172 W. B. Wright 8f A. M. Peach— Neolithic Man in Cole-may, 



V. Description of the Flint Implements. 



The flint implements found on the floor are on the whole rather 

 rude, and few of them, indicate auy great skill in the manufactui'e. 

 A large majority are merely flakes struck from a core and exhibit 

 little or no secondary working. The cores themselves are not 

 uncommon, but like the flakes are generally of small size. They 

 frequently retain some portion of the original rounded and battered 

 surfaces of the beach pebbles from which they have invariably been 

 made. The material of these beach pebbles must have been rather 

 intractable, having long lost any traces of quarry water, and the 

 quantity available for selection was by no means large. Occasional 

 flint pebbles can be found in the shingle beaches round the island, 

 but they are certainly not at all common. The shore in the immediate 

 neighbourhood is not composed of shingle, and the pebbles must there- 

 fore have been carried to this spot from other parts of the island. 

 In describing the different types of implement found we will take 

 them in order under the following heads : — 



1 . Cores and simple flakes. 



2. Secondarily worked chisel-ended flakes. 



3. Secondarily worked cutting-edged flakes or knives. 



4. Notched flakes. 



5. Pointed implements. 



6. Scrapers. 



Fig. 3. Small core, Neolithic floor in Sand-hills, Balnahard, Colonsay. 



Nat. size. 



1. The predominant type of core is of conical form, the flaking 

 having being effected from the base of the core towards the apex 

 (see Fig. 3). The greater number of flakes thus produced are 

 prismatic in form, but, when the fracture failed to run the full 

 length of the core, pointed flakes were also produced. The majority 

 of the flakes are triangular in section, narrow, and long, but broader 

 flakes with a four-sided cross section are not uncommon (see Fig. 4, A), 

 the latter being almost without exception the flakes which have been 

 selected for further development by secondary working. The cores 

 found had been reduced to a small size, as if there were a distinct 

 demand for the minutest flakes. 



2. Of the flakes showing secondary working the most simple types 

 are those which have been chipped at one end with the evident 

 intention of making a chisel-like tool. In all these the secondary 

 chipping is at the bulb end of the flake and on the off side from the 

 bulb, so that the latter forms, so to speak, part of the flat side of the 

 chisel (see Fig. 5). The presence of the bulb on this flat side was 



