A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE
of more elaborate workmanship, such as delicate arrow-heads with barbs, it is plain that these are merely the ruder implements of man who had already attained the neolithic culture. This in itself would not be evidence of a stone age, purely defined, for the use of stone for implements continued down to historic times, and some of the best products of the art of stone-working were fashioned during the Bronze Age which succeeded; but in regard to a variety of these, which are both very numerous and confined to a particular region, there is evidence in the absence of metal among the stone, as well as the intrinsic testimony of the finds themselves, that they were produced by a Stone-Age people settled in the locality. The region indicated is the range of moorland that forms the south-eastern boundary of the county and separates it from Yorkshire; and the objects found freely on hilltops denuded by the wind, and in other places from 4 to 5 (sometimes 10) ft. below the surface, are the cores of flint, the chippings and flakes, 'borers and gravers,' scrapers and small hammer-stones, which the flint worker of the neolithic age lost or rejected. In one place, on March Hill, have been found 'innumerable minute chippings of flint,' and on the same hill a 'half-made arrow-head.'
On Knoll Hill again was found a core amidst numerous chippings, one of which, identified by its patina, fitted exactly in the place whence it had been struck. It is interesting to read the account of what students of these remains see of the life of neolithic man himself in the traces of his handiwork. 'He was undoubtedly a hunter, from the arrow-heads and spearheads he has left behind him. He clothed himself in skins, for we find the flaying knives which he used to separate the skin from the carcase, the scrapers with which he removed the fat and hair from the hides. We also find the perforators used for boring the eyes in his bone needles with which he made his clothes. We find his graving tools for ornament or possibly tattooing, and we find the reddle and graphite which he used for personal adornment. We have found his hearth or dwelling-place, a rubble of millstone grit; the ruins of rude sandstone shelters; the iron pyrites and the hard hæmatite by which he got his light, and the charcoal, the remains of his long extinct fire.'[1]
The burial places of these people, which are usually the more sure indication, are in this case less easy to identify from the accounts which have been published. Of the many burial mounds which are found along the same range of hills it seems probable that the majority at least belong to a later age.
The area through which these remains are found is fairly extensive. The town of Rochdale is about its centre. Southward it reaches by the heights above Oldham almost to Ashton-under-Lyne. Westward it is bounded only by the edge of the moorland which spreads out beyond Bury towards Bolton-le-Moors. Northwards it follows the high crest of the Pennine range as far as Burnley, while towards the east it passes beyond the Yorkshire border. The small objects themselves are so numerous that it is not possible to describe them in detail in the manner subsequently adopted for the classes of larger antiquities. A few types of worked flints are
- ↑ Vid. Trans. Rochdale Lit. and Sci. Soc. 1897. 'Flint Implements,' W. H. Sutcliffe; also various contributions by Dr. Colley March.
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