380 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



and it shows great reso-uxcefulness to have turned such rocks as were 

 available to useful account. One would have expected that the people 

 might have dressed the boulders into fine cutting implements, and 

 polished them. Perhaps they may have done so though we have not 

 found the implements. Perhaps the rock was not suitable for grinding 

 into axes which may be most likely, as we find when a tough close- 

 grained rock turned up, as at Pisherstreet, county Clare, such tools 

 have been made. In other sites a fiake produced from a water worn 

 boulder gave an edge which would cut for a time pretty well, and as 

 the material was unlimited they could never be at a loss for a fresh 

 implement when required. At Ballykinler, in September, 1900, I 

 found among a lot of bones of cow and pig a large spall of blackish rock 

 about three or four pounds in weight ; it looked like a piece of rough 

 rock which had never been used for any purpose, but when I took it up 

 in my hand I found it had a rude edge and a handle dressed on it at one 

 end. It could be easily handled and used as a chopper. It must have 

 been used for smashing the bones to obtain the marrow. I have already 

 mentioned this object, and I have shown it on p. 341, fig. 9b. 



A]srviL Stones. 



The objects which I have called anvil stones in my present and 

 previous reports and papers occui' frequently with the other pre- 

 historic remains in the sand-hills. They have marks on the sides 

 which sometimes appear only as roughened spots, and in others as 

 pretty deep cup-like hollows. "We find the marks in all stages shading 

 from the one extreme to the other, and leading to the belief that the 

 continued use of the stone as an anvil caused the originally roughened 

 spots to wear in time into a hollow. When the hollows became deep, 

 so that they nearly met in the centre, the use of the stone as an anvil 

 would seem to have ceased, the bottom of the cavity was nicely 

 smoothed, and the hollow would then seem to have been tm-ned to 

 some other use. Many things could be ground or mixed in these cups, 

 paint for ornamenting their person among the rest. 



Anvil-stones are usually waterworn stones of about a poimd in 

 weight, but some are much larger, and occasionally the ends as well 

 as the sides are roughened as if they had also been used as hammer- 

 stones. The roughened pits on the sides were therefore believed by 

 some authors to be made for the pru'pose of enabling " the thumb and 

 fingers to take a sufficiently secm-e hold of the stone to prevent it 

 readily falling out of the hand when not tightly grasped. ... If, as 



