Among domestic utensils, in addition to pottery, are small cups and boxes made of horn (Nos. 12 and 18). There are also spoons, pins, needles, buttons, awls, knives, flax-combs, etc., of bone. Combs for the hair were generally made of wood in the usual form ([Fig. 11], No. 7). Another most ingenious method was by binding together a series of prepared twigs with their ends folded one way, as seen in [Fig. 185], No. 19.
Wooden dishes cut out of the solid, such as ladles, bowls, tubs, etc., have been found in many stations, but especially at Robenhausen; and there can be no doubt that similar vessels were in general use among the early lake-dwellers.
I have already noticed the finding of fishing-nets at Robenhausen and Vinelz, and a fish-hook ingeniously made from a boar's tusk. Other fish-hooks were made of bone, as seen in the illustrations from Bodmann, Wangen, and Bauschanze.
Nor were these early settlers insensible to the charms of personal ornament. Shells (both recent and fossilised), coloured pebbles, the teeth of carnivorous animals, ornamented pieces of bone and horn, stone and clay beads, and even roundlets of the human skull, were pierced for suspension, and worn either as pendants or necklaces (Nos. 9, 11, and 20 to 24).
The skill displayed in the manufacture of the perforated stone axes and hammers has often excited the astonishment of antiquaries; and many of them thought that it was hardly possible to bore perfectly round or oval holes through such hard materials without the use of metal tools. Yet this was undoubtedly done, as we find not only bored implements, but smoothly sawn portions, in the very earliest stations, as, for example, Schaffis, Moosseedorf, Wangen, Robenhausen, etc. From the former there are in the Berne Museum stone celts with a round hole and one with an oval-shaped perforation. Quite as inexplicable are the numerous fragments of stone, clearly indicating, from the parallel grooving, that they were sawn off. Some of these pieces are by no means small, and such as could be readily accounted for by the use of flint saws. In the Museum of Zürich there is a large water-rolled stone of serpentine, measuring 14 by 9 by 8 inches, which was dredged up at Wollishofen, showing a cut 11 inches long and ⅝ inch deep. One side of the cut was broken off, but the fragment was fortunately also recovered and when made to fit in its place, which it does to a nicety, the maximum breadth of the cut can be readily ascertained to be ⅜ of an inch. The sides of this cut are finely striated with parallel grooves, which are not exactly straight, but bent slightly downwards in the middle. Before the sawing was begun there are clear indications of a superficial groove having been made by chipping, evidently with the intention of guiding the saw in the initiatory stages of the process. What could this saw have been made of? I do not think that with a flint implement this cut could have been made. It is as regular as that from a modern steel instrument. It is now supposed that the sawing of stones was performed with a thin wooden board and some dry sand. The late Dr. Keller experimented with these simple means, and found that they were quite sufficient for the purpose. He also practically proved that in the same way, with a wooden tube set in rapid motion round its axis, he could easily bore a hole in the hardest stone. (B. 336, p. 49.) Anyone visiting the Museum in Zürich may practically test the efficacy of these processes for himself, and the obliging custodian delights in showing the method of working. Soft wood is found to be better than hard, as the former takes up more of the particles of the sand, which act like fine teeth in grinding the stone. That tubes of some kind were used for boring stones by the lake-dwellers is demonstrated by the finding of hundreds of round cores, the result of boring on this principle, as well as, sometimes, implements with the boring begun but incompleted, showing the round core still in the hole as shown in [Fig. 184], No. 6. In the Zürich Museum there is also a staghorn hammer from Robenhausen with a partially bored hole having a core in its centre, thus proving that horns were also manipulated in the same way ([Fig. 24], No. 12).
No problem has for many years puzzled archæologists more than the effort to account for the finding, from time to time in various parts of Europe, of those remarkably elegant implements made from the mineral substance commonly known as jade. Hitherto they have been generally found isolated in the soil or in graves of the Stone Age, such as the dolmens of Brittany. The favourite theory, seeing that no local habitat could be assigned to this mineral, was that these implements were imported by the original neolithic people, who were supposed to have migrated westwards from the plains of Northern India. The discovery of a large number of celts and small chisels in the lake-dwellings, together with a few other objects made of nephrite, jadeite, and chloromelanite, has reopened the problem as to their origin, with the result, however, of making the controversial flame burn brisker than ever. Independent of the lake-dwelling finds, the number of jade objects now known in Europe may be roughly stated at 200, about the half of which come from some 44 departments of France. Of the remaining 100 about 80 are from Western Germany, the rest being assigned to various localities in Italy,[128] Austria, and Greece. According to the opinions of competent mineralogists the vast majority of those from Western Europe are made of jadeite and chloromelanite, the number made of the former being slightly in excess of the latter. In the French group there is only one of nephrite, from the vicinity of Rheims, and in the German group three or four, found in Baden and Bavaria. Mr. A. B. Meyer states that, with the exception of one from Posen, all the German examples were found to the west of the Elbe.
