40 ON RAINS CAVE, LONGCLIFFE, DERBYSHIRE. 



sepulchral pottery are scarce — so scarce, that the late Mr. Llewellyn 

 Jewitt stated that we were entirely indebted to the barrows for 

 examples. In this, however, he was mistaken. A vessel remarkably 

 like the one sketched was found some years ago in a cave in county 

 Durham, and associated with articles of a domestic nature; it is 

 figured in Greenwell's "Barrows," p. 107. Professor Boyd Daw- 

 kins, in his Early Man in Britain, p. 275, states in reference 

 to the Neolithic inhabitants of this land, that " their vessels are 

 coarsely made by hand and very generally composed of clay, 

 in which small pieces of stone, or fragments of shell, have been 

 worked. They are brown or black in colour, and very generally 

 have had rounded bottoms, from which it may be inferred that 

 they were not intended to stand on tables, but were placed in 

 hollows on the ground or floor. Sometimes they are ornamented 

 with patterns in right lines or in dots." Elsewhere in the same 

 work (page 267), in making mention of the hut circles of Fisher- 

 ton, near Salisbury, he states that " fragments of pottery, not 

 turned in the lathe, plain, or ornamented with incised curves, right 

 lines, or lines of dots," were found associated with spindle-whorls, 

 bone weaving-combs, bone needles, stone grain-rubbers, flint im- 

 plements, and remains of dog, goat, short-horn, horse, pig, «S:c. 

 Fragments of hand-made pottery have frequently been found 

 similarly associated in other caves. 



A spindle-whorl (PI. II., Fig. 2) of hard black shale was found on 

 the north side of the cave. It is about i^ inches in diameter, and 

 bears lathe marks on one side, the other being rough. There is 

 figured in Evans' Stone Implemetits, p. 392, a whorl found in 

 Yorkshire which agrees with this in every detail. These whorls were 

 used to maintain the rotary motion of the spindle in the act of 

 spinning with the distaff and spindle, a mode which was displaced 

 by the spinning-wheel, so often seen in our museums. 



An iron spade-like instrument (PL II., Fig. i), about 2 feet long, 

 was picked up from between some stones. It differs from a spade 

 in having its broadened end oval and only about 2 inches across. 

 It has been suggested that it is an old plough-spade for scraping off 

 the clay from the share. Although considerably rusted, its condition 



