smooth. I am at a loss to assign a use to this object. In the Greenwell Collection a similar disc from the North Riding of Yorkshire shows polish on one face. A somewhat similar disc with the hole a little larger, so that it rather resembles a quoit, is in the Norwich Museum. It may be a plaything of no great antiquity. An instrument of similar form, engraved by Lindenschmit,[1] has a parallel shaft-hole. Among the North American Indians,[2] perforated discs, but with broad and not sharp peripheries, appear to have been used as a kind of quoits.
Some flat imperforate discs of stone, from two to nine inches in diameter, roughly chipped round the edges, and in one instance oval, were associated with bronze tweezers and articles of iron, in a Pict's house at Kettleburn, Caithness.[3] Two polished stone discs were found in a crannog near Maybole,[4] Ayrshire, and a nearly square piece of stone that had been polished on both sides in a crannog at Dowalton,[5] Sorbie, Wigtownshire. Others of large size occurred in another Pict's house in Orkney,[6] and were regarded as plates. Six black stone dishes, all about 212 inches thick, and varying from 1 foot 8 inches to 10 inches long, were found with numerous other objects, among them a copper needle, in a circular building in South Uist.[7] Other similar dishes have been found near Sand Lodge, in Shetland,[8] and elsewhere. Possibly such stones may have been used in cooking oatmeal cakes or bannocks—like the stones on which formerly "pikelets" or crumpets were cooked in Leicestershire and other Midland counties, where their modern iron substitutes are still called "pikelet-stones." Ornamented stones for toasting oatmeal cakes in front of a peat fire are or were until lately in use in Scotland.[9] Cooking slabs of thin stone are used by the natives of Guiana[10] for baking cassava bread.
Dr. Joseph Anderson[11] has suggested that some of the small discs, with the surface highly polished, such as have been found in Scottish brochs of the Iron Age, may have served as mirrors.
Another purpose to whicb stone implements seem to have been applied, in connection with weaving and the preparation of leather, is that of burnishing or smoothing, somewhat in the same manner as is now effected by the flat-iron. An oval pebble (4 inches) rubbed all along one side was found by General Pitt Rivers in one of the pits at Mount Caburn,[12] Lewes. Sir W. Wilde, speaking of a quite recent period, observes that "it is well known that weavers in the north of Ireland used a smooth celt, whenever they could find one, for rubbing on the cloth, bit by bit, as they worked it, to close the threads and give a gloss to the surface."[13] Canon
- ↑ "Alt. u. h. V.," vol. i. Heft ii. Taf. 1, fig. 1.
- ↑ Schoolcraft, "Ind. Tribes," vol. i. p. 83.
- ↑ Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. i. p. 268. Arch. Journ., vol. x. p. 219.
- ↑ Proc. S. A. S., vol. xv. p. 108.
- ↑ Proc. S. A. S., vol. xxiii. p. 217.
- ↑ Arch., vol. xxxiv. p. 135.
- ↑ Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. iii. p. 125.
- ↑ Proc. S. A. S., vol. xxiii. p. 216.
- ↑ Proc. S. A. S., vol. xi. p. 351. Sir A. Mitchell, "The Past in the Present," p. 239 et seqq.
- ↑ Im Thurn, "Among the Indians of Guiana," 1883, p. 427.
- ↑ Proc. S. A. S., vol. x. p. 717.
- ↑ Arch., vol. xlvi. p. 430, pl. xxiv. 21.
- ↑ "Cat. Mus. R. I. A.," p. 45.
