The hair-combs are of bone, and will therefore be described
subsequently when dealing with bonework.
The châtelaines of the Late-Celtic period are pretty little objects of
bronze, generally enamelled. At the top is a loop for suspension; there
is a little rod below, from which are hung tweezers, picks, files, etc.
Specimens have been discovered in the Thirst House Cave,[228] Deepdale,
Derbyshire, and at Canterbury,[229] and Craven Arms,[230] Shropshire.
[226] W. Greenwell’s _British Barrows_, p. 454.
[227] B. Faussett’s _Inventorium Sepulchrale_, p. 30.
[228] _The Reliquary_ for 1897, p. 95.
[229] _Proc. Soc. Ant. Lond._, ser. 2, vol. vi., p. 376.
[230] _Archæologia Cambrensis_, ser. 5, vol. vi., p. 90.
The domestic utensils and cooking appliances of the Late-Celtic
period include wooden tankards and buckets with bronze mountings,
bronze bowls and saucepans, and iron fire-dogs. Some of the riveted
caldrons possibly also belong to this period, but as they cannot be
distinguished from those of the Bronze Age it will be unnecessary to
describe them here.
There is a very perfect wooden tankard mounted with bronze in the Mayer
Museum, Liverpool, from Trawsfynydd,[231] Merionethshire, having a
handle ornamented in the Late-Celtic style with flamboyant tracery,
which might easily be mistaken for Gothic work of the fourteenth
century were it not for the trumpet-shaped expansions which occur
in the details. Handles of similar tankards have been found at
Aylesford,[232] Kent; Elveden,[233] Essex; Okstrow,[234] Orkney; and
Carlingwark Loch,[235] Kirkcudbrightshire.
Late-Celtic wooden buckets with bronze mountings are of the greatest
rarity, so much so that only two are known to exist, one from
Aylesford,[236] Kent, in the British Museum, and the other from
Marlborough,[237] Wilts, in the Devizes Museum. They are both decorated
with repoussé designs representing men, animals, etc., treated much in
the same way as on the Ancient British and Gaulish coins of the same
period.
Bronze bowls have been frequently found on Late-Celtic inhabited sites
and with Late-Celtic burials. A quite plain but extremely well-made
bronze bowl is to be seen in the British Museum side by side with the
beaded torque from Lochar Moss,[238] Dumfriesshire, which accompanied
it. There is another plain bowl in the Gloucester Museum which was
associated with the burial at Birdlip,[239] Gloucestershire, already
described. A bronze bowl ornamented with projecting bosses is amongst
the objects derived from the Glastonbury[240] Marsh Village; and a
bowl in the Dublin Museum from Keshkerrigan,[241] Co. Leitrim, has a
very characteristic Late-Celtic handle in the form of a beast made up
of flamboyant curves. A special type of bronze bowls with zoömorphic
handles and enamelled decorations will be dealt with subsequently.
[231] _Archæologia Cambrensis_, ser. 5, vol. xiii., p. 212.
[232] _Archæologia_, vol. lii., p. 44.
[233] _Ibid._, vol. lii., p. 45.