Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/104

82 implements, in the first instance, into this comparatively regular oval oontour, and subsequently to chip an edge at whichever end seemed best adapted for the purpose. This instrument is not unlike that from the Forest of Bere, Fig. 25. Another from Cissbury, with more parallel sides, has been figured. Others from the same place are like Figs. 16, 17, and 23, and like Fig. 35, though not ground at the edge.

Others, again, but much fewer in number, are of a wedge-shaped form, with the thin end rounded. The specimen of this kind shown in Fig. 28 is in the Greenwell Collection, and is very symmetrical. The butt-end is considerably battered at one part, but not at its extremity; so that this bruising may possibly have been on the block of flint before the implement was chipped out. A less symmetrical specimen is figured by General Pitt Rivers, having the butt formed of the natural crust of the flint. That here engraved appears well adapted for holding in the hand, so as to be used as a kind of chopper; but the rounded edge is uninjured. Can it have been used as a wedge for splitting open the chalk? or is it to be regarded as a special form of implement? If so, it seems singular that, if such a form was in use in Britain, no specimens have hitherto been met with having the edge ground. I should be more satisfied as to the form being intentional and for a certain purpose, had it occurred elsewhere than among what is evidently the refuse of a manu- factory; and yet a somewhat similar hand-tool is in use among the natives of Australia. A polished implement of analogous form is moreover shown in Fig. 83. Two or three pointed implements, in form like Fig. 417, were found at Cissbury. Judging from shape alone, they might be regarded as being of Palæolithic age, but their surroundings prove them to be Neolithic.