Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/452

350 a cairn of flints or stones. Neither in the single interment, however, at Lincoln, already mentioned, nor in examining the barrows at Broughton, was this found to be the case. The whole of the mounds at the latter place were composed of sandy peat; not a stone or flint was found in any of these barrows, the small chipped pieces of silex, intended to point the arrow or javelin, alone excepted.

In the urns, it appears to have been a common custom to insert lance and arrow-heads of flint, both ready chipped and finely finished, as well as others in a rough state.

It is difficult to conceive how these small and skilfully formed flint arrow-heads could have been made in times when the only implements used were of stone, and those, probably, of a rude and most inartificial description.

It would, at this day, when mechanical skill has reached such a high degree, baffle many a skilful workman to fashion a few flint arrow-heads chipped and notched with the same perfection as appears in those fabricated by the ancient Briton. At first, we might suppose that in those rude times it was difficult and laborious to produce such objects, and that, a high value being set on them, the roughly chipped pieces were deposited in the funereal urn in place of those that were more finished and highly prized. We find, however, a deposit described by Sir Richard Colt Hoare (Ancient Wilts, vol. i., p. 239), where four very perfect arrow-heads, as well as some pieces of flint, roughly chipped and prepared for similar weapons, were found together. In that barbarous age, when the inhabitants of these islands tattooed and painted their skins,—when their weapons were headed with stone, and their condition was that of mere savages, the inhabitants of the forest or the mountain fastnesses, we may infer that their thoughts, when not engaged in rude warfare, were engrossed by the pursuits of the chase. Their notions of futurity were probably on a par with those of the aborigines of countries where similar stone implements for the chase have been used in recent times, and are even at the present time employed. Amongst many tribes in North America, the belief prevails that, after death, they pass to another world, where they find hunting-grounds much superior to those they now enjoy, and without an enemy to annoy them. Might not the ideas of the Britons regarding a future state, during the "Stone Period," have been in some