Chapter VI: Polished Celts (3)

In a paper[510] on a neolithic flint weapon in a wooden haft, Mr. C. Dawson has given an account of a discovery made by Mr. Stephen Blackmore, a shepherd of East Dean, near Eastbourne, of a flint hatchet at Mitchdean. It was lying in its wooden haft which was perfectly carbonized, but Mr. Blackmore made a |154| drawing of it, apparently from memory. He describes the blade, which seems to have been unground, as lying in a horizontal groove cut in one side of the shaft, which was 2 feet 6 inches long. At one end of the shaft were two projections supposed to serve for holding the ligatures by which the blade was attached, and nearer the hand were a number of grooves running round the haft. Neither the description nor the drawings of this and other objects found with it are such as to inspire complete confidence.

About 1822, in sinking a well at Ferry Harty, Isle of Sheppey,[511] there were found, according to newspaper reports, the remains of a hut, two skeletons, and “flints and hard stones, apparently intended for axes and cutting implements, with handles of wood quite complete and in good preservation.” Nothing farther seems to be known of this discovery.

At Ervie,[512] near Glenluce, Wigtownshire, a celt of indurated clay-stone in form like Fig. 77 (8 inches) was found, which shows a band of dark colour about 1 1∕2 inch wide and about 2 inches from the butt-end, crossing it at an angle of about 20°. This band probably shows the position of the haft in which the blade was fixed. Another celt from Glenshee, Forfarshire, likewise in the Edinburgh Museum, shows a fainter mark of the kind. On a third from Dolphinton,[513] Lanarkshire, the mark is very distinct and at a right angle to the axis of the blade. Montelius[514] mentions a Swedish specimen, and A. de Mortillet[515] a French one of flint similarly marked.

In the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy[516] is a drawing of a celt in its handle (which is apparently of pine) found in the county of Monaghan. This handle was 13 1∕2 inches long, and more clumsy at the socketed end than that from Solway Moss. The woodcut given by Sir W. Wilde is here, by permission, reproduced as Fig. 93.

Another nearly similar specimen was discovered near |155| Cookstown,[517] in the county of Tyrone. What may be the haft of a stone hatchet was found in another Irish crannog.[518] Another is in the collection of General Pitt Rivers, F.R.S. Some of the hatchets from the Swiss Lake-dwellings were hafted in a similar manner. In one such haft, formed of ash, from Robenhausen,[519] the blade is inclined towards the hand; in another, also of ash, the blade is at right angles to the shaft.[520] Some of these club-like hafts resemble in character those in use for iron blades in Southern and Central Africa.[521] The copper or bronze axes of the Mexicans[522] were hafted in the same manner.

A method of hafting, which implies fixity of residence, is said to have been in use among the Caribs[523] of Guadaloupe. The blade of the axe had a groove round it at the butt-end, and a deep hole having been cut in the branch of a growing tree, this end of the blade was placed in it, and as the branch grew became firmly embedded in it, the wood which grasped it having formed a collar that filled the groove. The Hurons[524] are said to have adopted the same plan.

I have engraved in Fig. 94, an extremely rude example of hafting by fitting the blade into a socket, from an original kindly lent me by the late Mr. Thomas Belt, F.G.S., who procured it among the Indians of the Rio Frio, a tributary of the San Juan del Norte in Nicaragua. The blade is of trachyte entirely unground and most rudely chipped. The club-like haft is formed of some endogenous wood, and has evidently been chopped into shape by means of stone tools.

In these instances Clavigero’s[525] remark with regard to the copper |156| or bronze axes of the Mexicans holds good; they are like “those of modern times, except that we put the handle in an eye of the axe while they put the axe in an eye of the handle.” A similarly hafted hatchet with the blade ground is in use among the Botocudo Indians. In the Island of New Hanover[526] the axe blade is inserted about the middle of the club-like haft. Some hatchets from the Admiralty Islands[527] are curiously like those from the Swiss |157| Lake-dwellings. Excessively long hafts in which the blades are let into a socket are occasionally in use among the Chamacocos[528] of south-east Bolivia.

