Of all stone implements the most curious are the tiny objects which are known as ‘pygmy flints’, and which have been found not only in certain parts of Britain[296] and Ireland,[297] but also in France, Belgium, Spain, North Africa and Egypt, Palestine and India. They are all made of minute flakes; and in one of our collections the marks of working could not be detected without the aid of a microscope, while sixty-four specimens, many of which were no more than a quarter of an inch long, weighed less than half an ounce. Numerous guesses, which need not be repeated, have been made as to their use. Everywhere their forms are identical; and, partly for this reason, partly because in many places no other implements were associated with them, it has been supposed by lovers of the marvellous that they were the work of a peculiar race.[298] If the latter reason were valid, we should be compelled to assume that the Lilliputians had sent out many colonies from the land where Gulliver found them. But every archaeologist knows that tools and other articles of identical form are to be found in divers continents; and pygmy flints may often have lain with others and have escaped observation.
Specialization of industries.
A survey of the implements and other relics arranged in a representative collection teaches us that men had already learned the necessity of a division of labour. Some clans who used flint implements could only have obtained them by barter. Even in the great factories of Grime’s Graves and Cissbury the miners were evidently distinct from the cutlers, as were both from the herdsmen. But in other settlements, where mining and cutlery were apparently not predominant industries, implements have been found of such perfect finish that their manufacture would seem to have been the special or the sole occupation of skilled members of the community.[299]
A lost art.
But there was one thing which the forerunner of neolithic man had done, and which he could not do. Among his relics we may look in vain for the carved dagger-handles, the engraved antlers, and the other works of art of the palaeolithic caves. Except in Grime’s Graves, not a single attempt to portray the human figure, or animal, or plant has ever been found among the deposits of the Neolithic Age. If the artists of Derbyshire and Aquitaine had left descendants, perhaps they were massacred or enslaved, perhaps their individuality withered under oppression: whatever may have been the cause, the old creative art was dead.[300]
Dwellings.
Provided with their tools, the neolithic herdsmen were able to construct dwellings which, humble as they were, must have been comfortable in comparison with the shelters that had satisfied the hunters of the older time. Unfortunately, however, the evidence relating to the domestic life of the neolithic people is far less complete than that which has been preserved in regard to their Swiss contemporaries. In that age and for many centuries after it had come to an end the inhabitants of northern and western Europe, like the ancient Romans whom Horace[301] eulogized, were content to live in habitations which were small and mean, while, under the influence of superstitious terror as much as of reverence, they constructed the mansions of their dead chieftains on a magnificent scale. Thus, while neolithic sepulchres are still conspicuous upon the western hills, few buildings have left traces which can be referred with absolute certainty to the same period.[302] Many of the ‘hut-circles’ and pit-dwellings which have been excavated contain no trace of metal; but it is generally impossible, in any given instance, to dismiss all doubts as to their antiquity when we find others, precisely similar, which were certainly occupied, if not built, by people who used implements of bronze. Still it is not credible that such dwellings were constructed for the first time after the introduction of metal working; and it is reasonable to believe that they were common before the earliest bronze implement was imported into Britain. Indeed a pit-dwelling has been found at the eastern end of a long barrow near the village of Hanging Grimston on the Yorkshire Wolds; and, as it was proved by excavation to be older than the barrow,[303] it must have been dug in the Neolithic Age. There were of course villages of some sort at Cissbury and Grime’s Graves; and at Grovehurst, near Sittingbourne, are the remains of huts which were occupied by implement-makers.[304] A group of pits on the sheltered southern slope of Croham Hurst, about a mile south of Croydon, the fields near which are thickly strewn with flint flakes, probably formed the winter abode of a small community:[305] on Hayes Common a village has been explored, comprising about one hundred and sixty pits, the period of which was determined by the discovery of a neolithic workshop, on the floor of a pit of identical form, at Millfield in the immediate neighbourhood; and the neolithic age of a settlement at West Wickham was as clearly proved by the nature of the implements.[306] At these places, at Weybourne in Norfolk, on the Hampshire Downs, and elsewhere, the sites of such dwellings are indicated by circular depressions, ranging in diameter from six to thirty feet and from two to six feet deep, which, though they generally occur in groups, are sometimes isolated. Each is surrounded by a bank, formed of the excavated earth, in which the entrance is marked by a gap. The bank was in certain cases prevented from falling in by a stone circle; and upon it was reared a hut, sometimes perhaps formed of stones, but more often of interlaced boughs, while the roof, in which a hole was left for the escape of smoke, was probably thatched with fern or heather or turf, and, if it happened to be large, supported by a pole or the trunk of a tree, the position of which seems to be indicated by a mound in the centre of the pit.[307] A cluster of huts was apparently sometimes surrounded by an entrenchment, which protected the inhabitants and their cattle from night attacks.[308] Rude as these structures were, they fulfilled their purpose. The soil on which they were built was generally dry: the pit not only ensured warmth but also enabled the roof to be carried to a sufficient height: the bank, by throwing off the rain, kept the interior dry; and while in certain cases the remains of a hearth made of flints are found in the centre, in others it would seem that cooking was performed outside. Thus one group of pits on Hayes Common, the dimensions of which are within the ordinary range, is associated with smaller depressions, which apparently contained cooking-hearths.[309] A small fire might have been safely lighted inside the hut to warm the inmates; but a large one, such as would have been necessary for cooking a joint or an entire hare or sucking-pig, might have ignited the inflammable roof.[310]
A remarkable group of pits has recently been excavated in Wigtownshire.[311] Piles had been driven into them to support a wooden floor, the object of which was doubtless to keep them dry; and the marks on the piles seemed to their discoverer to show that they had been cut with stone hatchets.[312]
Three entirely subterranean chambers, of a kind which has been met with nowhere else in the British Isles, have lately been discovered by navvies who were digging a sewer-trench at Waddon, near Croydon. They were about twelve feet in diameter and seven feet high; and although they contained fragments of Romano-British pottery, the flint flakes and blocks which lay upon the floors were assigned by the experienced antiquary who explored them[313] to the Age of Stone. While he was impressed by their exact resemblance to certain Portuguese neolithic chambers which were used for burial,[314] he suggested that they might also have served as shelters in times of excessive heat or cold.
Unlike their Swiss contemporaries, who built their huts on platforms, supported by piles driven into the beds of lakes, the neolithic Britons lived mainly if not exclusively on land. Lake-dwellings indeed abound in the British Isles; but exploration shows that almost all were erected in the Late Celtic Period; and the only one in Britain which can with any show of reason be referred to the Age of Stone is in Holderness, which, before it was drained, was covered with marshes and shallow meres. One of a group of five, called the West Furze dwelling, contained a large number of flint flakes: but a bronze spear-head was also found in it; and the evidence is not sufficient to show that it was built in a pre-metallic period.[315]