Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/54

32 chipped hatchets found in Britain, the depressions of the bulbs of percussion of the flakes struck off occur in a perfect state only on one face, having been partly removed on the other face by the subsequent chipping. There are, however, exceptions to this rule, and more especially among the implements found in our ancient river gravels. In some cases (see postea, Fig. 12) the cutting edge has been formed by the intersection of two convex lines of fracture giving a curved and sharp outline, and the body of the hatchet has been subsequently made to suit the edge. The same is the case with the hatchets from the Danish kjökken-möddings and coast-finds, though the intersecting facets are at a higher angle, and the resulting edge straighter, than in the specimens which I have mentioned. The edge is also, like that of a mortising chisel, at the extremity of a flat face, and not in the centre of the blade. The cutting edge has, however, in most of the so-called celts of the ordinary form, been fashioned by chipping subsequent to the roughing out of the hatchet; and even in the case of polished hatchets, the edge when damaged was frequently re-chipped into form before being ground afresh.

There hardly appears to be sufficient cause for believing that any of the stone hatchets found in this country were chipped out by any other means than by direct blows of a hammer; but in the case of the Danish axes with square sides, and with their corners as neatly crimped or puckered as if they had been made of pieces of leather sewn together, it is probable that this neat finish was produced by the use of some kind of punch or set. The hammer-stones used in the manufacture of flint hatchets appear to have been usually quartzite pebbles, where such are readily to be obtained, but also frequently to have been themselves mere blocks of flint. Many such hammer-stones of flint occurred in the Cissbury pits —of which more hereafter—and I have found similar hammer-stones on the Sussex Downs, near Eastbourne, where also flint implements of various kinds appear to have been manufactured in quantities. Not improbably, these hammers were made of flints which had been for some time exposed on the surface, and which were in consequence harder than the flints recently dug from the pits. We have already seen that the gun-flint knappers of the present day are said to work most successfully on blocks of flint recently extracted, and those, too, from a particular layer in