The exact period when Sotacus, the most ancient of these authorities, wrote is not known, but he was among the earliest of Greek authors who treated of stones, and is cited by Apollonius Dyscolus, and Solinus, as well as by Pliny. We cannot be far wrong in assigning him to an age at least two thousand years before our time, and yet at that remote period the use of these stone “halberds or axeheads” had so long ceased in Greece, that when found they were regarded as of superhuman origin and invested with magical virtues. We have already seen that flint arrow-heads were mounted, probably as charms, in Etruscan necklaces, and we shall subsequently see that superstitions, almost similar to those relating to celts, have been attached to stone arrow-heads in various countries. To return from the superstitious veneration attaching to them, to the objects themselves. The materials[264] of which celts in Great Britain are usually formed are flint, chert, clay-slate, porphyry, |66| quartzite, felstone, serpentine, and various kinds of greenstone, and of metamorphic rocks. M. A. Damour,[265] in his “Essays on the Composition of Stone Hatchets, Ancient and Modern,” gives the following list of materials: quartz, agate, flint, jasper, obsidian, fibrolite, jade, jadeite, chloromelanite, amphibolite, aphanite, diorite, saussurite, and staurotide; but even to these many other varieties of rock might be added. The material most commonly in use in the southern and eastern parts of Britain was flint derived from the chalk; in the north and west, on the contrary, owing to the scarcity of flint, different hard metamorphic and eruptive rocks were more frequently employed, not on account of any superior qualities, but simply from being more accessible. So far as general character is concerned, stone celts or hatchets may be divided into three classes, which I propose to treat separately, as follows:— 1. Those merely chipped out in a more or less careful manner, and not ground or polished; 2. Those which, after being fashioned by chipping, have been ground or polished at the edge only; and 3. Those which are more or less ground or polished, not only at the edge, but over the whole surface. In describing them I propose to term the end opposite to the cutting edge, the butt-end; the two principal surfaces, which are usually convex, I shall speak of as the faces. These are either bounded by, or merge in, what I shall call the sides, according as these sides are sharp, rounded, or flat. In the figures the celts are all engraved on the scale of half an inch to the inch, or half linear measure, and are presented in front and side-view, with a section beneath. |67| CHAPTER IV. CHIPPED OR ROUGH-HEWN CELTS.