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
Besides being converted into round-ended scrapers, and pointed
boring-tools, flint flakes were trimmed on one or both faces into a
variety of forms of cutting, scraping, and piercing tools, and weapons.
In one direction these forms pass through daggers and lance-heads, into
javelin and arrow heads; and in another through cutting tools, wrought
into symmetrical shape, and ground at the edges, into hatchets or celts
adapted for use in the hand without being hafted.
[Illustration: Fig. 233.—Cambridge (1). 1∕2]
The first I shall notice are flakes trimmed into form by secondary
working on both edges, but only on the convex face, the flat face being
left either almost or quite intact. The illustrations of these forms
are no longer full size, but on the scale of one half, linear measure.
* * * * *
The simplest form of such instruments is when merely the edge of the
flake is worked, so as to reduce it to a regular leaf-like shape. A
beautiful specimen of this kind is preserved in the Christy Collection,
and is shown in Fig. 233. It was probably found in the neighbourhood
of Cambridge, having formed part of the collection of the late Mr.
Litchfield of that town. It is of grey flint, curved lengthwise, as
is usually the case with flint flakes, and worked to a point at each
end, though rather more rounded at the butt-end of the flake. Such
instruments have sometimes been regarded as poignards, though not
improbably they were used for various cutting and scraping purposes.
They rarely occur in Britain of so great a length as this flake, which
is 5 1∕2 inches long, but those of shorter proportions are not uncommon.
In Ireland also the long flakes are scarce.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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