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
I have another axe of the same kind, with both sides flat, 6 1∕8 inches
long, formed of porphyritic greenstone, and found near Colchester.
|194| Another, formed of basalt, 6 1∕4 inches long, the sides slightly
hollowed, from Chesterford, Cambridge,[673] was in the possession of
the late Mr. Joshua Clarke, of Saffron Walden.
Another, 5 inches long, was found in the Thames off Parliament Stairs,
and passed with the Roach Smith Collection into the British Museum.
One, 5 3∕4 inches long, from Cumberland, is in the Christy Collection.
One of sandstone (4 1∕2 inches) was discovered at Northenden,[674]
Cheshire, in 1883.
In the Greenwell Collection is one of greenstone, 6 3∕4 inches long,
found at Millfield, near Sunderland. The hole is somewhat oval, and
tapers inwards from each side. There is also one of basalt, 4 1∕4
inches long, with an oval hole and slightly convex sides, from
Holystone, Northumberland. The edge, as usual, is blunt.
An axe-head of this kind, from a chambered tumulus or dolmen at
Craigengelt, near Stirling, Scotland, is engraved by Bonstetten.[675]
One with flat sides (6 1∕4 inches) was found in the Tay, near Mugdrum
Island, Perth,[676] and another (7 inches) at Sorbie, Wigtownshire.[677]
Implements or weapons of this character occasionally occur in
Ireland,[678] but the sides are usually flat.
The exact form is rare in Denmark and North Germany. Lindenschmit[679]
engraves a thin specimen from Lüneburg. It occurs also in Styria.
A specimen from Lithuania, more square at the butt, is engraved by
Mortillet.[680] I do not remember to have met with it in France.
In one of the barrows on Potter Brompton Wold,[681] Yorkshire, explored
by Canon Greenwell, accompanying an interment by cremation, he found a
beautifully-formed axe-head of serpentine(?) the surface of which was
in places scaling off from decomposition, arising from its having been
partly calcined. A single view of it is given in Fig. 126. The hole is
about 1 1∕4 inches in diameter on each side, but rather smaller in the
middle. The cutting edge has been rounded as well as the angles round
the sides, but this process has been carried to a greater extent on one
than the other; possibly this was the outer side.
[Illustration: Fig. 126.—Potter Brompton Wold. 1∕2]
A somewhat similar, but rather broader, axe-head of basalt, 5 1∕4
inches long, was found by the late Mr. T. Bateman in a barrow called
Carder Low,[682] near Hartington, in company with a small bronze
dagger, and near the elbow of a contracted skeleton. |195|
Another, expanding rather more at the edge, from a barrow in
Devonshire,[683] was in the Meyrick Collection.
A somewhat similar axe-head, more rounded at the butt and rather more
expanded at the cutting edge, was found in Annandale in 1870, and was
described to me by the late Mr. Joseph Clarke, F.S.A.
One of granite, much like Fig. 126, came to light in a cairn at
Breckigoe,[684] Caithness.
[Illustration: Fig. 127.—Rudstone.]
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