Page:VCH Staffordshire 1.djvu/206

 A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE interesting facts which are worthy of consideration. These points consist mainly of the association of the stone objects with other articles rather than individual and actual features, and they tend to illustrate the transition and overlapping of the ages of stone and metal. Thus, in the Mouse Low barrow, a flint arrow-head (a weapon which it was formerly the custom to regard as Neolithic) was found in a Bronze Age drinking-cup, a circumstance which implies but does not prove con- temporaneity, because the arrow-head may have been preserved as a relic from a former age. At Mouse Low, also, two barbed arrow-heads of flint were found in association with bone pins. The same combination of objects was found in Ribden Low barrow. Thor's Cave, at Wetton, furnished two decidedly curious objects, viz., a carved sandstone vessel and a bronze kettle-like vessel. The objects are probably both later than the Bronze Age, as the handle is of iron. The sandstone vessel belongs to a type found in more abundance in Scotland than England, where they are decidedly rare. In the details of the contents of Staffordshire barrows given in this article it will be noted, again and again, that flint flakes and implements occur in the sepulchral mounds in intimate association with burnt burials and pottery bearing the char- acteristics, both in fabric and decoration, of the Bronze Age. The con- clusion to which these facts point is that the two races, the Neolithic and the Bronze-using people, intermingled, intermar- ried, and buried their dead side by side, some indivi- duals retaining the old cus- toms and others adopting the new. The bone pins re- ferred to may be either of the Neolithic or the Bronze Age. Their purpose has been the subject of a good deal of speculation amongst antiquaries, some regarding them as instruments for piercing leather or soft materials. When they occur in barrows, however, there seems reason to believe that they served as fastenings for some kind of shroud in the case of unburnt interments, and in the case of burnt burials it is believed that they served to pin together the cloth in which the ashes were placed, after being collected from the funeral pile. 1 THE BRONZE AGE The main points of difference between the later age of stone or the Neolithic Age, and the earliest period of metal or the Bronze Age, may be summed up in a few words, although it would be difficult, if not impossible, for us in modern times to realize all that the great transition meant. 1 Evans, Stone Imp. (and ed.), 432. 170 GRANITE AXE-HEAD FOUND AT STONE (12 in. in length)