Page:VCH Surrey 1.djvu/285

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EARLY MAN by use. Two such pieces of sandstone bearing small bowl-shaped depressions were found some years ago in barrows near Sheen. 1 Another form of implement made of chipped flint found at various parts of Surrey is one which at first sight might be mistaken for a roughly made celt, and indeed there is no reason why it should not be so described, as it was probably affixed to a handle in much the same way as celts. It was however probably used for agricultural purposes such as breaking up the ground before sowing seeds. It might be described as a hoe rather than a celt. Examples have been found in the Thames near Mortlake, at Putney and Wanborough, and there are in the museum at the Charterhouse School, Godalming, several specimens procured in West Surrey. Flint arrowheads shaped by careful and skilful chipping have been discovered in some numbers in different parts of the county, but perhaps more particularly in the western half of Surrey. These beautiful little objects bear evidence of great skill and care, and have always been regarded by the ignorant with some amount of superstition. It has been supposed that they may have been made in the bronze age. One reason for this opinion is the absence, or at any rate the remarkable rarity, of arrowheads of bronze. Another is the wonderfully delicate flaking by which they have been shaped, and which is a mark of excellent and probably very late neolithic work. In the Charterhouse School Museum at Godalming there are many examples of these arrowheads from West Surrey. Specimens have been found at the following places : Dorking, Eashing, Farley Heath, Farn- ham, Godalming, Lingfield Mark Camp, Puttenham, Redhill, Scale, Tilford, Wanborough and Woking. The arrowheads from Farley Heath, which were found by, and are now in the cabinet of Sir W. C. Roberts-Austen, K.C.B., are particularly fine examples and of two types, viz. (i) stemmed and double- barbed, and (2) leaf-shaped, approaching in one example almost to a lozenge. In the same collection are several beautifully formed flakes, scrapers and saws, all procured from the Farley Heath district. 2 One of the arts of the neolithic age was that of making pottery. This was shaped by the hand without the assistance of a wheel, coarse in texture, and not always perfectly baked. In the year 1900 in a small round barrow on Blackheath, near Shamley Green, 8 not far from Guild- ford, on the property of Mr. C. D. Hodgson, a cinerary urn was found enclosed in a rude kind of cist formed of rough slabs of local ferrugi- nous sandstone. The urn contained remains of calcined bones, doubt- less those of a human being, accompanied by neolithic implements but without any traces of metallic objects. Mr. R. A. Smith, 4 who inspected the site and remains on behalf of the British Museum, considers that 1 Bateman, Ten Tears' Diggings, p. 172.

  • The writer is indebted to Sir William Chandler Roberts-Austen, K.C.B., for much valuable

information in reference to prehistoric discoveries at Farley Heath. 8 Surrey Archaeological Collections, xv. 156.

  • Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, ser. 2, xviii. 251-7.

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