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CHAPTEE X. 

 Bone Tools and Stone Sharpeners. 



Bone- and stag-horn tools were greatly in use in the Solutrian- 

 Magdalenian times, but bone tools have not prevailed in the South 

 African lithic epoch. This is the more surprising in view of the 

 undoubted Aurignacian and Magdalenian facies of many of the 

 stone pieces. 



The scarcity of the find seems to justify the assumption that the 

 utility of bone as a material was not quite realised. 



These bone-tools can be arranged in three categories : Knives, 

 awls, arrow-tips. No bone ornament, either bored for suspension 

 or otherwise, has, as yet, been discovered that can be connected 

 with the stone industry. 



Knives. 



The knives are very scarce. I know of four examples only, and 

 all have been found in shell-mounds in the open, or in cave-shelters. 

 They were possibly used for detaching the molluscs from univalve 

 or bivalve shells. Cut 2 of Fig. 193, PI. XXVI., is very blunt, and 

 bears numerous traces of short, sub-transverse incisions made plainly 

 by a stone scraper-knife. These incisions must be posterior to the 

 shaping of this tool by polishing. Cut 1 of Fig. 172, which, like 

 Cut 2 of Fig. 193, is from one of the Outeniqua-Tzitzikama Caves, 

 has the edges plainly ground. Cut 172 may have been a knife, 

 although it may also have been used as a spear-head. It is made 

 from the rib of a ruminant, is thin and smoothed on one face only. 

 I know of another exactly alike, but smaller, found with a number 

 of bone awls and arrow shafts in a rock-shelter. 



Awls and Arrow Points. 



x\wls or bodkins are more numerous than either knives or 

 arrow-tips. 



