In 1866 I exhumed from this cemetery with my own hands, when in company with Sir John Lubbock, a socketed celt of iron, with a portion of the haft still in it. The celt is attached to a branch of the main handle, which projects at an angle of about 80°. This has been split off from the handle, only a small part of which remains attached; and it is this portion only of the wood which has been preserved by the infiltration of some salts of iron, while the rest, which was detached from contact with metal, has disappeared. The wood of which the handle was made appears to be fir. On an iron palstave from the same spot it seems to be oak. On two bronze palstaves from France in my own collection, one from Amiens and the other from the Seine, at Paris, the portions of wood which still remain attached to the blades appear also to be oak. In the Hallstatt specimen the inclination of the blade seems to have been towards the hand, and the part of the handle beyond the branch which enters the socket presents some appearance of having been bound with an iron ferrule, probably with the view of preventing it from splitting. The projection is somewhat longer proportionally than that in Fig. 185, and the end appears to have been truncated, and not rounded. There have been in this country a few instances of the discovery of bronze rings in company with palstaves and socketed celts, and these rings may possibly have served a similar purpose, though it must be confessed that such an use is purely conjectural. That shown in Fig. 188 was found in company with a bronze palstave without a loop, but much like Fig. 74, at Winwick,[548] near Warrington, Lancashire, and was kindly lent me by Dr. James Kendrick, who in 1858[549] suggested that it was a “sort of ferrule to put round the handle of the palstave to prevent the wood from splitting when the instrument was struck.” The ornament on the ring, somewhat like the “broad arrow” of modern times, is of much the same character as the shield-like pattern below the stop-ridge of some palstaves. In the British Museum is a stone mould from Northumberland for flat rings, 3 inches in diameter, and for flat celts; but such rings probably served some other purpose. [Illustration: Fig. 188.—Winwick. ½] Another bronze ring, 1⅔ inches in diameter, was found with a socketed celt in the Thames,[550] opposite Somerset House, but here the actual association of the two is doubtful.