Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/265

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WITH DEPRESSIONS ON THE FACES.
243

not exist in the original celt, but were subsequently added when it had lost its cutting edge, and was destined to be turned into a hammer-stone. In the Greenwell Collection is a similar specimen, 4 inches long, found at Wold Newton, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. In the celts with cup-shaped depressions on their faces, but still retaining their edge, the depressions are nearer the centre of the blade.


Fig. 164.—Bridlington. 1/2

This hollowing of a portion of the surface is sometimes so slight as to amount to no more than a roughening of the face, such as would enable the thumb and fingers to take a sufficiently secure hold of the stone, to prevent its readily falling out of the hand when not tightly grasped; a certain looseness of hold being desirable, to prevent a disagreeable jarring when the blows were struck. If, as seems probable, many of these hammers or pounders were used for the purpose of splitting bones, so as to lay bare the marrow, we can understand the necessity of roughening a portion of the greasy surface of the stone, to assist the hold.

In Fig. 164 I have represented a large quartz pebble found in Easton Field, Bridlington, which has the roughened depression on both faces rather more strongly marked than usual, especially on the face here shown. It is more battered at one end than the other, and has evidently been long in use. It shows some traces of grinding at the lower end in the figure, as if it had been desirable for it to have a sort of transverse ridge at the end, to adapt it to the purpose for which it was used.


Fig. 165.—Bridlington. 1/2

Canon Greenwell found in a barrow at Weaverthorpe,[1] Yorkshire, a hammer-stone of this kind, but nearly circular in form. It is a flat quartz pebble, about 13/4 inches in diameter, battered all round, and broken at one part, and having the centre of one face artificially roughened.

A round hammer (21/2 inches), with depressions on each face, was found at Gatley,[2] Cheshire. Hammer-stones of the same character occurred abundantly on the site of ancient Naukratis.[3] The wallong,[4] or stone used by the Australian natives for grinding nardoo seeds on the yow wi, a large flat stone, is curiously like Fig. 164.

To the same class, belongs the hammer-stone shown in Fig. 165, found at Huntow, near Bridlington. It has been made from a quartz pebble, of the original surface of which but little remains, and has a
  1. "Brit. Barrows," p. 200.
  2. Pr. Lanc. and Ch. Arch. Soc., vol. xi. p. 172.
  3. "Naukratis," pl. i. 1886, p. 42.
  4. Journ. Anth. Inst., vol. vi. pp. 41, 195.