In appearance, nephrite, jadeite, and chloromelanite closely resemble each other, and, owing to considerable variations in the colour to which they are all more or less liable, it is difficult to distinguish them by the unaided eye. Generally speaking nephrite has a somewhat soapy feel, with a lighter and more transparent tint of green than jadeite, while chloromelanite is darker and less transparent than either. According to Meyer their specific gravity is:—nephrite 2·9 to 3·2, jadeite 3·3, and chloromelanite 3·4 to 3·6. From the large number of implements, especially hatchets, small chisels, and sometimes knives ([Fig. 185], No. 28)—rarely arrow-points and ornaments—found in almost all the lake-dwelling stations of the Stone Age, it would appear that they were greatly admired and much sought after by the inhabitants of these settlements. Dr. Gross thinks they were in greatest abundance in those stations which flourished in the period immediately preceding that of the introduction of metals, and that after this event they disappear altogether. (B. 392, p. 10.)
From Lake Constance the number of jade implements now considerably exceeds 1,000, as may be verified by an inspection of the museums in the neighbourhood. One station alone, Maurach, has supplied 349 tolerably well, and 141 badly, made implements, and no less than 154 chips and sawn portions varying from the size of a finger-nail to a few inches. (B. 378, p. 78.) Similar chips have also been occasionally met with in other stations. This at once settles one important point, viz. that the lake-dwellers were in actual possession of the raw material, which they worked on the spot. Although most of the settlements in Lake Constance have yielded more or less specimens, there is none that even approaches Maurach in point of numbers, the next highest being Unter-Uhldingen, Immenstadt, and Sipplingen, from each of which two or three score have been collected. In moving eastwards towards the Danubian valley they become much rarer. Thus Schussenried has yielded only one (jadeite), Olzenreuthe seven (all nephrite), Starnbergersee two (nephrite), Laibach one (nephrite). Only one (jadeite) is recorded from the Mondsee, and none from the Attersee. According to Fischer[129] 97 per cent. of the implements from Lake Constance are of nephrite, while the other three per cent. are nearly equally divided between jadeite and chloromelanite. In the Zürich Museum he found 28 implements of nephrite, one of jadeite, and six of chloromelanite. Of the former, 22 are from Meilen and four from Robenhausen. Out of 295 in the museums of Berne (which came from the lakes of Neuchâtel, Bienne, Morat, Inkwyl, and Moosseedorfsee), 118 are of nephrite, 124 of jadeite, and 53 of chloromelanite. From these approximate calculations we see that while nephrite was greatly in excess of jadeite in the settlements of Lake Constance and its neighbourhood, this inequality becomes gradually removed as we move westwards, till we come to France, where their relative frequency becomes actually reversed. Chloromelanite, on the other hand, though as a whole much rarer than either nephrite or jadeite, seems to have been more evenly distributed. Roundly speaking, we have in all Europe between 300 and 400 worked objects of jadeite, and about 200 of chloromelanite, while those of nephrite amount to twice these numbers combined.
These facts are very suggestive, and undoubtedly give some support to the theory that these minerals were found by the lake-dwellers somewhere in their own neighbourhood. But notwithstanding the most careful searching on the part of geologists and mineralogists not a particle of any of them has yet been found in situ in any part of Switzerland. As an inducement to country people to be on the look-out a reward of 200 francs was offered a few years ago[130] to anyone who could produce a bit of nephrite, found in situ, of the size of a man's fist, but as far as I know, the reward still lies unclaimed.
Three isolated portions have been found in Germany, one in the alluvial sands of Potsdam, another in the vicinity of Meersburg, and a third in the vicinity of Leipzig.[131] Also in somewhat similar circumstances two portions have been recorded from Styria.[132] It is said to have been found in situ in small quantities in the rocks of Silesia, as recorded by H. Traube, of Breslau, in an article entitled "Über den Nephrit von Jordansmühl in Schlesien."[133] Mr. Roediger directs attention (by a note in Antiqua, 1884, p. 150) to the fact that it was stated to have been found in the Canton Freiburg, in a work published in 1834. A few chips were found in the prehistoric caves at Mentone associated with worked flints.[134]