266 



YORKSHIRE. EAST RIDING. 



weapon was laid with the perforation in a vertical position. Close 

 to it was a flint tool of elongated triangular form, 1|^ in. long, and 

 chipped along both edges. In the material of the harrow were 

 some sherds of pottery, two round flint scrapers, and some bones 

 of goat or sheep, ox, dog, and pig, all of domesticated animals. 



This barrow presented some features which seem to require a more 

 particular notice than the mere record of their occurrence. The 

 most important matter is the discovery of two articles which 



Fig. 126. 



cannot have been anything else than a ' flint and steel,' the means 

 of producing fire. So far as I know, this is the first instance of 

 anything of the kind appertaining to the bronze age having been 

 specially recorded * ; and although the probability that in these 



1 Though the occurrence of pyrites of iron and flint -in barrows had been already 

 remarked, it does not seem to have suggested the purpose to which these materials 

 had been applied. Mr. Bateman, for instance, mentions that in a barrow on Elton 

 Moor, near the head of a body ' was a piece of spherical iron pyrites, now for the first 

 time noticed as being found with other relics in the British tumuli.' In the rear of 

 the same body was ' a flat piece of polished iron ore, a small celt of flint, with the 

 peculiarity of having a round polished edge instead of a cutting one as is usual j a 

 beautifully -chipped cutting tool, twenty-one circular instruments, almost all neatly 

 chipped, and seventeen pieces or rude instruments, all of flint.' Vestiges, p. 53. In 

 Green Lowe, behind the shoulders of a skeleton was ' a piece of spherical pyrites or 

 iron ore . . . and a flint instrument of the circular-headed form.' 1. c., p. 59. In Dowe 

 Lowe a skeleton 'was accompanied by a fluted brass dagger . . . and an amulet or 

 ornament of iron ore, with a large flint implement, which had seen a good deal of 

 service.'./, c., p. 96. In Wiltshire Sir R. Colt Hoare found in a barrow at Brigmilston, 

 'a long piece of flint and a pyrites, both evidently smoothed by use.' Ancient 

 Wilts, vol. i. p. 195. A half nodule of pyrites, showing signs of use, after the same 

 fashion as those from Rudstone, was discovered in a barrow on Lambourne Down, 

 Berkshire, and is now in the British Museum. Another, having a deep groove worn 

 on the flat surface, was met with in company with an urn and a bronze dagger, in a 

 barrow at Angrowse Mullion, Cornwall. Borlase, Nenia Conrnbiae, p. 235. Lord 

 Rosehill found with a burnt body in a cist at Tyneside Farm, near Minto, Roxburgh- 

 shire, a slice of a nodule of iron pyrites, together with a long and thick flint flake, 

 apparently ' a flint and steel.' I myself found a piece of iron ore, held in the hand 

 of a skeleton, and a long thick flake of flint, evidently ' a flint and steel/ in a cairn 

 [No. clxxiv] on Crosby Garrett Fell, Westmoreland. See Evans, Stone Impl., pp. 14, 

 281, seqq.- 



