ARBOR LOW EXCAVATIONS IN 1901 AND I902. 57 



although General Pitts-Rivers' method* of arranging arrow- 

 heads, showing the theoretical transition from one form to 

 another, is excellent in museum arrangement until something 

 more definite is arrived at, yet, bearing in mind the records 

 of the circumstances of the finding of flint arrow-heads during 

 the last thirty-five years, it would be, as Sir John Evans has 

 said long ago, " unwarrantable to attempt any chronological 

 arrangement founded upon mere form, as there is little doubt 

 of the whole of these varieties having been in use in one and 

 the same district at the same time, the shape being to some 

 extent adapted to the flake of flint from which the arrow-heads 

 were made, and to some extent to the purposes which the 

 arrows were to serve, "f 



The two Arbor Low specimens were probably not used a 

 great many years apart, for the fosse would, throughout its 

 lower portions, and indeed within a foot or two of the present 

 surface of the silting, fill up somewhat rapidly, particularly at 

 the bottom, owing to the fact of the sides of the ditch being 

 exposed to the erosive action of the weather, and the conse- 

 quent disintegration of the sides. 



The barbed arrow-head being on the bottom of the ditch 

 and near the middle would become covered almost imme- 

 diately the fosse was allowed to silt up. The other arrow- 

 head being found within an inch or two of the side of the 

 ditch at a depth of 3 feet, it is obvious that it would be 

 deposited on the talus and become covered very soon after 

 the barbed arrow-head. As before mentioned, the broken 

 kite-shaped arrow-head was picked up out of the silting so 

 very near the actual wall of the fosse that it is just possible 

 it may have rested on a small ledge of the limestone rock, 

 being removed therefrom by the pickaxe on the day of dis- 

 covery. In any case it may, I think, be safely asserted that 



* Colonel A. Lane Fox's second lecture on "Primitive Warfare, " Journal 

 of the Royal United Service Institution, 1 868, xii., No. li. 



t Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain (1872), 330 ; second edition, 

 370. 



