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
The example shown in Fig. 245 is in my own collection. I do not,
however, know in what part of Ireland it was found. The rivet-hole is
at the side, and not on the face, in which, however, there is a slight
flaw, which assumes the appearance of a hole in the figure. In Canon
Greenwell’s collection is a nearly similar specimen (10¾ inches),
found at Balteragh, Co. Derry, with two rivet-holes at the side and
the socket somewhat ornamented by parallel grooves at the mouth and at
the junction with the blade.
[Illustration: Fig. 245.—Ireland. ½]
One of the socketed knives in the Academy Museum at Dublin has two
rivet-holes on the face. Of the others, about two-thirds have a single
rivet-hole on the face, and the other third one on the side.
A long blade, somewhat differing in its details from Fig. 245, was
found between Lurgan and Moira, Co. Down, and, it is stated, in
company with the bronze hilt or pommel shown in Fig. 246. These
objects formed part of the Wilshe Collection, and are now in the
Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. Two objects, somewhat similar to
Fig. 246, found with spear-heads in Cambridgeshire, will subsequently
be mentioned. A piece of bronze of much the same form, found with a
hoard of bronze objects at Marden,[739] in Kent, seems to be a jet or
waste piece from a casting. It has, however, been regarded as part of
a fibula.
The socketed form of knife is hardly known upon the Continent,
though, as will have been observed, it has occasionally been found
in the North of France. Among the fragments of metal forming part of
the deposit of an ancient bronze-founder, and discovered at Dreuil,
near Amiens, I have the fragments of two such knives. I have also a
fine and entire specimen, 9¼ inches long, from the bed of the Seine
at Charenton, near Paris. There is a transverse rib at each end
and in the middle of the socket, through the face of which are two
rivet-holes. A portion of the original wooden handle is still in the
socket, secured in its place by two pins, also apparently of wood,
which pass through the rivet-holes. Another knife (6⅝ inches), like
Fig. 241, but with only one rivet-hole, was also found in the Seine at
Paris, and is now in my collection.
Several socketed knives with curved blades have been found in the
Swiss Lake-dwellings, and one such, found with the sickle already
mentioned, is in the Amiens Museum.
There is another form of socketed knife which it will be well here to
mention. The blade is sharp on both sides, but instead of being flat it
is curved into a semicircle. For a typical example I am obliged to have
recourse to a French specimen.
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