A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



drilled with a hole for suspension, and a perforated stone axe with one 

 cutting edge and one slightly blunted end. A sepulchral mound of 

 earth, or barrow had been thrown up over the interment, and the coffin 

 was found nine feet below the surface of that mound. It is unfortunate 

 that no very precise notes or photographs were taken when the discovery 

 was made, but the objects found have been carefully preserved and are 

 now in the Brighton Borough Museum. The discovery is one of the 

 most important ever made in the county, and it is of special value as 

 showing the association of objects of different characters in one recep- 

 tacle. Had they been found in or near one spot merely, the juxtaposition 

 might have been considered the result of chance or accident. The 

 amber cup, which is probably unique, in this country at any rate, has 

 been shaped with great pains and some skill. Its capacity is rather 

 more than half a pint. It is 3I in. in external diameter, 2| in. high, 

 and about yL of an inch thick. The regularity of form and of the 

 parallel lines running round as an ornament on the outside, and the 

 general smoothness of the surface are points which clearly indicate that 

 the vessel was shaped, at least in part, on the lathe. Whether it was 

 actually produced in this country or imported is uncertain, but a good 

 many vessels turned in Kimmeridge shale and probably of Bronze Age, 

 or Prehistoric Iron Age, workmanship have been found in Britain, and 

 they point pretty clearly to native manufacture and the use of the lathe 

 prior to the Roman period. 



The occurrence of a perforated stone axe-head in a Bronze Age 

 burial, and associated with a bronze knife-dagger, is also important. It 

 has, of course, long been recognized that the highly-finished and per- 

 forated axe-heads and hammer-heads of stone, with which one is familiar 

 in various collections in Britain, must have considerably overlapped the 

 age of metal ; but it has remained for a recent writer * to point out the 

 numerous instances in which such forms of stone implements have been 

 found in connection with Bronze Age sepulchral deposits. Yorkshire, 

 Wiltshire and Derbyshire seem to have furnished the largest numbers of 

 such discoveries. The cult of the axe was pretty generally diffused among 

 the Neolithic and Bronze Age races. In Brittany and Denmark stone 

 axes are more frequently associated with Stone Age burials, but in Great 

 Britain they are more often found with those of the Bronze Age. Mr. 

 J. Romilly Allen suggests three reasons why stone axes should be so 

 often found with burials, namely, (i) that they were objects prized by 

 the deceased during his lifetime ; (2) that he would require weapons in 

 a future state of existence ; and (3) that the axe was a symbol associated 

 with the worship of some deity. To whatever reason the presence of 

 the perforated axe in the Hove burial may be attributed, it can hardly 

 be questioned that the grave marked the resting-place of a personage of 

 considerable consequence, whilst the presence of a bronze knife-dagger 



^ Mr. J. Romilly Allen, F.S.A., ' Note on a perforated stone axe-hammer found in Pembrokeshire,' 

 in Arch. Cambr. (ser. 6), iii. 224-38. A list of such objects found in barrows in Great Britain is given 

 in Mr. Allen's paper. 



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