By William Gowland, F.S.A., F.I.C. 



27 



are accustomed to consider, and rightly so, as characteristic of 

 neolithic man, would find no place in such work. They required 

 too much labour and time for their manufacture, and, when made, 

 could not have been more effective than the hammer axes and 

 hammerstones found in the excavations, which could be so easily 

 fashioned by merely rudely shaping the natural flints, with which 

 the district abounds, by a few well-directed blows of a sarsen pebble. 



These implements can therefore, I think, notwithstanding their 

 rudeness, be legitimately placed in the neolithic age and, it may 

 be, near its termination. 



Bones. — As regards the bones, they are only the bones and teeth 

 of domestic animals, horses, oxen, sheep, goats, pigs, and dogs, and 

 of rabbits and deer, not calculated to afford any evidence as to the 

 date of Stonehenge. 



Of considerable importance, however, are the splinters of antlers 

 of deer which occurred in most of the excavations, especially in 

 Q, where they were found along with the stone tools, as they would 

 seem to indicate that antlers were utilised as picks in digging holes 

 for the stones. 



And, indeed, a portion of a large antler, with its lowest tine 

 worn away apparently by such use, was found in the rubble im- 

 mediately above the chalk at a depth of 5 feet 8 inches below 

 the surface of the ground in Excavation VIII. 



In this connection it may be remarked that all the digging 

 required even in the chalk was perfectly possible with such imple- 

 ments, aided it may be by some of the larger flint tools. 



Coins. 1 These are of a very miscellaneous character, and all, 

 even the Koman coins, were only found in the superficial layers. 

 Enumerating them in the order of their dates they are as follows : — 



Excavation III. 5 CM. 10 inches below the surface. 



A sestertius of Antonia, mother of Claudius (?) and daughter of Marcus 

 Antonius and Octavia. Her head is on the obverse, and on the reverse 

 a figure of Claudius, her husband. 



1 I am indebted to my friend Mr. H. A. Grueber, F.S.A., of the British 

 Museum, for the ^identification and description of these coins. 



