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.

    11/12 (page 9)
    coincidence. It seems, indeed, to indicate the concurrence of the earliest type of finished flint weapon with probably the earliest form of sepulchral tumulus in this part of the world. The more advanced and complex barbed flint arrow-heads, which are not un- frequently found in the circular barrows of the age of bronze and of burning the dead, have never been found in the long barrows. It would be no objection to this view if leaf-shaped arrow-heads were frequently met with in the round barrows. Indeed, we know that the simpler and earlier varieties of all objects of utility fre- quently continue in use long after the invention of the more elaborate and costly forms. As regards the Wiltshire barrows, however, it may be observed that Sir R. C. Iloare nowhere records the discovery of a leaf-shaped flint arrow-head in any of the numerous round barrows which he explored. In the Museum at Stourhead there is only one such among many beautiful ones of the barbed form.1 It is much thicker and clumsier than any of those I have described above; measures 1^ inch in length, and bears the number “ 83.” I have not been able to obtain access to the Catalogue to which, no doubt, this number refers ; but possibly, this is one of the “ two rude arrow-heads of flint found near the head ” of a skeleton, in a circular barrow near Tytherington.2 It may belong to a period when leaf-shaped arrow-heads were no longer used by the chiefs, and when less pains were bestowed on their fabrication. The flint heads of missile weapons, when chipped into form at all, were no doubt of a shape for which, in the first instance, the foliage of some tree or plant supplied the ready type. This shape 1 See the barbed arrow-heads found in round barrows, described by Sir it. C. Hoare, sometimes with the entire skeleton, “Ancient Wilts,” i., p. 211, pi. xxx., p. 239, pi. xxxiv. (in the latter case with a fine bronze dagger blade); and sometimes with burnt bones, “ Ancient Wilts,” i., 183, pi. xxii. In two or three other instances, there is nothing to shew whether the arrow-heads were of the barbed or simple leaf-shape. [Ibid, i., 104, 209, 242.] The examina- tion of the Museum at Stourhead, makes it probable that they were of the barbed form. 2 Ancient Wilts, i., 104.