Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/614

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592
RIVER-DRIFT IMPLEMENTS.
[CHAP. XXIII.

river, near the junction of the Kennet and the Thames, the Drift deposits are ferruginous and about 15 feet thick. In them were found a tooth of a mammoth and numerous implements, principally of ovate forms and made of flint, but among them one made of quartzite. At Redlands, at a lower level, about 40 feet above the river, mammoth remains occur, as also at the Kennet Mouth Pit, Newtown, where a kite-shaped implement was found. The geological position and structure of the Redlandsbeds have been described by Prof. Poulton, F.R.S.[1] In 1882 I found in the gravel at Pig's Green, near Reading, the butt-end of a pointed implement, which had been originally about 41/2 inches long and had lost its point before being deposited in the Drift. The gravel was subangular and ochreous, and contained from 15 to 20 per cent, of quartzite pebbles. Flint flakes were fairly abundant, but finished implements, scarce. On the other side of the river, at Caversham, Dr. Stevens has found implements in gravel 120 feet above the level of the Thames. I have myself found an acutely-pointed implement (4 inches) in the same beds.

These Caversham Beds have been well described by Mr. O. A. Shrubsole.[2] At Toots Farm the implements are usually pointed, as also at Shiplake, at a distance of about three miles and at a slightly lower level. At Henley Road, Caversham, about 59 feet above the Thames, he obtained a flat ovoid implement of flint. A molar of Elephas primigenius was found at this spot. South of the Thames, besides the pits mentioned by Dr. Stevens, Mr. Shrubsole enumerates the following localities: a cutting of the South Western Railway at Earley, one of the Great Western Railway at Sonning, a gravel-pit at Charvil Hill, Sonning, and a brick-yard at Ruscombe, near Twyford. In the last-mentioned place several implements of various types have been found. Some extremely doubtful specimens, probably of purely natural origin, have been found on Finchampstead Ridges,[3] but in gravel at Wokingham[4] a large highly finished pointed implement has been obtained by Mr. P. Sale.

Some more or less worked flints from the Reading[5] gravels have been described and figured by Mr. 0. A. Shrubsole, who has assigned uses to what he terms " the less familiar forms of Palæolithic Flint Implements."

Still higher up the Thames, near Wallingford, there is a considerable spread of gravel, some of it at a distance of two miles or more from the existing streams. In this gravel implements have been found, though up to the present time in no great abundance. I

  1. Q.J.G.S., vol. xxxvi. p. 296.
  2. Q.J.G.S., vol. xlvi., 1890, p. 582. See also Mr. H. W. Monckton, F.G.S., in Q.J.G.S., vol. xlix., 1893, p. 310.
  3. Journ. Anth. Inst., vol. xxiv., 1895, p. 44, pl. iii.
  4. Q.J.G.S., vol. xlix., 1893, p. 321.
  5. Journ. Anth. Inst., vol. xiv., 1885, p. 192.