Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/514

492 50 per cent, of angular fragments of limestone, with numerous bones of extinct animals, and implements fashioned by the hand of man. Above this and below the stalagmite, in one part of the cave there is a black band from 2 inches to 6 inches thick, formed of soil like No. 2, containing charcoal, numerous flint instruments, and bones and teeth of animals.

5. At the base of the cave-earth is another floor of stalagmite in places 10 or 12 feet in thickness.

6. Below this again a breccia of sub-angular and rounded pieces of dark-red grit, a few quartz pebbles, and angular fragments of limestone, embedded in a sandy paste. This also contained implements, and in places had been broken up and become lodged in the cave-earth.

Above the upper stalagmite, principally in the black mould, have been found a number of relics belonging to different periods, such as socketed celts, and a socketed knife of bronze, some small fragments of roughly-smelted copper, about four hundred flint flakes, cores, and chips, a polishing stone, a ring of stone already described, numerous spindle-whorls, bone instruments terminating in comb-like ends, probably used for weaving, pottery, marine shells, numerous mammalian bones of existing species, and some human bones, on which it has been thought there are traces indicative of cannibalism. Some of the pottery is distinctly Roman in character, but many of the objects belong, no doubt, to pre-Roman times.

It is, however, with the implements found in the beds below, which had already, at least two thousand years ago, been sealed up beneath the thick coating of stalagmite, formed by a deposition of film upon film of calcareous matter once held in solution, that I have here to do.

In some places, it is true that owing to previous excavations, and to the presence of burrowing animals, the remains from above and below the stalagmite have become intermingled; but I shall not cite any objects, about the original position of which there is any doubt.

The principal forms are these: flat ovoid implements with an edge all round; pointed kite-shaped or triangular implements; flakes of flint of various sizes and wrought into different shapes, including the so-called scrapers; the cores from which flakes have been struck, and stones which have been used as hammers or pounders. Besides these, a few pins, harpoons, and needles of bone have been discovered.