Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/140

 The Stone Age in Greece. 119 reason for seriously regarding a stone- or flint-yard in Arcadia, near Orchomenos, or the kitchen-middens which have been pointed out on the shores of the island of Salamis.^ On the other hand, our researches are facilitated by the knowledge that towns which in after days played so brilliant a part were often built on much older settlements ; that when substructures or foundations were laid bare, instead of the looked-for classical buildings, they not unfrequently found remains of villages in which had lived the earliest inhabitants of the country. As already pointed out, apart from these sites it is more particularly on the table-lands that stone implements are picked up.^ Of the different pieces representing this industry, fragments of obsidian and flints cut to a point muster stronger, and are gathered almost everywhere, Schliemanns excavations alone having yielded thousands of them. The largest crop comes from Hissarlik,^ but Mycenae and Tiryns furnish fine specimens also.* Pieces of obsidian naturally fall under two principal heads : slender cones fitted with wood or bone handle, to be used as sword or javelin (Fig. i), and thin triangular blades, intended to go through the air and hit the mark at a distance. The two saliences often found at their base were to act as hooks, and keep the point in the wound which it had made (Fig. 2).' Long fine blades, whether of knives or saws, are not uncommon (Fig. 3). The edge of the former is still capable of cutting soft 1 Fr. Lenormant states having lighted, near Orchomenos in Boeotia, on the cast- off scraps of a flint-yard where axes of this material were made. But the specimen which he presented to the St. Germain Museum as hailing from this deposit, makes it plain that he was either mistaken or the victim of a stupid hoax (G. Mortillet, Le prkhistorique). No other discovery of this nature has been given out. True, DucKER claims having identified kitchen-refuse on the coast of Salamis, but his evidence has found no favour among experts. 2 Revue archeologique^ 1867. Virchow, whose keen interest in the prehistoric antiquities of Greece is w6ll known, formally states — from information which he obtained — that stone axes and implements of the like nature are found on the ground surface, in the fields and beds of torrents (Ueber altgrieckische Funde in Verhandlungen fiir AnthropologU), Besides Virchow's note written for the Heldreich's collection at Athens, we have largely consulted Dumont, La collection prehistorique de G. Finlay h Athhnes^ together with A. Martin, Note sur quelques Testes de PAge de pierre en Anatolie {Revue archhlogique^ 1877), including copious borrowings from Schliemann's three principal works : Mycena^ Tiryns^ and llios, ^ Schliemann's IHos^ Town and Land of the Troy am.
 * Schliemann's Tiryns; Mycence (translated by Schmitz).