2o6 Mortimer : Jet OnuDiioits from East YorksJiire. 



From whence were these jet buttons and ornanients obtained? 

 And where were they manufactured ? Have they been unported 

 or are they of local production ? 



Judging" from my specimens I am inclined to believe that 

 they have been obtained through both sources. Some of the 

 pendants are merely rough pieces of jet, pierced from opposite 

 sides in a manner which might have been readily accomplished 

 with a pointed flint. Though most of the buttons have well- 

 polished conical fronts, the piercings at their backs are such as 

 would not be difficult to make with a pointed stone or even 

 bone. In many instances also the flat backs of these buttons 

 have evidently been cut and scraped with an instrument no 

 better than a flint knife ; and there are other articles which have 

 probably been shaped by the same crude tools. 



But on examining some of the better executed ornaments it 

 seems clear that the work could not have been produced by 

 stone or bone tools alone ; such, for instance, as the boring of 

 the broad flat beads, the drum-shaped and long" cylindrical 

 beads that chiefly compose many necklaces, and must have been 

 pierced with small metal drills finely tempered. 



There are also the very delicately-cut and pierced discs of 

 jet, measuring as little as ^ of an inch to ^ an inch in diameter, 

 and often but y^ of an inch in thickness, of which some of the 

 jet necklaces are mostly composed (see Fig. i). I am of opinion 

 that these could only have been produced by an exceedingly 

 fine-toothed saw of metal, as they appear to have been so truly 

 cut. As the borings in the long beads are mostly from opposite 

 ends, meeting half way, some of them may have been made 

 with the bronze drill-shaped awls (used as bow drills) possessed 

 by the Britons. Such objects, generally named awls and 

 prickers, are not infrequently found with British interments. 

 No remains of a bronze saw has, as far as I know, ever been 

 found with a British interment in East Yorkshire, or even in the 

 British Isles. Nevertheless, such a tool may have been used by 

 them, as I possess the root end of a oak sapling, about 2^ inches 

 in thickness, showing on its lower end several fairly clean cuts 

 which must have been made by a metal axe ; while some 6 to 

 8 inches from its thick end is a cross incision half through the 

 piece of oak. When first found this cut was well-defined and 

 showed that it had been made by a saw about ^ of an inch 

 wide. This must have been of the Bronze Age, as the piece of 

 wood was taken with many others, much decayed, from under 

 the centre of a very large British barrow not later than the 



Naturali&t, 



