The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments, of Great Britain: Second Edition, RevisedEvans, John
History
The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments, of Great Britain: Second Edition, Revised
Evans, John
Great Britain -- Antiquities; Stone age -- Great Britain
Such stag’s-horn sockets have occurred, though rarely, in France. M.
Perrault found some in his researches in the Camp de Chassey, |160|
(Saône et Loire).[542] Some seem to have been found at Vauvray,[543]
in making the railway from Paris to Rouen. Others were discovered in
company with arrow-heads, celts, and trimmed flakes of flint, in the
Dolmen,[544] or _Allée couverte_, of Argenteuil (Seine et Oise). These
are now in the Musée de St. Germain. Others were found in a cavern on
Mont Sargel (Aveyron).[545] They occasionally occur in Germany. One
from Dienheim is in the Central Museum at Mayence.
Discoveries of these stag’s-horn sockets for stone tools in England
seem to be extremely rare. Mr. Albert Way describes one, of which a
woodcut is given in the _Archæological Journal_.[546] It is formed
of the horn of the red deer (which is erroneously described as being
extinct), and is said to have been found with human remains and
pottery of an early character at Cockshott Hill, in Wychwood Forest,
Oxfordshire. It seems better adapted for mounting a small celt as a
chisel, like that of bronze found in a barrow at Everley,[547] than
for forming part of a hatchet. Mr. Way[548] cites several cases of
the discovery of these stag’s-horn sockets in France and elsewhere on
the continent of Europe. I may add, by way of caution, that numerous
forgeries of them have been produced at Amiens. In some of the genuine
specimens from the peat of the valley of the Somme,[549] the stone was
fixed in a socket bored in one end of the piece of stag’s horn, and the
shaft was inserted in another hole bored through the horn. M. Boucher
de Perthes describes the handle of one as made of a branch of oak,
burnt at each end.
An example of this method of mounting is given in Fig. 99A. The
original was found at Penhouet, Saint Nazaire sur Loire,[550] in 1877.
The length of the haft is 19 1∕2 inches. A fine socket with the blade
still in it, but without the shaft, has been figured by the Baron
Joseph de Baye.[551] It was found in La Marne, in which department
funereal grottoes have been discovered, at the entrances of which
similar hafted axes were sculptured.
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