliemann's "Troy," 1875, p. 94. Atlas, pl. xxii. 610.