571.93(42.25) 94 [August 
Il 
Primeval Refuse Heaps at Hastings 
(Concluded from ip. 44) 
HE 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. 43 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 
