ties, and have then been bound together so as to securely grasp the pebble. A stone mallet, consisting of a large pebble mounted between two curved pieces of wood, somewhat resembling the hames of a horse collar, and firmly bound together at each end, is still used by the quarrymen of Trichinopoly,[1] in India. Another method of hafting stones, by tying them on to the side of a stick with little or no previous preparation, is practised by the Aymara Indians of Bolivia and Peru.[2] Mr. D. Forbes, F.R.S., in his interesting account of this people, has engraved a pebble thus mounted, which was in use as a clod crusher. One of them is preserved in the Christy Collection. Among the Apaches,[3] in Mexico, hammers are made of rounded pebbles hafted in twisted withes.
Fig. 160.—Helmsley. 12
A remarkable hammer-head, found at Helmsley, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, is in the collection formed by Canon Greenwell. It is shown in Fig. 160, and has been made from a rather coarse-grained quartzite pebble, both ends of which have, however, been worn away by use to an extent probably of an inch in each case, or of two inches in the whole pebble. The worn ends are rounded, but somewhat hollow in the middle, as if they had at that part been used for striking against some cylindrical or sharp surface. The funnel-shaped cavities appear almost too deep and too sharp at their edges to have been intended merely to assist in holding the hammer in the hand, and it seems possible that their original purpose may have been in connection with some method of hafting. The hammer has, however, eventually been used in the hand alone, for the wear of the ends extends over the face, quite to the margin of one of the cavities, and at such an angle, that it would have been almost impossible for any handle to have been present. But if the stone be held in the hand, with the middle finger in the cavity, the wear is precisely on that part of the stone which would come in contact with a flat surface, in hammering upon it. What substance it was used to pound or crush it is impossible to determine, but not improbably it may have been animal food; and bones as well as meat may have been pounded with it.
A quasi-cubical hammer-stone, with recesses on two opposite faces, found at Moel Fenlli,[4] Ruthin, Denbighshire, has been figured. It is now in my collection.
