Know]-e.s^ — Prehistoric Stone Implements. 219 



slabs of sandstone, just as the Bann people did. I have one grinding-slab from 

 New Zealand which I could match with some of those from the Bann. I show 

 in Plate XIX, fig. 1-26, a sandstone slab, ground on both its flat faces, which 

 was found in the brick clay of Culbane, 4 feet from the surface. Close to it 

 was found a nest of six stone axes, ground and completed. Possibly the person 

 who ground these axes intended to return next day and grind some more ; but 

 I suppose a flood — a thing which must have been of frequent occurrence along 

 the Bann — had come in the meantime, and either was long in subsiding, or 

 covered all with a deposit of mud, so that the place where the grinding-slab 

 and axes had been laid down could not be found. This or some other 

 cause prevented them from being found until they were brought to. light a few 

 year's ago. This slab of well-rubbed sandstone is 13 inches long by 8 inches 

 broad. I show an axe resting on this grindstone. 



Axe-lmmincrs. 



All the implements I have previously described might, I should say, be 

 looked on as those of one people, and to represent one stage of culture, but 

 ^other objects of stone have been found in the Bann which may be of 

 later age and belong to a higher stage of culture. There is no doubt that 

 a succession of peoples came to this beautiful valley abounding in food, each 

 bringing superior implements, and perhaps a higher degree of culture. 

 We can easily judge for ourselves that such waves of culture succeeded 

 each other by the findmg of bronze implements and of an early type of iron 

 implements in the Bann and Lough Neagh. I am not, however, dealing with 

 metal objects on the present occasion, but only with those of stone, and, 

 owing to stone axe-hammers and other pierced stones having been found in 

 the Bann, I am taking notice of them. 



An old man now living in Portglenone, over eighty years of age, and who 

 worked at the excavations made in the bed of the Bann by the Board of 

 Works, remembers Eev. James O'Laverty collecting the antiquities found 

 <Iuriug the deepening of the river. He was down along the banks of the 

 Bann every morning to procure, if possible, whatever was found, but he had a 

 competitor, a dealer or pedlar, who was there every morning also for a similar 

 purpose. No doubt his Keverence got the lion's share, as he obtained a very 

 large and good assortment of prehistoric implements. Father O'Laverty did not 

 write much about the objects he found, as far as I have been able to discover. 

 I know of only one paper of his,' in which he deals chiefly with the age and 

 succession in point of time of the various kinds of implements found while 

 deepening the bed of the Bann. He allows the editor of the " Ulster Journal of 



' Ulster Journal of Archaeolog-y (O.S.), vol. v, j). Vl'l. 

 B.I.A. PROC. , VOL. XXX., SECT. C. [30] 



