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 from the Thames (28⅝ inches), with plain blade and thirteen
rivet-holes, has five small rivets still _in situ_.
More commonly the rivet-holes are fewer in number. One (24½ inches)
in Canon Greenwell’s Collection, from Broadway Tower, Broadway,
Worcester, has nine rivet-holes, three in the tang and three in
each wing. One from the Thames at Battersea[1033] (26 inches), and
one from Ebberston, Yorkshire, in the Bateman Collection, have the
rivets arranged in the same manner, as has one which was found near
Whittingham,[1034] Northumberland, with another sword subsequently to
be described, and also with three spear-heads.
[Illustration: Fig. 344.—Newcastle. ¼]
I have one (19 inches) with eight rivet-holes, four in the centre and
two in each wing, found near Cambridge. The holes appear to have been
either made or enlarged by a punch having been driven through them,
the rough burr being left on. On either side of the central ridge of
the blade there is a pair of engraved lines parallel to the edges
and at about ¼ inch distant from them. The base of the blade next
the expansion for the hilt has been neatly serrated or engrailed,
like that of the sword from Barrow, but in this case transversely.
Unfortunately this blade, which is beautifully patinated, has been
broken into three pieces.
French swords of this class, both with a central slot combined with
rivets and with rivets only, are by no means uncommon. Specimens
of each, from the department of Seine et Oise, are figured in the
“Dictionnaire Archéologique de la Gaule.” One with a slot and four
rivets is in the museum at Nantes. Two with seven rivet-holes were
found at St. Nazaire-sur-Loire[1035] (Loire Inférieure).
Seven is, indeed, a more usual number for the rivet-holes than any
of these higher numbers. In Fig. 344 is shown a fine example of a
sword with seven rivet-holes, found in the Tyne, near Newcastle, and
now in the collection of Canon Greenweil, F.R.S. It is 28 inches in
length, and has a bead or rib just within the edges, which is somewhat
exaggerated in the figure. The hilt-plate is provided with slight
flanges for retaining the horn or wood that formed the hilt, and has a
semicircular notch at the base, possibly for the reception of a rivet.
See Fig. 356.
A sword from the Thames near Battersea (28⅝ inches), in the British
Museum, is of nearly the same form as Fig. 344, but the end of the
hilt-plate has no notch, and there is no midrib running down it. The
hilt has been fastened by seven rivets, which fit tightly in the holes
and are nearly all in position. Their ends have conical depressions
in them, as if a punch had been used as a riveting tool. In some the
rivets have been closed by a hollow punch, so as to leave a small stud
projecting in the middle of each surrounded by a deep hollow ring.
Some French swords present the same peculiarity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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