On four leaf and lozenge-shaped flint javelin-heads, from an oval barrow near Stonehenge : and on the leaf-shaped type of flint arrow-head, and its connection with long barrows / by John Thurnam.

  • Thurnam, John, 1810-1873.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On four leaf and lozenge-shaped flint javelin-heads, from an oval barrow near Stonehenge : and on the leaf-shaped type of flint arrow-head, and its connection with long barrows / by John Thurnam. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    flake, but is elaborately chipped all over both surfaces.” From another cist in the same barrow, “two very beautiful leaf-shaped arrow-heads of white flint ” were obtained.1 Another instance, also recorded by Mr. Bateman, is from a mound described as a lontr harrow, in Yorkshire, near Ileslerton-on-the- Wolds, in the East Riding. Near the centre, was a pile of about fifteen skeletons, with the skull of one of which “was a small and neat flint arrow-head,” which, from a sketch by Mr. LI. Jewitt, I find is leaf-shaped. It is rather broader in proportion than those from the Wiltshire and Gloucestershire long-barrows, from which it likewise differs in retaining both its points. It measures 110 of an inch in length, by in breadth.2 During the summer of I860, I had an opportunity of opening a long barrow of great extent on Fyfield Hill, near Pewsey, Wilt- shire, locally known as “the Giant’s Grave.” It is not less than 315 feet in length, by 70 feet in width at the east, and 50 feet at the west, and is about 7 feet high at the east end. A moderately wide trench runs along each side, but is not continued round the ends of the barrow. On the natural level, near the east end, a heap of three or four skeletons was found, the only perfect skull from which is of a remarkably long and narrow form, the breadth being as '69 to the length taken as LOO. One of the other skulls had been forcibly cleft before burial. The only object of antiquity with the skeletons was a finely-chipped arrow-head of flint, of a beautiful leaf-shape, and weighing forty-three grains : the point of its more tapering extremity was broken off when found, as represented in the woodcut. It has measured 2 inches in length, by ^ inch in breadth; or 51 by 23 millimetres. The repeated discovery of simple leaf-shaped flint arrow-heads in the long barrows, must, I think, be regarded as something more than a Leaf - shaped Arrow- head of Flint, from Long Barrow at Fyfield, Wilts. (Actual size.) 1 Ten Years’ Diggings, pp. 95, 96 2 Ibid, pp. 230, 276. Comp. p. 227.