Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 2.djvu/201

Rh them are as struck from the nodules, having the sharp smooth edges resulting from the original conchoidal fracture; and these have mostly an elongated or blade-like shape (see woodcut, fig. 10). Ten or twelve of a round form have been carefully chipped by repeated blows at the edges, by which means a serrated edge has been obtained; more useful, perhaps, than a smooth edge for dividing the coarse and gristly fibres of the food. The regularly serrated edge of one of the oblong flakes may be compared to that of a saw, very similar to one figured in the Proceedings of the Society; the chief difference being that the teeth of the saw in our example are not so deep or defined. Only one of the flint implements had been ground at the edges; and this is a beautiful thin ovoidal knife, three and a half inches long, which may have been used for flaying the animals slaughtered for the funeral feast (see woodcut, fig. 13). A portion of a whetstone, on which it may have been ground, was found at no great distance from skeleton No. 4. It was of Pennant or coal-measure sandstone, probably from the valley of the Somersetshire Avon.

The quantity of coarse native pottery was very remarkable. At first it was thought that the heaps in the angles of the chamber would prove to be the fragments of vases, deposited entire when the funeral rites were completed. This, however, was not the case, and whence the fragments came, and why here deposited, must be matter of conjecture. They at least remind us of the "shards, flints, and pebbles," which our great dramatist connects with the graves of suicides (Hamlet, v. 1), and the use of which in mediæval times may have been a relic of paganism. That the fragments found in the chamber were those of domestic vessels required for the funeral feast, is by no means clear; for in such case, had the mass of fragments been deposited, it would have been possible to have recon-