The Ancient Bronze Implements, Weapons, and Ornaments, of Great Britain and Ireland.Evans, John
History
The Ancient Bronze Implements, Weapons, and Ornaments, of Great Britain and Ireland.
Evans, John
Bronze age -- Great Britain; Bronze age -- Ireland; Great Britain -- Antiquities
One of the first type, from the Golden barrow at Upton Lovel, is
engraved by Hoare,[666] and is shown in Fig. 223. With it were two
cups, a necklace of amber beads, and a small bronze dagger. It is
almost the longest of those found by Sir R. Colt Hoare, which were
upwards of thirty in number. The only longer specimen was found in a
barrow near Lake,[667] and there also some beads and a bronze dagger
accompanied the interment. It is considerably thicker than Fig. 223,
and the tang for insertion in the handle is broader and flatter. A
smaller awl of the same character was found in a barrow on Upton Lovel
Down,[668] opened by Mr. Cunnington. In this instance there were two
interments in the same grave, and several flint celts and a perforated
stone battle-axe were found, as well as numerous instruments of bone,
and a necklace of beads of jet or lignite.
[Illustration: Fig. 223. Upton Lovel. 1/1]
[Illustration: Fig. 224. Thorndon. ½]
[Illustration: Fig. 225. Butterwick. 1/1]
An awl of this kind (3-1/10 inches) found, with a spear-head,
hammer, knife, and gouge of bronze, at Thorndon, Suffolk,[669] most of
them already described, is now in the British Museum, and is shown in
Fig. 224.
Several such instruments, some of them not more than an inch in
length, were found by Canon Greenwell[670] in his exploration of
the Yorkshire barrows. In nine cases awls or prickers accompanied
interments of unburnt bodies, and in three cases they were found among
burnt bones. In most instances instruments of flint were found with
them. An aged woman in a barrow on Langton Wold[671] had three bronze
awls or prickers, as well as an assemblage of bone instruments, animal
teeth, marine shells, and other miscellaneous property, buried with
her. Dr. Thurnam regarded these as drills used with a bow, but I think
such an use is doubtful. Some of the awls from the Yorkshire barrows,
instead of being flattened at one end, are drawn down to a point at
both ends, leaving the middle of larger diameter so as to form a kind
of shoulder. These, I presume, are included under Dr. Thurnam’s Type
II. Sometimes this central part of the blade is square and sometimes
the tang is square, like that described by Stukeley[672] from a barrow
near Stonehenge as “a sharp bodkin round at one end, square at the
other where it went into a handle.”
An awl, square at the centre, and round at each end in section, is
shown in Fig. 225. It was found by Canon Greenwell in a barrow at
Butterwick, Yorkshire, in company with the celt (Fig. 2), and other
objects. The point has unfortunately been broken off.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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