Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/405

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STEMMED AND BARBED ARROW-HEADS.
383

symmetrical (to judge from the engravings), were found in 1763 at Tring Grove, Herts,[1] with an extended skeleton. They lay between the legs, and at the feet were some of the perforated plates of greenish stone of the character of Fig. 354. An arrow-head of much the same form was found in a barrow near Tenby,[2] with human bones and a part of a curious ring-shaped ornament, supposed to be of ivory. The long tapering arrow-head shown in Fig. 316 affords a contrast to this broad form. Its barbs are unfortunately not quite perfect, but the form being uncommon I have engraved it. It was found in Reach Fen, Cambridgeshire. A ruder example of the same form as Fig. 316, from Bourn Fen, has been figured in Miller and Skertchly's "Fen-land."[3] A longer specimen, almost as acutely pointed, and with square-ended barbs, found on Lanchester Common,[4] Durham, is in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle. I have several others of the same type from Suffolk, some with the sides curved slightly inwards.

Fig. 315.—Eddlesborough. Fig. 316.—Reach Fen. Fig. 317.—Isleham.

The next Figure (317) is illustrative of the extraordinary amount of care and skill that was sometimes bestowed on the manufacture of objects so liable to be broken or lost in use as arrow-heads. This specimen was found at Isleham, Cambridgeshire, and has unfortunately lost its central stem, the outline of which I have restored from a nearly similar arrow-head found at Icklingham, Suffolk, which has lost both its barbs. It is very thin, so much so that its weight is only thirty-eight grains, but it is neatly chipped over the whole of both faces. Nothing, however, can exceed the beautiful regularity of the minute chipping by which the final outline was given to the edges, extremely small flakes having been removed at regular intervals so close to each other that there are twenty of them in an inch. The inner sides and ends of the barbs are worked perfectly straight, the ends forming right angles to the sides of the arrow-head, and the inner sides being nearly parallel with each other, so that the barbs are somewhat dovetailed in form.

The broader, but almost equally beautiful arrow-head shown in Fig.
  1. Arch., vol. viii. p. 429, pl. xxx.
  2. Arch. Camb., 2nd S., vol. ii. p. 292.
  3. P. 579.
  4. Arch. Journ., vol. xvii. p. 60.