Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/208

186 axe-head is said to be formed of some kind of ironstone, and is 5 inches long. The hole is described as neatly drilled. A weapon of the same kind (3 inches) blunter at the ends and described as a hammer, was found with a deer's-horn hammer, and a bronze knife in a barrow at Lambourn, Berks. A small black stone axe-head of nearly similar form was found near the head of a contracted skeleton at a depth of 12 feet in a barrow in Rolston Field, Wilts. A somewhat similar specimen, with the sides faceted and blunt at one end, has been engraved as having been found in Yorkshire. It is, however, doubtful whether, like many other objects in the same plate, it is not foreign. The original is now in the Christy Collection.

A double-edged axe-head of basalt, injured by fire, and 4 inches long, was found by the late Mr. Bateman, in a large urn with calcined bones, bone pins, a tubular bone laterally perforated, a flint "spear-head," and a bronze awl, in a barrow near Throwley, Derbyshire. This was the only instance in which he found a perforated stone axe accompanying an interment by cremation.

An axe-head of basalt, with a double edge to cut either way, was also dug up in the neighbourhood of Tideswell, Derbyshire.

Fig. 119.—Hove.

A specimen of this kind (5 inches), edged at both ends, but "the one end rather blunted and lessened a little by use," was found near Grimley, Worcestershire, and is figured by Allies.

I have a specimen (5 inches), much weathered, which is said to have come from Bewdley in that county, but which maybe that from Grimley.

An example, 5 inches long, engraved in the Salisbury volume of the Archæological Institute, from a barrow on Windmill Hill, Abury, Wilts, is described as double-edged.

The Danish and German axe-heads of this form have usually, but not always, one edge much more blunted than the other. Occasionally there is a ridge on each side at the blunt end, which shows that this thickening was intentional. A fine double-edged axe-head of this form from Brandenburg is engraved in the "Horæ Ferales." The double-edged form is found also in Finland.

The form likewise occurs in France, but the faces are usually flatter. I have one from the Seine at Paris (5 inches). Another from the