Many stone and metallic axes in use among other modern savages are hafted in much the same manner by insertion in a socket. In some instances it would appear as if the hole for receiving the stone did not extend through the haft, but was merely a shallow depression—even a notch. Such seems to be the case with a war-axe of the Gaveoë Indians of Brazil in the British Museum, figured in the _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries_,[529] and here, by permission, reproduced, as Fig. 95. Some of their axes have longer hafts. In the Over Yssel Museum is a Brazilian stone axe with a blade of this kind, which is said to have been used in an insurrection at Deventer[530] in 1787.

The “securis lapidea in sacrificiis Indorum usitata,” engraved by Aldrovandus,[531] seems to have the blade inserted in a socket without being tied, but in most axes of the same kind the blade is secured in its place by a plaited binding artistically interlaced. The stone axe said to be that of Montezuma II., preserved in the Ambras Museum at Vienna, is a good example of the kind.[532] I have engraved it as Fig. 96, from a sketch I made in 1866.

In some cases the whole handle is covered with the binding. Two such in the Dresden Historical Museum are engraved by Klemm.[533] Others have been figured by Prof. Giglioli.[534]

Some of the war-axes (called taawisch or tsuskiah) in use among the natives of Nootka Sound[535] are mounted in this manner, but the socket end of the shaft is carved into the form of a grotesque human head, in the mouth of which the stone blade is |158| secured with cement, as in Fig. 97. In another instance the handle is carved into the form of a bird[536] and inlaid with mother-of-pearl, or, more properly speaking, shell of _haliotis_. The blade of basalt projects from the breast of the bird, the tail of which forms the handle. In some the blade goes right through the handle, so as to project equally on both sides of it, and is sharpened at both ends.

The socket in all these handles is usually at some little distance from their end, but even with this precaution, the wedge-like form of the celt must have rendered them very liable to split. It was probably with a view of avoiding this, that the intermediate socket of stag’s horn, so common in the Lake-dwellings of Switzerland, was adopted. The stone was firmly bedded in the horn, the end of which was usually worked into a square form, but slightly tapering, and with a shoulder all round to prevent its being driven into the wood. In the annexed woodcut (Fig. 98) is shown one of these sockets with the hatchet inserted. It was found at Concise, in the Lake of Neuchâtel. An analogous system for preventing the stone blade from splitting the haft was adopted in Burma, Cambodia, |159| and Eastern India, but the shoulders were there cut in the stone-blades themselves. One of the Swiss instruments in its complete form is shown in Fig. 99, which I have copied from Keller.[537] It was found at Robenhausen, and the club-like handle is of ash. Several other specimens are engraved by the same author and Professor Desor,[538] and by other more recent writers.

In some instances the stone was inserted lengthways[539] into the end of a tine of a stag’s horn at the part where it had been severed from the antler, so as to form a sort of chisel.[540] In other cases the socket was worked through the tine, and the stone blade fixed in it after the manner of an axe, though the handle was too short for the tool to be used for chopping. Some wooden handles[541] are also but a few inches long, so that the celts mounted in them must have been used for cutting by drawing them along the object to be cut.

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.

The socket discovered by the late Lord Londesborough in a barrow, near Scarborough,[552] appears to have been a hammer, |161| although he describes it as a piece of deer horn, perforated at the end, and drilled through, and imagined it to have been the handle for one of the celts found with it, “much in the manner of that in the museum of M. de Courvale, at his Castle of Pinon, in France,” of which he sent a drawing to the Archæological Association. A stag’s-horn socket, with a transverse hole for the haft, and a circular socket bored in the end, from which the main body of the horn was cut off, was found in the Thames, near Kew, and is in the possession of Mr. Thomas Layton, F.S.A. In the circular socket was a portion of a tine of stag’s horn, so that it seems rather to have been intended for mounting such tines for use as picks, than for hafting celts.

A celt, mounted in a socket of stag’s horn, bored through to receive the wooden shaft, found in the Lake-dwellings at Concise, and in the collection of Dr. Clément, has been engraved by Desor;[553] and another, found near Aerschot,[554] in Belgium, by Le Hon. A hatchet, mounted in a socket of this kind, is figured by Dupont[555] |162| and Van Overloop.[556] Some of the stag’s-horn sockets are ornamented by having patterns engraved upon them.[557]

In New Guinea and Celebes a plan has been adopted of inserting the stone blade into the end of a tapering piece of wood, which is securely bound round to prevent its splitting. The small end of this fits in a hole in the club-like haft. An example is shown in Fig. 99B,[558] obligingly lent by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. By turning round the pivot an axe is converted into an adze. In some New Guinea and New Caledonia adzes and axes the blade is let into a socket at a nearly right angle to the haft, and either forming part of it or attached to it. Such an adze is shown in Fig. 99C, kindly lent by the same Society. A similar method of hafting is in use in the Entrecasteaux Islands.[559]

Some ingenious suggestions as to the probable method of mounting stone implements in ancient times have been made by the Vicomte Lepic.[560] With a polished Danish flint hatchet 8 inches long, hafted in part of the root of an oak, an oak-tree 8 inches in diameter was cut down without injury to the blade.

