66 SIE DANIEL WILSON 



weathering, that they contributed in no slight degree to discredit the book on its first 

 api^earance. Others of them, however, show true flakes, scrapers, and fragments probably 

 referable to smaller implements of the same class, such as w ould be recognized without 

 hesitation to be of artificial origin if found alongside of undoubted flint implements in a 

 cave deposit, or in any barrow, cist, or sepulchral urn. In so far as they belong to the 

 true Drift, and not to the Neolithic or the Grallo-Eoman period, they tend to confirm the 

 idea that the large almond and tongue-shaped imj^lemeuts are not the sole relics of iialœo- 

 lithic art. 



But now that adequate attention has been given to the stone implements of the Drift- 

 folk, or the men of the Mammoth and Reindeer ages it becomes apparent that they are 

 by no means limited to such localities. On the contrary, sites of native manufactories 

 of flint implements, with abundnnt remains of the fractured debris of the ancient tool- 

 makers' workshop, some of which are described on a later page, have been discovered 

 remote from any locality where the raw material could be procured. Until the gun flint 

 was superseded by the percussion cap, the material for its manufacture was procured by 

 sinking shafts through the chalk until the beds of flint suited for the purpose were 

 reached. In this the modern flint worker only repeated the practice of the primitive tool- 

 maker. A gronp of ancient flint pits at Cissbury, near Worthing, has been made very 

 familiar by the systematic explorations of Colonel A. Lane Fox. They occur in and 

 around one of the aboriginal hill-forts of Sussex, the name of which has been connected 

 with Cissa, the son of Ella, who is referred to by Camden as " Saxon king of those parts." 

 But any occupation of the old hill-fort as a Saxon stronghold belongs to very recent times 

 when compared with that of the flint workers, whose pits have attracted the notice of 

 modern explorers. Colonel Lane Fox describes Cissbury Hill Fort as a great flint arsenal. 

 Here within its earthen ramparts the workmen who fashioned the arms of the Stone age 

 excavated for the beds of native flint in the underlying chalk, and industriously worked 

 it into every variety of weapon. " In one place a collection of large flakes might be seen, 

 where evidently the first rough outline of a flint implement had been formed. In another 

 place, a quantity of small flakes showed where a celt had been brought to perfection by 

 minute and careful chipping." ' In other excavations the pounders, or stone hammers, were 

 found, with a smooth rounded end by which they were held in the hand, and the other 

 bruised and fractured in the manufacture of the flint implements that abound on the same 

 site.' Twenty-fiA'^e pits were explored ; and from these, hundreds of worked flints were 

 recovered in every stage of workmanship — chips, flakes, cores, balls, and finished knives ; 

 drills, scrapers, spear heads and axes or celts. In fact, Col. Lane Fox sums up his gen- 

 eral statement of details with the remark that " Cissbury has produced specimens of nearly 

 every type known to have been found among flint implements, from the Drift and Cave 

 up to the Surface period," ' But this " Woolwich" of the Hint age occupied an altogether 

 exceptional position, with the raw material immediately underlying the military 

 enclosure, not improbably constructed on purpose to defend the primitive arsenal and 

 workshop, and so render its garrison independent of all foreign supplies. 



Other flint pits point to the labours of the industrious miner, and the probable trans- 

 port of the raw material to distant localities where the prized flint could only be procured 



' Archeeologia, xlii. 72. ^ Ibid., p. 68. " Ibid., p. 68. 



