A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE
flint workers. On Bull Hill, near Bury, one measuring 1½ in. in length and 1 in. across the barb was found in the vicinity of numerous flakes and chips and small shaped flints. Others are recorded from Blackstone Edge, Foxton Edge, Great Winning Gulf, Hunger Hill, Knoll Hill, Middle Hill, and Walsden Moor.
Barbed arrow-heads of similar workmanship have been found but rarely elsewhere. Such cases are, therefore, the more interesting. One of these comes from the hilly ground north of the Ribble, where a barbed flint arrowhead, 1¾ in. in length and 1⅜ in. across the barbs, was picked up on Longridge Fell.
A more notable instance is that found at Wavertree, near Liverpool, a beautiful specimen, which was near to and apparently associated with some cinerary urns and interments of the Bronze Age. The explanation of this as a survival of flint usage among the population during the Bronze Age would be possible; but there is some suggestion of even earlier interments in the vicinity, and while the sum of present evidence indicates only the one moorland region as certainly inhabited during a neolithic age, that was not necessarily the only area so occupied. Even on those moors and uplands, at an average height of 1,300 ft. above the sea, the peat covers this 'neolithic floor' to an average depth of 4 ft., which in some instances is much increased. But on lower ground, in the great excavations made, for instance, for the Ribble Docks and the Manchester Ship Canal, objects of bronze were found even more than 20 ft. below the surface. Hence it is possible that the cultivated tracts below still cover the traces of the earliest population.
In Lancashire over Sands, though not apparently connected in any way with the local settlements on the Pennine Hills of south-east Lancashire, there seems to be indication of neolithic population, particularly in some remains found high up in the indent between the boundaries of Cumberland on the one hand and of Westmorland on the other. Here in the vicinity of lakes and hills and wooded valleys was a region likely to attract early settlement. At Hawkshead and at Torver, on either side of Coniston Water, have been found remains of burial places associated with small objects and implements of flint; in the former case a 'beautifully-worked flint knife.'[1] As before, the presence of stone implements alone is not a sufficient criterion in itself for the determination of the date of the burials; but in the same region other signs of flint-working have been noticed. Southward, at Broughton-in-Furness have been found flakes and cores, scrapers, small arrow-heads, and the general indications of neolithic habitation, which is traced as far to the south as Grange-over-Sands on the east and Kirkby Ireleth on the west.
3. Stone Celts
Among the more interesting stone implements of the county must be placed several great stone celts, of polished surface, two of them found in the south of the county at Newton-le-Willows and Flixton respectively, and other two on the hill slopes of Pendle. A fifth was found just over the Yorkshire border at Saddleworth; while a sixth of analogous character is exhibited in the museum at Preston.[2]
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