Another method of hafting, adopted by the Swiss Lake-dwellers for their stone hatchets, is described by Dr. Keller,[561] from whose work I have copied the annexed woodcut, Fig. 100. |163|

The haft was usually formed of a stem of hazel, “with a root running from it at right angles. A cleft was then made in this shorter part, forming a kind of beak in which the celt was fixed with cord and asphalte.” A woodcut of a handle of the same character, found near Schraplau, in company with its stone blade, is given by Klemm,[562] and is here reproduced as Fig. 101. A handle of much the same kind, consisting of a shaft with a branch at right angles to it, in which was fixed a flint axe, was found with a skeleton and a wooden shield in a tumulus near Lang Eichstätt, in Saxony,[563] and has been engraved by Lindenschmit. Another is said to have been found at Winterswyk.

The discovery in the district between the Weser and the Elbe of several stone hatchets mounted in hafts of wood, stag’s-horn, and bone, has been recorded by Mr. A. Poppe,[564] but the authenticity of the hafting seems to me open to question. The compound haft of a stone axe, said to have been found at Berlin,[565] is also not above all suspicion. The handles of bronze palstaves, found in the salt mines near Salzburg, Austria, are forked in the same manner as Figs. 100 and 101. One of them, formerly in the Klemm Collection, is now in the British Museum.

The same system of hafting has been in use among the savages in recent times, as will be seen from the annexed figure of a stone adze from New Caledonia,[566] Fig. 102, lent to me by the late Mr. Henry Christy. Another is engraved in the _Proceedings of the Society of |164| Antiquaries of Scotland_.[567] Several other varieties of New Caledonian and Fiji handles have been engraved by M. Chantre.[568] In some countries, probably in consequence of the difficulty of procuring forked boughs of trees of the proper kind, the wood which forms the socket for the blade is bound on at the desired angle to the end of the wooden handle. An adze of stone from the Caroline Islands, thus mounted, is engraved in the _Comptes Rendus_;[569] and a |165| handle of this kind from North America, but with a small iron blade, is figured by Klemm.[570]

We are left in a great degree to conjecture as to the other methods of mounting stone hatchets and adzes on handles in prehistoric times; but doubtless some besides those already mentioned were practised. A very common method among existing savages is to bind the blade of stone on to the face of a branch at the end of the handle, which in some cases projects upwards, and in others downwards, and is inclined at an angle more or less perpendicular to the handle.

Figs. 103 and 104 are kindly lent me by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.[571] The short-handled adze, Fig. 103, is one |166| used by the Schlalum or Clalam Indians, of the Pacific Coast, to the south of the Straits of De Fuca and on Puget’s Sound, to hollow out their canoes. The group, Fig. 104, exhibits various methods of attachment of stone adzes to their handles employed by the South-Sea Islanders.

The Australians occasionally mounted their tomahawks in much the same manner as that shown in the central figure. An example has been engraved by the Rev. J. G. Wood.[572] The right-hand figure probably represents an adze from the Savage Islands. Some Brazilian and Aleutian Island adzes are mounted in much the same fashion.

The jade adzes of the New Zealanders are hafted in a somewhat similar manner; but the hafts are often beautifully carved and inlaid. A fine example is in the Blackmore Museum, and a handle in the Christy Collection. I have also a haft with the original |167| jade blade, but the binding has been taken off. One of them is engraved by the Rev. J. G. Wood.[573] The axe to the left, in Fig. 104, as well as that in the centre, is from Tahiti. The axes from Mangaia, so common in collections, exhibit great skill in the mounting and in the carving of the handles. Some have been engraved by the Rev. J. G. Wood.[574] A ceremonial stone adze with a very remarkable carved haft from New Ireland[575] has been figured by Professor Giglioli.

