Flint Industries in North Cornwall

Extract

A paper in Vol. I., Part III., of the “Proceedings,” on “Pygmy Implements from Cornwall,” by E. L. Arnold, has spurred me on to place on record my discoveries on the same spot.

During the years 1898 to 1903 I paid numerous visits to the western side of Trevose Head, Booby Bay, Constantine Island, and also to the Late Celtic Cemetery at Harlyn Bay, one mite N.E. Flint flakes and cores or cones lay on the surface of the ground, at the cliff edge, all the way from Dinas Head (the western-most corner of the Trevose promontory, and a splendid look-out place), down to Booby Bay and Constantine Island. They had evidently once been covered with soil and are now exposed by the wastage thereof near the cliff edge. Some I dug out from the banks of tiny runlets formed after heavy rain.

Mr. Arnold says that “the artificers appear to have turned out immense numbers of barbs and arrow-points, but practically nothing else.” Like him, I found many hundreds of chipped flints, leaving quantities of them where I found them, after examination. But I found no true arrow-head. None of the pygmy tools were of especial smallness, but some were straight and sharply pointed, and I suggested, in “Man,” Vol. VII., No. 9, 83, their possible use as barbs to harpoons and also as fish hooks.

One flake, however, has been cleverly snicked from the base to half-way up its length, on each side, so as to leave two projecting shoulders as barbs, and a tang. It is carefully retouched round the edges on one face only. It has curved edges and a narrow, sharp chisel end.