Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/665

Rh name of "scraper" has been applied, from its still being used in that capacity by the Eskimos and some North American tribes. The same, or nearly the same, form occurs among the instruments belonging to the Palæolithic Period. Such scrapers are very abundant in many of the French caves, and, as has already been seen, are not entirely wanting in Kent's Cavern and in other British caves. They are, however, of very rare occurrence in the River-drift, and when found, are hardly ever trimmed to so regular and neatly-chipped a segmental edge, as those either from the surface or from the caves.

Occasionally the end of a flake has been worked to a quadrantal edge, so that one of the straight sides is much longer than the other. In some cases the end of the flake appears to have become rounded by wear rather than by trimming.

The implement from Icklingham, Fig. 424, formed from a polygonal flake, is very scraper-like in character. Its convex face shows a great many more facets than is usual with the scrapers of the Neolithic Period. A more characteristic scraper is that from High-Lodge Hill, Fig. 426. It is mainly among the implements found in a matrix of clay, or on a "Palæolithic floor," that these more delicate forms occur. They are not only more likely to have been injured by rolling, but when they form constituent parts of beds of gravel are also less liable to attract observation than are the larger implements.

There is another form which, when of large size, seems almost peculiar to the caves and the River-drift, and to which the term "side-scraper" may be applied. The instruments of this kind are made from broad flakes, usually about twice as broad as they are long. The butt-end of the flake—that at which the blow was administered to strike it off from the parent block—is either left blunt, or trimmed into such a form as may conveniently be held in the hand; the other end, which, owing to the great breadth of the flake, forms the side of the implement, is trimmed to a segmental edge by blows given on the flat inner face of the flake which is left as originally produced. Figs. 437 and 453 show implements of the side-scraper form in flint, and Fig. 443 one less carefully finished in quartzite. The edge is in some instances much more acute than in others. They appear to have been held in the hand, and used in some cases for cutting or chopping, and in others for scraping. The flints of what have been termed the "Plateau types" have their edges much more obtuse and rounded, and