A HISTORY OF ESSEX in manufacturing knives, scrapers, etc. 1 others carefully chipped at the edge, suggesting their use as cutting or rasping instruments. Small circular or oval implements chipped to a sharp edge are frequently found. It is generally thought that these were used as scrapers in preparing the skins of animals for clothing, for shaping wood for implements, etc. (fig. 5). In arrowheads our Essex collections are poor, though some have been found (figs. 6, 7). To the legends and folklore gathered round these ' fairy weapons ' space will not allow us to refer ; suffice it to say that even to this day a certain or uncertain power of preservation from evil is in some quarters attributed to them. The use of arrowheads of flint and obsidian continued long after the neolithic period, and has hardly yet died out in certain remote parts of the world. Longer pieces of flint, pointed and chipped to a cutting edge, served as spearheads, or maybe were hafted to handles for use as daggers and knives (figs. 8, 9, 10). Pestles for pounding or grinding corn and food are occasionally found, but as their use extended to later days it is impossible to say with certainty that all appertain to the neolithic age. From the sur- roundings there can be no doubt that an example in Mr. Spalding's collection belongs to the period, but a remarkable implement from Epping Forest (Loughton parish) may have been fashioned by those Late Celtic men who built the earthwork fort near. It is composed of hornblendic granite, or hornblendic gneiss, 12^ inches long, tapering from a diameter of 2 inches to if inches, and has been pecked and partially ground into shape. It is fully described by Mr. Worthington G. Smith in the Essex Naturalist (1888, vol. ii.), and may be seen in the Forest Museum at Chingford. Occasionally, holed hammerheads, axes, or maces of hard stone are found 3 (figs. 11, 12). A fine hammerhead, discovered at Epping, is illustrated in the Essex Naturalist, viii. 1 64. The discovery of spindle-whorls indicates a knowledge of that primitive method of spinning, while finds of weavers' weights show that weaving was practised, at all events, in the later part of the period. Of neolithic pottery Essex has few or no recorded examples, though doubtless in the recent dark ages of archaeology many an urn may have been smashed by the plough or the spade. 3 Though the advent of a people who understood the art of smelting metals stopped the exclusive use of stone and bone for weapons, it must be remembered that stone implements were used for a long period after
In the shed of one of the present-day workers of gun flints at Brandon a bushel of such wasters was heaped.
Sir John Evans considers that perforated implements belong to the very late neolithic or early bronze ages. An example in Saffron Walden Museum of basaltic stone has a clean-cut hole, apparently bored with a metal tool.
Near Birdbrook two tumuli were levelled to the ground, when, according to the testimony of an agricultural labourer, 'some rubbishy pots were found instead of gold.' The tumuli may have been Romano-British, but their shape was suggestive of the neolithic period.
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