I 



1888.] J. Wood- Mason— T/ie Prehistoric Antiquities of BancU. 387 



XVIII. — Notes on some Objects from a Neolithic Settlement recently dis- 

 covered by Mr. W. H. P. Driver at Banchi in the Ghota-Nagpore 

 District.— By J. Wood-Mason, Superintendent of the Indian Museum^ 

 and Professor of Comparative Anatomy in the Medical College of 

 Bengal, Calcutta. 



[Eeceived and Read January 4th, 1888.] 

 (With Plates II— V.) 

 At a recent meeting of this Society some ancient stone beads were 

 exhibited by the Philological Secretary on behalf of Mr. W. H. P. Driver 

 who had found them at Banchi in the Chota-Nagpore District. With 

 these beads were associated one or two pieces of chert and some quartz 

 crystals which had evidently been artificially chipped and flaked. The 

 presence of these worked pieces of stone amongst the beads suggesting 

 the suspicion that a settlement of neolithic people similar in character 

 to those of Jubalpur in the Central Provinces had been hit upon, I, 

 with the goodwill of the Philological Secretary, placed myself in com- 

 munication his correspondent, who has been kind enough to send 

 me all the larger of the objects described below and, at my special 

 request, a considerable quantity of fragments of different kinds of stone 

 gathered without selection from the same site. Amongst the latter I 

 have had the good fortune to find a number of arrow-heads belonging 

 to two distinct forms of the same simple type. 



Objects discovered by Mr. Driver, 



PI. II. represents a curious implement of olive-green grey unctu- 

 ous clayey stone which readily absorbs moistare from the hand and gives 

 an ashy-grey streak when grazed, however lightly, by a harder substance 

 such as chert. It tapers from 20 c. in girth at the butt to 13 c. at the 

 functional end, which is worn as smooth as a piece of lithographic slate 

 that has been prepared for the engraver, exhibiting only some very fine 

 scratches chiefly in one direction. It has three sides, two of which are 

 fairly smooth and flat, and at right angles to one another, while the 

 third is rough and convex. All three sides have been * dressed ' by- 

 some tool, which in the case of the rough convex side seems to have 

 been pointed. The marks of the ' dressing ' are ashy grey of a some- 

 what darker tint than the fresh streak of the stone. If, as seems pro- 

 bable the rough convex side has been so fashioned as to fit the hollow 

 palm of the hand (as in Fig. I), the instrument is a right-handed 

 one, and must have been worked to and fro the body of the operator, 

 in the direction, that is to say, indicated by the scratches on the surface 



