Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/453

Rh One of fine-grained sandstone (4 inches) with four holes was found near Prenzlow in North Germany, and another of chocolate-coloured material, probably slaty stone, accompanied an interment at Ochsenfurt, Lower Franconia.

Although, possibly, not strictly within the scope of the present work, it may be well here to make a few observations relating to the various articles formed of bone which are occasionally found in association with those of stone.

More than three dozen bone instruments were found in the Upton Lovel Barrow, already frequently mentioned. Most of them were pointed, varying in length from about 3 to 9 inches, and formed apparently from the leg-bones of different mammals. They, for the most part, show a portion of the articular surface at the end which has not been sharpened, at which also they are perforated. Mr. Cunnington, their discoverer, was of opinion that they had been used as arrow- or lance-heads; and possibly some of the larger specimens served as javelin-points, even if the smaller were merely pins to aid in fastening the dress, to which they were secured by a string passed through the hole, so as to prevent their being lost. Numerous other bone instruments from barrows are described and figured by Dr. Thurnam and Canon Greenwell. I have two that are decidedly lance-heads, about 6 inches long, made from leg-bones, probably of roe-deer, which have been pointed by cutting the bone obliquely through, so as to show a long elliptical section, while the articular end has been excavated into the cavity of the bone, so as to form a socket for the shaft, which was secured in its place by a pin, passing through two small holes drilled through the bone. One was found in Swaffham Fen, and the other at Girton, near Cambridge. Other spear-heads of much the same character, from the same district, from Lincolnshire, and from the River Thames, are in the British Museum, and some of them have been described and figured by Sir Wollaston Franks.

I have also a bone dagger with the blade about 4 inches long, with a rivet hole through the broad tang. It was found in the Thames near Windsor, and was given to me by Mr. F. Tress Barry, M.P., in 1895. I have also bones worked to a dagger-like form, but without any tang, from the Cambridge Fens.

A pin or awl of bone, 4 inches long, made from the fibula of some small animal, probably a roe-deer, split, and then rubbed to a point, was among the objects found by the Canon Greenwell, at Grimes's Graves, Norfolk, as well as the rounded piece of bone already mentioned at p. 34.

Bone pins or skewers, closely resembling those from British barrows, are of frequent occurrence on the sites of Roman occupation. In the name of fibula, as applied to the small bone of the leg, we have an