Other flint pits point to the labours of the industrious miner, and the probable transport of the raw material to distant localities where the prized flint could only be procured from traders, who bartered it for other needful supplies. An interesting group of flint pits of this latter class has been subjected to careful exploration by the Rev. Canon Greenwell, with the ingenious inference already noted, of the traces of a left-handed workman among the flint-miners of the Neolithic age. This was based on the relative position and markings of two picks fashioned from the antlers of the red deer, corresponding to others of the ancient miners’ tools found scattered through the long-deserted shafts and galleries of the flint pits.
The shallow depressions on the surface, which guide the explorer to those shafts of the ancient workmen, are analogous to others that reveal the funnel-shaped excavations hereafter described, on Flint Ridge, the sites of ancient flint pits of the American arrow-makers. In France, Germany, and Switzerland, as well as in Great Britain, many localities are no less familiar, on which the refuse flakes, and chippings of flint and other available material, show where they have been systematically fashioned into implements. The Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland has acquired numerous interesting additions to its collections of objects of this class by encouraging systematic research. From the sands at Colvin and Findhorn, Morayshire; Little Ferry, Sutherlandshire; and from Burghhead, Drainie, and Culbin sands, Elginshire, nearly seven thousand specimens have been recovered, consisting chiefly of flint flakes and chippings; but also including several hundred arrow heads, knives, and scrapers, many of them unfinished or broken.
Thus, in various localities, remote from native sources of flint, a systematic manufacture of implements appears to have been carried on. There can, therefore, be scarcely any hesitation in inferring, from the evidence adduced, first a trade in the raw material brought from the distant localities of the flint mines; and then a local traffic in the manufactured implements, as was undoubtedly the case among the American aborigines at no remote date. This aspect of primitive interchange, both of the raw material and the products of industrial skill, in so far as it is illustrated in the practice of the American Indian tribes, merits the most careful study, as a help to the interpretation of the archæological evidence pertaining to prehistoric times. To the superficial observer, stone is of universal occurrence; and it seems, therefore, needless to inquire where the implement-maker of any Stone age procured the rough block out of which he fashioned his weapon or tool. Only when copper, bronze, and iron superseded the crude material of the Stone age has it been supposed to be needful to determine the sources of supply. But that is a hasty and wholly incorrect surmise. The untutored savage is indeed greatly limited in his choice of materials. We are familiar with the shell-workers of the Caribbees and the Pacific Islands, and the horn and ivory workers of Arctic regions; but where the resources of an ample range could be turned to account, the primitive workman learned at a very early date to select by preference such stones as break with a conchoidal fracture. Only where such could not be had, the most available chance-fractured chip or the apt water-worn stone was turned to account. Rude implements are accordingly met with fashioned of trap, sienite, diorite, granite, and other igneous rocks, as well as from quartzite, agate, jasper, serpentine, and slate. Some of those materials were specially favoured by the neolithic workmen for certain classes of their carefully finished weapons and implements, such as perforated hammers, large axes, gouges, and chisels. But the natural cleavage of the flint, and the sharp edge exposed by every fracture, adapt it for fashioning the smaller knives, lance and arrow heads, in a way no other material except obsidian equals. Hence flint appears to have been no less in request among ancient tool-makers than copper, tin, and iron in the later periods of metallurgic art.
The fact that tin is a metal of rare occurrence, though found in nearly inexhaustible quantities in some regions, has given a peculiar significance to certain historical researches, apart from the special interest involved in the processes of the primitive metallurgist, and the widely diffused traces of workers in bronze. The comparative rarity of flint, and its total absence in many localities, suggest a like inquiry into the probable sources of its supply in regions remote from its native deposits. The flint lance or arrow head, thrown by an enemy, or wrested from the grasp of a vanquished foe, would, as in the case of improved weapons of war in many a later age, first introduce the prized material to the notice of less favoured tribes. As the primitive tool-maker learned by experience the greater adaptability of flint than of most other stones for the manufacture of his weapons and implements, it may be assumed that it became an object of barter in localities remote from those where it abounds; and thus, by its diffusion, it may have constituted a recognised form of pecunia ages before the barter of pastoral tribes gave rise to the peculiar significance attached to that term.
One piece of confirmatory evidence of trade in unwrought flint is the frequent occurrence of numerous flint flakes among the prized gifts deposited with the dead. Canon Greenwell describes, among the contents of a Yorkshire barrow in the parish of Ganton, a deposit of flint flakes and chippings numbering one hundred and eighteen, along with a few finished scrapers and arrow heads;[[24]] and smaller deposits of like kind are repeatedly noted by him. Still more, he describes their occurrence under circumstances which suggest the probability of the scattering of flint flakes, like an offering of current coin, by the mourners, as the primitive grave was covered in and the memorial mound piled over the sacred spot. Flints and potsherds, he says, occur more constantly, and even more abundantly than bones; and this presents to his mind a difficult problem, in considering which he refers to an analogous practice of a very diverse age. The maimed rites at poor Ophelia’s grave are familiar to the reader of Hamlet. The priest replies to the demand of Laertes for more ample ceremony at his sister’s burial:—
But that great command o’ersways the order,
She should in ground unsanctified have lodged
Till the last trumpet; for charitable prayers,
Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her.
The flints and potsherds, Canon Green well remarks, “occur at times in very large quantities, the flints generally in the shape of mere chippings and waste pieces, but often as manufactured articles, such as arrow points, knives, saws, drills and scrapers, etc.” He further notes that they are found distributed throughout the sepulchral mound, “in some instances in such quantities as to suggest the idea that the persons who were engaged in throwing up the barrow, scattered them from time to time during the process.” Assuredly whatever motive actuated those who contributed such objects while the sepulchral mound was in progress of erection, they were not designed as any slight to the manes of the dead. In districts remote from those where the flint abounds, flakes and chips of the prized material must have been in constant demand to replenish the sheaf of arrows, and replace the lost or broken lance, knife, and scraper. The trader would barter the raw material for furs and other equivalents, or the industrious miner would carry off an adequate supply for his own future use. Such small objects, possessing a universally appreciable value, would be as available for current change as the African cowrie, the Ioqua shells of the Pacific coast, or the wampum-beads of the tribes to the east of the Rocky Mountains. If this assumption be correct, the scattering of flint flakes, while the mound was being piled over the grave, was a form of largess not less significant than any later tribute of reverence to the dead.