276 EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP. vm. 



They are brown, or black, in colour, and very gener- 

 ally have had rounded bottoms, from which it may be 

 inferred that they were not intended to stand on tables, 

 but were placed in hollows on the ground or floor. 

 Sometimes they are ornamented with patterns in right 

 lines or in dots. 



The Neolithic Flint-Mines near Brandon. 



The stone implements of the Palaeolithic men were 

 fashioned out of pebbles and boulders torn from the 

 rocks by the elements, and ready to hand on the surface. 

 The stones used by the Neolithic men for their imple- 

 ments were carefully sought beneath the ground. The 

 flint out of which many of them have been manufactured 

 was obtained by mining operations, carried out with 

 great skill and ingenuity. Two of these mining centres 

 in this country have been scientifically explored. 



The series of workings at Grimes Graves, near Bran- 

 don, in Suffolk, explored by the Eev. W. Greenwell, 1 

 consists of shafts connected together by galleries from 

 three to five feet high, which had been made in pursuit 

 of a layer of flint good for manufacture. When the 

 flint within reach was exhausted a new shaft was sunk 

 close by, and a new set of galleries made ; for the 

 miners appear to have been ignorant of the use of 

 timber to keep up the roof, and were therefore unable 

 to work very far from the bottom of the shaft. The 

 partially filled up shafts appear at the surface as circular 

 depressions of the same form as the hut circles described 

 above. 2 In the old workings the miners have left behind 



1 Etlmol. Soc. Journ. vol. ii. p. 419. 

 2 This mode of mining was employed in Britain as late, if not later than 



