EARLY MAN I BRACES of man in very early times, prior to the period of written records, are by no means rare in Staffordshire, and although the actual antiquities are now somewhat scattered, it is an interesting fact that Dr. Robert Plot, in his well-known Natural History of the county, was one of the first to record and figure prehistoric implements of bronze and stone. The book was printed in 1686, and contains in the tenth chapter ' Of Antiquities ' descriptions and copper-plate engravings of several well-known types of Neolithic and Bronze Age weapons. The fact that Dr. Plot assigns the bronze celts, etc., to a Roman origin excites no wonder when it is remembered that the field of prehistoric archaeology was at that time quite unexplored. One must be grateful, rather, for such an early record of local antiquities. Of the earliest prehistoric period, the Palaeolithic Age, when man shaped his flint tools merely by chipping and was ignorant of the art of grinding them, Staffordshire affords no evidence. THE NEOLITHIC AGE The traces of man's presence in Staffordshire in the Neolithic Age are neither numerous nor important, but, as will presently be shown, they are really of considerable interest as showing the diffusion of what was probably the earliest race to inhabit this part of Britain. A word or two may here be said as to the conditions of life at this remote period. The Neolithic Age represents a phase of civilization ante- cedent to the use of metal, yet not devoid of certain accomplishments. For instance, Neolithic man was able to make his tools and weapons of stone and flint not merely by chipping, but also by grinding, whereby regular smooth edges were produced. He was able to till the soil, to construct dwellings and to throw up earthworks as a defence against his enemies. He had also acquired the art of making a rough kind of pottery. Altogether, considering the very early period in which he lived, he had made substantial progress in civilization, and it is practically certain that our inability to recognize his proper place in the scale of human progress arises, not so much from the bar- barity of the times, as from the fact that many traces of such a remote period have necessarily perished by decay. Dwellings, and many of the appliances of Neolithic life, have to a very large extent been swept away, and this gives a special value to the buried sepulchral remains, both in the form of actual human remains and grave furniture, such as pottery, flint implements, and many other objects which were commonly interred with the dead. The stone implements found in Staffordshire, some of which evidently belong to the Neolithic Age and some to the Bronze Age, present one or two i 169 22
