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Knowles — Prehistoric Remains, Sandhills, Coast of Ireland. 365 



witli flakes struck off in the course of manufacture. Such, places, 

 together with the examples of flint and stone-working to be seen in 

 the various sandhill sites, give a very fair insight into the methods of 

 manufactui'ing implements during the Stone Age in Ireland. 



In order to manufacture an axe, a boulder of flint, or hard rock 

 appears to have been selected and worked by striking olf flakes from 

 either side till it assumed the shape of an axe, broad at the base or 

 cutting edge and pointed at the butt. In the valley of the Bann and in 

 county Clare rocks of fine hard quality appear in the form of thin flags, 

 which are largely used in the manufacture of axes, as they only require 

 to be split and hammered into shape and dressed along the edges, the 

 •central portions of the two principal faces generally remaining in their 

 natural state. When an axe was fully chipped by the hammerstones 

 it was ground, not backwards and forwards lengthwise as in other 

 countries, but across, diagonally, and every way, so as to give it the 

 necessary smoothing down. We flnd many axes merely ground and 

 not polished on which the irregular nature of the grinding is easily 

 seen. In some other countries fixed griudstones have been used and 

 there the grinding may have been performed by a backward and 

 forward movement in one groove, but this plan does not seem to have 

 been followed in Ireland. The polishing after grinding seemed to have 

 been effected by whetstones, of which I have figured examples. 

 See Journal R.H.A.A.I., 5th ser., vol. iii., figs. 49 and 50, p. 156. 



Besides axes, some of our larger spear-heads must have been made 

 from boulders or very large spalls, but many good sized spear heads, and 

 all our smaller implements, scrapers, knives, arrow heads, borers, etc., 

 have been made fi'om fiakes, in most cases produced for the purpose. 

 "We find such implements in all stages of manufacture, partly made, 

 nearly finished, and also completed, yet in the majority of cases we can 

 trace the original fiake by the bulb of percussion or some undressed 

 portion of the flake. 



In other countries the plan employed in manuf actui'ing implements, 

 while appearing to have agreed in many ways with that found to have 

 been in use in Ireland, yet varied eonsiderably from it. Mr. William 

 Henry Holmes gives a very full and instructive monograph in the 

 Fifteenth Annual Report of the Bui-eau of Ethnology, Washington, 

 published in 1897, "On the Stone Implements of the Potomac- Chesa- 

 peake Tide Water, Province of America." Good raw material for 

 making the implements in question was found in the state of rounded 

 boulders in gi'avelly deposits in and around the City of Washington ; 

 but, in order to obtain a sufficient supply of boulders of the best 



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