A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



of more elaborate workmanship, such as delicate arrow-heads with barbs, 

 it is plain that these are merely the ruder implements of man who 

 had already attained the neolithic culture. This in itself would not be 

 evidence of a stone age, purely defined, for the use of stone for implements 

 continued down to historic times, and some of the best products of the art 

 of stone-working were fashioned during the Bronze Age which succeeded ; 

 but in regard to a variety of these, which are both very numerous and 

 confined to a particular region, there is evidence in the absence of metal 

 among the stone, as well as the intrinsic testimony of the finds themselves, 

 that they were produced by a Stone-Age people settled in the locality. The 

 region indicated is the range of moorland that forms the south-eastern boundary 

 of the county and separates it from Yorkshire ; and the objects found freely 

 on hilltops denuded by the wind, and in other places from 4 to 5 .(sometimes 

 10) ft. below the surface, are the cores of flint, the chippings and flakes, 

 ' borers and gravers,' scrapers and small hammer-stones, which the flint 

 worker of the neolithic age lost or rejected. In one place, on March Hill, 

 have been found ' innumerable minute chippings of flint,' and on the same 

 hill a ' half-made arrow-head.' 



On Knoll Hill again was found a core amidst numerous chippings, one 

 of which, identified by its patina, fitted exactly in the place whence it had 

 been struck. It is interesting to read the account of what students of these 

 remains see of the life of neolithic man himself in the traces of his handi- 

 work. ' He was undoubtedly a hunter, from the arrow-heads and spear- 

 heads he has left behind him. He clothed himself in skins, for we find 

 the flaying knives which he used to separate the skin from the carcase, the 

 scrapers with which he removed the fat and hair from the hides. We also 

 find the perforators used for boring the eyes in his bone needles with which 

 he made his clothes. We find his graving tools for ornament or possibly 

 tattooing, and we find the reddle and graphite which he used for personal 

 adornment. We have found his hearth or dwelling-place, a rubble of millstone 

 grit ; the ruins of rude sandstone shelters ; the iron pyrites and the hard 

 hsmatite by which he got his light, and the charcoal, the remains of his 

 long extinct fire.' l 



The burial places of these people, which are usually the more sure 

 indication, are in this case less easy to identify from the accounts which have 

 been published. Of the many burial mounds which are found along the 

 same range of hills it seems probable that the majority at least belong to a 

 later age. 



The area through which these remains are found is fairly extensive. 

 The town of Rochdale is about its centre. Southward it reaches by the 

 heights above Oldham almost to Ashton-under-Lyne. Westward it is 

 bounded only by the edge of the moorland which spreads out beyond Bury 

 towards Bolton-le-Moors. Northwards it follows the high crest of the 

 Pennine range as far as Burnley, while towards the east it passes beyond the 

 Yorkshire border. The small objects themselves are so numerous that it is 

 not possible to describe them in detail in the manner subsequently adopted 

 for the classes of larger antiquities. A few types of worked flints are 



1 Vid. Trans. Rochdale Lit. and Set. Sue. 1 897. ' Flint Implements,' W. H. Sutcliffe ; also various contri- 

 butions by Dr. Colley March. 



214 



