In a wood at this spot, the whole surface of the ground is studded with shallow bowl-shaped depressions from 20 to 60 feet in diameter, sometimes running into each other so as to form irregularly shaped hollows. They are over 250 in number, and one selected for exploration was about 28 feet in diameter at the mouth, gradually narrowing to 12 feet at the bottom, which proved to be 39 feet below the surface. Through the first 13 feet it had been cut through sand, below which the chalk was reached, and after passing through one layer of flint of inferior quality, which was not quarried beyond the limits of the shaft, the layer known as the “floor-stone,” from which gun-flints are manufactured at the present day, was met with at the bottom of the shaft. To procure this, various horizontal galleries about 3 feet 6 inches in height were driven into the chalk. The excavations had been made by means of picks formed from the antlers of the red-deer, of which about 80 were found. The points are worn by use, and the thick bases of the horns battered by having been used as hammers, for breaking off portions of the chalk and also of the nodules of flint. Where they had been grasped by the hand the surface is polished by use, and on some there was a coating of chalky matter adhering, on which was still distinctly visible the impression of the cuticle of the old flint-workers. The marks of the picks and hammers were as fresh on the walls of the galleries as if made but yesterday. |34| It is to be observed that such picks as these formed of stag’s horn have been found in various other places, but have not had proper attention called to their character. I have seen one from the neighbourhood of Ipswich,[107] Suffolk. Canon Greenwell mentions somewhat similar discoveries having been made at Eaton and Buckenham, Norfolk. One was also found by him in a grave under a barrow he examined at Rudstone, near Bridlington,[108] and others occurred near Weaverthorpe and Sherburn. A polished hatchet of basalt had also been used at Grime’s Graves as one of the tools for excavation, and the marks of its cutting edge were plentiful in the gallery in which it was discovered. There were also found some rudely-made cups of chalk apparently intended for lamps; a bone pin or awl; and, what is very remarkable, a rounded piece of bone 4 1∕2 inches long and 1 inch in circumference, rubbed smooth, and showing signs of use at the ends, which, as Canon Greenwell suggests, may have been a punch or instrument for taking off the lesser flakes of flint in making arrow-heads and other small articles. It somewhat resembles the pin of reindeer horn in the Eskimo arrow-flaker, shortly to be mentioned. The shaft had been filled in with rubble, apparently from neighbouring pits, and in it were numerous chippings and cores of flint, and several quartzite and other pebbles battered at the ends by having been used as hammers for chipping the flints. Some