A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE 



interesting facts which are worthy of consideration. These points consist 

 mainly of the association of the stone objects with other articles rather than 

 individual and actual features, and they tend to illustrate the transition and 

 overlapping of the ages of stone and metal. 



Thus, in the Mouse Low barrow, a flint arrow-head (a weapon which 

 it was formerly the custom to regard as Neolithic) was found in a Bronze 

 Age drinking-cup, a circumstance which implies but does not prove con- 

 temporaneity, because the arrow-head may have been preserved as a relic 

 from a former age. At Mouse Low, also, two barbed arrow-heads of flint 

 were found in association with bone pins. The same combination of 

 objects was found in Ribden Low barrow. 



Thor's Cave, at Wetton, furnished two decidedly curious objects, viz., 

 a carved sandstone vessel and a bronze kettle-like vessel. The objects are 

 probably both later than the Bronze Age, as the handle is of iron. The 

 sandstone vessel belongs to a type found in more abundance in Scotland than 

 England, where they are decidedly rare. 



In the details of the contents of Staffordshire barrows given in this 

 article it will be noted, again and again, that flint flakes and implements occur 

 in the sepulchral mounds in intimate association with burnt burials and 



pottery bearing the char- 

 acteristics, both in fabric 

 and decoration, of the 

 Bronze Age. The con- 

 clusion to which these 

 facts point is that the two 

 races, the Neolithic and 

 the Bronze-using people, 

 intermingled, intermar- 

 ried, and buried their dead 

 side by side, some indivi- 

 duals retaining the old cus- 

 toms and others adopting 

 the new. 



The bone pins re- 

 ferred to may be either of the Neolithic or the Bronze Age. Their purpose 

 has been the subject of a good deal of speculation amongst antiquaries, 

 some regarding them as instruments for piercing leather or soft materials. 

 When they occur in barrows, however, there seems reason to believe 

 that they served as fastenings for some kind of shroud in the case of unburnt 

 interments, and in the case of burnt burials it is believed that they served to 

 pin together the cloth in which the ashes were placed, after being collected 

 from the funeral pile. 1 



THE BRONZE AGE 



The main points of difference between the later age of stone or the 

 Neolithic Age, and the earliest period of metal or the Bronze Age, may be 

 summed up in a few words, although it would be difficult, if not impossible, 

 for us in modern times to realize all that the great transition meant. 



1 Evans, Stone Imp. (and ed.), 432. 

 170 



GRANITE AXE-HEAD FOUND AT STONE (12 in. in length) 



