Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/53

Rh I have hitherto been treating of the production of flint flakes for various purposes. In such cases the flakes are everything, and the resulting core, or nucleus, mere refuse. In the manufacture of celts, or hatchets, the reverse is the case, the flakes are the refuse (though, of course, they might occasionally be utilized) and the resulting block is the main object sought. To produce this, however, much the same process appears to have been adopted, at all events where flint was the material employed. The hatchets seem to have been rough-hewn by detaching a succession of flakes, chips,

or splinters, from a block of flint, by means of a hammer-stone, and these rough-hewn implements were subsequently worked into a more finished form by detaching smaller splinters, also probably by means of a hammer, previously to their being ground or polished, if they were destined to be finished in such a manner. In most cases, one face of the hatchet was first roughed out, and then by a series of blows, given at proper intervals, along the margin of that face the general shape was given and the other face chipped out. This is proved by the fact that in most of the