571.93(42.25) 94 [August 



II 



Primeval Refuse Heaps at Hastings 



(Concluded from p. 44) 



THE most remarkable of all the flint implements found in the 

 Hastings Kitchen Middens — or we may perhaps even say 

 anywhere else — is a group of highly specialised diminutive forms 

 totally unlike anything outside their own class. They are usually 

 exceedingly small, very rarely exceeding an inch and a half in 

 length, and sometimes are not one-sixth that size. They are 

 characterised by the peculiarity of their shape and outline, and the 

 method by which the flint has been worked. So persistent are the 

 quaint and curious types, and so unique the working of the flint, 

 that these delicate little implements have been recognised in Egypt, 

 Arabia, Spain, the Valley of the Meuse, and in England by four 

 different field workers. Around Sevenoaks I have found several 

 settlements, and in one case a barrow of these people, in which, 

 probably, the chief was cremated, with implements. Experiments 

 lead me to the belief that this peculiar work, in which the delicate 

 flakes average sometimes only one-thirtieth of an inch in length, was 

 performed by a slot in a piece of bone similar to a saw-setter, as with 

 a tool of this sort I can reproduce this work with its characteristic 

 rectilinear outline. More recently I have noticed a few spheroidal 

 flints, with the edges finely contused. I find that by using 

 these upon a flake lying upon a banker I can lever off small flakes, 

 giving rise to a kind of working very similar to that found on the 

 Midden flints. Amongst these queer little forms are crescents, 

 such as Nos. 8, 85, 10, 11, 12, 8, 4, and 81, which were probably 

 employed for fishing, by a method of suspension that has come 

 down to us, as shown in Plate VI.; also oblique (Nos. 4y and ^) 

 and incurved pointed tools (Nos. 85, 87, 88), probably used for 

 tattooing and other rites ; others are drills ; while the use of others, 

 such as those with trapezoidal outline (No. 40, Plate VI.), is past 

 conjecture. Many are simply sharp points, and were doubtless 

 used for fish hooks, being bound upon a crutch twig, in the manner 

 suggested in Plate VI. It is the extreme dissimilarity of these little 

 things from everything else that makes us feel justified in recognis- 

 ing them as the work of one and the same people wherever they are 

 found. They are not scattered indiscriminately all over the surface 

 like the ordinary neoliths, but are confined to settlements, which 



