A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



Tring and Eddlesborough. It is engraved as fig. 315 in Ancient Stone 

 Implements, and here reproduced in fig. 8. 



A remarkably fine barbed arrowhead with straight sides from Ash- 

 well, found in 1881, is represented in fig. 3O5A of the same book, and 

 here in fig. 7. A smaller example from Ashwell 1 has also been figured. 

 I possess a well-formed example of the same type, but of larger size, 

 found at Hunsdon 2 near Ware. 



In my collection are also a pointed leaf-shaped arrowhead (like 

 fig. 281) from Pirton, and a tanged arrowhead without barbs, 2^ inches 

 long (like fig. 302), from Royston. 



Fabricators. These instruments, to which the name of arrow-flakers 

 has also been applied, seem to have been used either in the hand to 

 detach small flakes in the manufacture of arrowheads or other small 

 appliances by means of direct pressure, or else as punches through which 

 an impact could be communicated from a mallet or hammer. Their 

 worn and bruised ends testify to their having performed hard work. 

 A specimen possibly belonging to this class, and found near Baldock, 

 has already been mentioned, and Mr. Worthington Smith has figured a 

 more characteristic specimen of a Neolithic fabricator in his work Man 

 the Primeval Savage. It was found at Caddington, 8 and, in Mr. Smith's 

 opinion, was made from a Palaeolithic flake, the older portions of the 

 surface having a white patina, while the more recent are black, the 

 original colour of the flint. 



THE BRONZE PERIOD 



Following on the Neolithic stage of culture, and, indeed, gradually 

 developed from it, comes a period when metal to a great extent super- 

 seded stone as a material for tools and weapons. It seems probable that 

 in some, if indeed not in several, countries of the world copper was the 

 metal first used for such purposes, and that there was in those countries 

 what has been termed a Copper age, as distinct from a Bronze age. 

 There exists, however, in Britain but little evidence of such a period, 

 though in Ireland, according to the views of some antiquaries, it may 

 have been otherwise. At an early stage in the annals of metallurgy it 

 appears to have been discovered that a comparatively slight admixture of 

 tin with copper not only rendered it more fusible and better adapted for 

 being cast in a mould, but that the alloy thus obtained was susceptible of 

 being drawn out to a sharper and more durable edge. 



Typical bronze consists of nine parts of copper and one of tin, and 

 this alloy received in later days the name of bronze, from the town 

 of Brundusium, or Brundisium (now Brindisi), where a commerce in this 

 metal appears to have been carried on. Analysis of ancient bronze tools 

 and weapons shows a considerable variation in the proportion of tin to 

 copper, and occasionally lead is present in appreciable quantity, even to 

 the extent of 8 per cent. 



L Trans. Herts Nat. Hist. Soc., viii. pi. xii. I. 



' Ancient Stone Implements, 2nd ed. p. 389. * Op. cit. 2nd ed. p. 304, fig. 219. 



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