In some instances the ligaments for attaching the stone blade against the end of the handle pass through a hole towards its end. A North American adze in the Ethnological Museum, at Copenhagen, is thus mounted, the cord being apparently of gut.

A similar method of mounting their adzes, by binding them against the haft, was in use among the Egyptians.[576] Although it is extremely probable that some of the ancient stone adzes of other countries may have been mounted in this manner, there have not, so far as I am aware, been any of the handles of this class discovered. I have, however, two Swiss celts of Lydian stone, and of rectangular section, found at Nussdorf and Sipplingen, in the Ueberlinger See, and on the flatter of the two faces of each, there is a slight hollow worn away apparently by friction, which was, I think, due to their having been attached against a handle in this manner. The blade in which the depression is most evident has lost its edge, seemingly from its having been broken in use. I have not up to the present time found any similarly worn surfaces upon British celts.

Another method of hafting adopted by various savage tribes is that of winding a flexible branch of wood round the stone, and securing the two ends of the branch by binding them together in such a manner as tightly to embrace the blade. A stone axe from Northern Australia thus hafted, is figured in the _Archæologia_,[577] whence I have borrowed the cut, Fig. 105. Another used by natives on the Murray river[578] has been figured by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. This method of hafting has been mentioned by White,[579] who describes the binding as being effected by strips |168| of bark, and in his figure shows the two ends of the stick more firmly bound together.

Another example has been engraved by the Rev. J. G. Wood.[580] This mode is very similar to that in common use among blacksmiths for their chisels and swages, which are held by means of a withy twisted round them, and secured in its place by a ring.

It seems extremely probable that so simple a method may have been in use in early times in this country, though we have no direct evidence as to the fact. A “fancy sketch” of a celt in a withy handle will be found in the _Archæologia_.[581] It resembles in a singular manner the actual implements employed by the Ojibway Indians,[582] of which there is a specimen in the Christy Collection, engraved by the Rev. J. G. Wood.[583] Some of the other North American tribes[584] mounted their hatchets in much the same manner. A hatchet thus hafted is engraved by Schoolcraft.[585]

In some instances a groove of greater or less depth has been worked round the axes mounted in this manner, though undoubtedly British examples are scarce. An axe-hammer of diorite (13 inches), found near Newburgh,[586] Aberdeenshire, has a groove round it instead of the usual haft-hole. The blade engraved in the _Archæological Journal_[587] and found near Coldstream, Northumberland, is probably of Carib origin, like others which have also been supposed to have been British. Another from the Liverpool |169| Docks is mentioned by Mr. H. Ecroyd Smith.[588] In the British Museum are two such axes, and some other stone implements, found near Alexandria, but which probably are Carib, as would also seem to be those in the Museum of Douai,[589] on which are sculptured representations of the human face.

Stone axe-heads with a groove round their middle, for receiving a handle, have been found in Denmark,[590] but are of rare occurrence. The form has been found in the salt-mines of Koulpe,[591] Caucasus, and in Russian Armenia. The large stone mauls found so commonly in the neighbourhood of ancient copper-mines, in this and many other countries in both hemispheres, were hafted much in the same manner as the Australian axe.

In other cases axe-heads are mounted by being fixed in a cleft stick for a handle, the stick being then lashed round so as to secure the stone and retain it in its place. This method was employed by some of the North American Indians,[592] and the aborigines in the colony of Victoria.[593] In the Blackmore Museum is a stone axe thus mounted, from British Guiana. There is a small hole through the butt which is carved into a series of small spikes. Others from Guiana[594] have notches at the sides to receive a cord which bound the haft in a groove running along the butt-end. The same form has been found in Surinam.[595] An Egyptian[596] stone hammer is mounted in much the same way. The notches practically produce lugs at the butt-end of the blade. I have an iron hatchet, edged with steel, brought home by the late Mr. David Forbes, F.R.S., from among the Aymara Indians of Bolivia, which is mounted in a stick cleft at the end. The blade is T-shaped at the butt, and is tied in such a manner, by means of a strip of leather, that the arms of the T rest on two of the coils, so as to prevent its falling out, while other two coils pass over the butt and prevent its being driven back, and the whole binds the two sides of the cleft stick together so as tightly to grasp the blade and prevent lateral or endways motion. The ancient Egyptian bronze hatchets were merely placed in a groove and bound to the handle by the lugs, and sometimes by the cord being passed through holes in the blade. The same shape is |170| found in flint hatchets ascribed by Professor Flinders Petrie[597] to the twelfth dynasty. What may be a stone hatchet mounted occurs in a painting at Medum.[598]

