Proceedings at the Meetings of the Archaeological Institute.
January 5, 1849.
Mr. S. P. Pratt laid before the meeting a singular bronze celt, found, as he stated, in ancient workings for coal, supposed to have been known to the Romans, in Andalusia. Eighteen or twenty implements of the kind had been discovered, more than 150 yards from the commencement of the working, and one, as he had been assured, firmly attached to a wooden handle by means of thongs, interlaced and held by notches in the wood. The people of the country said that such tools were frequently found in old workings, and supposed them to have been used for picking out the strata of coal. The celt had a loop or ear on each side, one being now broken: it is of more taper form than celts usually found in the British islands.[1] Length 7 inches, breadth of the cutting edge 134 inch. On the flat face, near the edge, is an ornament in relief, in form of a trident (?). A similar symbol occurs on some coins of Epirus. Compare the coin of Ventippo, given in Mr. Akerman's "Ancient Coins of Cities and Princes." Pl. VII., No. I. Mr. Pratt stated that the Phœnicians had worked mines in the Asturias, in which ancient objects, bearing Phœnician characters similar to those on the coins of Gades, had been found, and are now preserved at Madrid. A Spanish celt, resembling Mr. Pratt's, but without any symbol, and with a single side-loop, is in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries. It was found on a mountain between Llamas del Mauro and Carcalai, 12 leagues south of Oviedo.
The Hon. Richard Neville, F.S.A., communicated notices of his recent discoveries of Roman remains at Chesterford and Ickleton, on the borders of Cambridgeshire and Essex. They were accompanied by ground-plans, and the exhibition of an interesting collection of antiquities found amongst the foundations of buildings lately explored, consisting of ornaments of bone and metal, fictile vases of various kinds of ware, and other relics. Mr. Neville has liberally presented to the Institute woodcut representations of the most interesting of these remains, which will be found with a detailed account of his late researches, in another part of this Journal.
A memoir was read, descriptive of a very singular tumular cemetery, supposed to be of the Saxon period, near York, by Dr. Thurnam, of that city, illustrated by a large section and numerous drawings.[2]
Mr. William T. Collings communicated drawings of a remarkable silver fibula, and of other analogous ornaments, with the following notices. This fibula, now in the possession of Charles Carus Wilson, Esq., was ploughed up near Casterton, about a mile from Kirby Lonsdale, Westmorland, and three miles from the old Roman station at Burrow. Several other relics have been found in the same field at various times. This was discovered in 1840; about the same time the plough turned up a stone in
- ↑ It has a stop-ridge. See Mr. Du Noyer's classification, Archaeol. Journal, vol. iv. p. 4, Fig. D. The Dean of Westminster observed that it was evidently intended to be used as a cutting chisel, the edge held in a perpendicular, not an horizontal direction. A representation of this interesting celt will be given on a future occasion.
- ↑ The first portion of the memoir will be found in this number of the Journal, p. 27.
