Page:Excavations at the Kesslerloch.djvu/66

Rh and also the domestic cattle, so that we have to decide between the urus and the musk-sheep; but as the form of the horns actually will not agree with those of the urus, my idea is that the only animal which this sculpture can represent is the musk-sheep. At the lower or hinder part of this specimen the porous part of the horn is seen, so that we may conclude that this sculpture is merely a fragment, and that the whole may probably once have been the handle of a dagger. This view is borne out by the fact that in the cave at Laugerie Basse an actual dagger was found, with the handle formed of a carved animal's head. The size of the specimen now under consideration is as follows: it is about 2$1⁄3$ inches long, and $7⁄10$ of an inch thick in one direction and $5⁄10$ in another. A second sculpture (Plate IX. fig. 61) was also found. It is a regularly carved head, but the right ear is lost. The specimen is rather more than $8⁄10$ of an inch long. The head runs quite to a point; the nose is long, and not arched ; the eyes are at the same height, and the eyelid and eyeball are discernible. The forehead is also clearly marked, with the protuberance over each eye. The ear is rather narrow, and stands upright. The specimen decidedly represents the head of a horse, and this appears quite clearly when it is looked at either before or behind. The whole head is ornamented with many parallel striæ. The snout of this figure evidently rested upon a second head, for on the under side, both to the right and the left, two very definite ears may be seen, formed exactly like that of the specimen under consideration. The musk-sheep's head before described gives the idea more of a carving in relief, but in the present case we have to do with a head regularly sculptured, and consequently more with the plastic representation of an animal's head.

As before mentioned, not a trace of pottery was found in the relic-bed. But we most certainly met with a fragment of pottery in the upper bed of rubbish which rested upon the relic-bed (Plate XIII. fig. 80). This fragment has eight circular depressions in it, and the material, like that of the pottery in many of the Swiss lake-dwellings, is black mixed with white bits of gravel. In this fragment we have therefore an irrefragable proof that the cave was known, but not inhabited, in the time of the lake-dwellings.

No bronze or iron implements were found in the Kesslerloch, but several pieces of iron ore, as, for instance, iron pyrites and red oxide of iron. These were probably brought home by the