STRANDLOOPER INSTRUMENTS AND ORNAMENTS. 461 



but not a single crescent nor any small or rounded scrapers. The 

 Spitzkop implements are nearly all flakes, many of them of the 

 kind popularly spoken of as arrowheads. They are the predomin- 

 ating implements of the caves around Grahamstown (Plate X, 

 Fig 6), and presumably Dr. Peringuey referred to this type when 

 he wrote "with our paintings are associated simple small flakes 

 of a type and size which are met with nearly everywhere." Such 

 implements are apparently the productions of the most recent 

 aborigines of the Albany district, and no doubt the Spitzkop 

 skeletons (Fig. 15) belong to that now extinct race. Culturally, 

 these people belonged to the Neolithic period, as indicated by the 

 pottery and the polished stone implements — palettes and digging 

 stones. There is another very characteristic implement which I 

 ■do not hesitate to refer to these same people; an axe, or adze, with 

 a carefully-ground cutting edge (Fig. 7). This has quite a 

 striking general resemblance to the European Neolithic axes, but 

 is made of local rock. It was found on the farm Vaal Krantz, 

 which is but a few miles away from Spitzkop. It was not taken 

 in situ, being picked up amongst other stones which had pre- 

 viously been excavated in making a water furrow. The specimen 

 has been described and illustrated both by Schonland and 

 Peringuey, but hitherto its connection with recent aborigines was 

 not even suspected. 



Regarding the relative ages of the two cultures here dis- 

 tinguished, in the absence of stratigraphical data we have at 

 present no evidence more important than that of the paintings. 

 There are no paintings on the walls of the Spitzkop cave, the 

 surfaces being much broken up, but a coloured funeral slab of 

 stone found in the bottom layers of the cave, overlying a skeleton, 

 bears crude paintings which somewhat resemble the very inferior 

 later paintings — the fat-tailed sheep group — found at the Wilton 

 rock-shelter. This certainly adds weight to the argument for 

 two or more cultures at Wilton, and helps to justify our segregating 

 those inferior later paintings with the larger implements : but 

 there are no means of estimating what period separated the two 

 •cultures. 



The larger crescents from Nahoon seem to me very like one 

 •or two specimens recorded by Prof. W. J. Sollas from Paviland 

 Cave, in Wales. 1 He refers the Welsh material to the Upper 

 Aurignacian period, the characteristic implements of that sub- 

 divison being the "Gravette point," "a long, straight parallel- 

 sided flake, generally triangular in section, one edge of which 

 has been completely removed by minute and thorough retouching." 

 In the Gravette point, the retouch on the worked edge is almost 

 constantly directed from below upwards, which is certainly the 

 case in most of the South African specimens, but not all. How- 

 ever, many Paviland specimens differ from ours in that they 

 are pointed only at the apex, whilst the base of the flake remains 

 untouched. The undoubted resemblance in technique becomes 

 more remarkable inasmuch as the Gravette point passes into 



1 "Journ.il Royal Anthropological Institute," Vol. XLIII, 1913. 