Another Australian method of mounting implies the possession of some resinous material susceptible of being softened by heat, and again becoming hard and tough when cold. This mode is exhibited in Fig. 106, which represents a rude instrument from Western Australia, now in my collection, engraved in the _Archæologia_.[599] It is hammer-like at one end, axe-like at the other, and is formed of either one or two roughly chipped pieces of basalt-like stone entirely unground, and secured in a mass of resinous gum, in which the handle is inserted. In most implements of this kind there appear to be two separate stones used to form the double blade, and these are sometimes of different kinds of rock. It would seem that the shaft, either cleft or uncleft, passed between them, and that the stones, when bound with string to hold them in their places, were further secured with a mass of the gum of the _Xanthorrhæa_ or grass-tree.[600]

Such a method of hafting cannot, I think, have been in general use in this country, for want of the necessary cementing material, though, from discoveries made in Scandinavia, it would appear that a resinous pitch was in common use for fixing bronze implements to their handles; so that the practice may also have applied to those of stone. In the Swiss Lake-dwellings, bitumen was used as a cement for attaching stone to wood. In the case of the axes of the Indians on the River Napo,[601] Ecuador, the binding of |171| the blades, which are formed with lugs like those of Guiana, is covered with a thick coating formed of bees-wax and mastic.

Besides those that were hafted as axes or adzes, it seems probable that not a few of the implements known as celts may have been for use in the hand as cutting tools, either mounted in short handles or unmounted. There can be but little doubt that the tools, Fig. 83 and 83A, were thus used in the hand, as also the implement with a depression on each face (Fig. 87), and that with the notches at the side (Fig. 89); and they can hardly have been unique of their kind.

Dr. Lukis,[602] indeed, at one time expressed an opinion that the stone celt was not intended to be secured “in a handle, but was held in the hand and applied to particular uses which are not now evident, but to which neither the hammer nor the hatchet were applicable.” But in the face of the fact that numerous handles have since been found, such an opinion is no longer tenable except in a very limited sense.

Among modern savages we have instances of similar tools being used in the hand without the intervention of any haft, giving a form much like that of Fig. 83A, though among the Australians the butt-end is sometimes enveloped in a mass of resinous matter, so as to form a knob which fits the hand. According to Prinz Neuwied,[603] the Botocudos used their stone blades both unmounted in the hand and hafted as hatchets. The South Australians[604] and Tasmanians[605] likewise use celts in a similar manner.

There are cases in which the hatchet and haft have been formed from one piece of stone. Such a one, of chloritic stone, found in a mound in Tennessee,[606] is in outline like Fig. 92, and has a small loop for suspension at the end of the handle. Mr. Cursiter, of Kirkwall, has an instrument of the same kind from Orkney, formed of hard slate. In extreme length it measures 9 3∕4 inches. It cannot, however, be assigned to a very early date. For a comparison of celts from different countries Westropp’s “Prehistoric Phases”[607] may be consulted.

With regard to the uses to which these instruments were applied, they must have been still more varied than the methods of mounting, which, as we have seen, adapted them for the purposes of hatchets and adzes; while, mounted in other ways, or |172| unmounted, they may have served as wedges, chisels, and knives. The purposes which similar instruments serve among modern savages must be much the same as those for which the stone celts found in this country were employed by our barbarian predecessors. An admirable summary of the uses to which stone hatchets—the “Toki” of the Maori—are, or were applied in New Zealand, has been given by Dr. W. Lauder Lindsay.[608] They were used chiefly for cutting down timber, and for scooping canoes[609] out of the trunks of forest trees; for dressing posts for huts; for grubbing up roots, and killing animals for food; for preparing firewood; for scraping the flesh from the bones when eating, and for various other purposes in the domestic arts. But they were also employed in times of war, as weapons of offence and defence, as a supplementary kind of tomahawk.

For all these purposes stone celts must also have been employed in Britain, and some may even have been used in agriculture. We can add to the list at least one other service to which they were applied, that of mining in the chalk in pursuit of flint, as the raw material from which similar instruments might be fashioned.

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