A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE Tring and Eddlesborough. It is engraved as fig. 315 in Ancient Stone Implements, and here reproduced in fig. 8. A remarkably fine barbed arrowhead with straight sides from Ash- well, found in 1881, is represented in fig. 3O5A of the same book, and here in fig. 7. A smaller example from Ashwell 1 has also been figured. I possess a well-formed example of the same type, but of larger size, found at Hunsdon 2 near Ware. In my collection are also a pointed leaf-shaped arrowhead (like fig. 281) from Pirton, and a tanged arrowhead without barbs, 2^ inches long (like fig. 302), from Royston. Fabricators. These instruments, to which the name of arrow-flakers has also been applied, seem to have been used either in the hand to detach small flakes in the manufacture of arrowheads or other small appliances by means of direct pressure, or else as punches through which an impact could be communicated from a mallet or hammer. Their worn and bruised ends testify to their having performed hard work. A specimen possibly belonging to this class, and found near Baldock, has already been mentioned, and Mr. Worthington Smith has figured a more characteristic specimen of a Neolithic fabricator in his work Man the Primeval Savage. It was found at Caddington, 8 and, in Mr. Smith's opinion, was made from a Palaeolithic flake, the older portions of the surface having a white patina, while the more recent are black, the original colour of the flint. THE BRONZE PERIOD Following on the Neolithic stage of culture, and, indeed, gradually developed from it, comes a period when metal to a great extent super- seded stone as a material for tools and weapons. It seems probable that in some, if indeed not in several, countries of the world copper was the metal first used for such purposes, and that there was in those countries what has been termed a Copper age, as distinct from a Bronze age. There exists, however, in Britain but little evidence of such a period, though in Ireland, according to the views of some antiquaries, it may have been otherwise. At an early stage in the annals of metallurgy it appears to have been discovered that a comparatively slight admixture of tin with copper not only rendered it more fusible and better adapted for being cast in a mould, but that the alloy thus obtained was susceptible of being drawn out to a sharper and more durable edge. Typical bronze consists of nine parts of copper and one of tin, and this alloy received in later days the name of bronze, from the town of Brundusium, or Brundisium (now Brindisi), where a commerce in this metal appears to have been carried on. Analysis of ancient bronze tools and weapons shows a considerable variation in the proportion of tin to copper, and occasionally lead is present in appreciable quantity, even to the extent of 8 per cent. L Trans. Herts Nat. Hist. Soc., viii. pi. xii. I. ' Ancient Stone Implements, 2nd ed. p. 389. * Op. cit. 2nd ed. p. 304, fig. 219. 232
