Archaeological Intelligence.
EARLY BRITISH PERIOD.
The Rev. C. W. Bingham, of Bingham's Melcumbe, Blandford, has kindly communicated drawings of various ancient objects discovered in Dorsetshire, and deposited in the county museum at Blandford; amongst these are certain implements of bone, here represented, found near Dorchester, and presented to the Dorset collection by the Rev. Henry Moule, vicar of Fordington. No example, unfortunately, has hitherto been met with in a perfect state: the longest fragment measures about 7 inches in length, and three quarters of an inch in diameter: these rude implements are blunt at one extremity, and perforated like a needle or bodkin at the other, which has led to the conjecture that they may have been intended for some like use, possibly for fabricating fishing nets: their size, and the obtuseness of the point renders it improbable that they should have been used as pins for fastening the garments. In one of the British barrows opened on Alsop Moor, Derbyshire, by Mr. Bateman, as related in his valuable "Vestiges" of the antiquities of that county, three instruments of bone were found, formed of the ribs of some animal, neatly rounded at each end, and much like a mesh-rule for netting, or perhaps, as he supposed, used as modelling tools in the construction of urns[1]. None of these, however, were perforated. Another bone pin found in Dorsetshire, appears to have been used in the dress; the point unluckily is broken; this object is neatly rounded, and is formed with a ring at the other end, to which a lace, or some pendant ornament, might be attached; it closely resembles one found in a tumulus at Lake, North Wilts, given by Sir Richard Hoare, pl. 30. It measures three inches in length, and is stained green, probably from coming in contact with metal. Another, similarly coloured, of flattish form, with an eye at one end, is in a perfect state, as here shewn. With these remains Mr. Bingham noticed some weapons of bronze, consisting of the broken blade of a dagger, found in a tumulus near Came, Dorset, and presented to the museum by the Right Hon. Col. Damer; also two other blades of bronze, found with the bone implements, and presented by Mr. Moule. The former measures nearly nine inches in length, and two inches in breadth, at the end where it was attached to the haft by rivets, the holes for which are seen in the annexed woodcut. This weapon bears some resemblance to the kind of blade considered by Sir Samuel Meyrick to have been a spear-head of the earliest form, not a dagger, and to which he gives the name of gwaew-fon[2]; the next improvement being the form with a socket for the shaft. This example however seems to have been a
