material is greenstone. This weapon was found in the middle of a barrow, or rather cairn, formed of stones, in the parish of Pelynt, Cornwall.[1] It lay among a considerable quantity of black ashes, which had evidently been burnt on the natural surface of the ground at the spot. There was no urn, nor any other work of art in company with it. In another barrow, in the same field, was a bronze dagger with two rivets. I have never seen any other stone hammer of this form found in Britain, nor can I call to mind any such in continental museums. The nearest approach to it is to be observed in some of the Scandinavian weapons, in which the outer side is much more
Fig. 143.—Pelynt, Cornwall 12
rounded than the inner, but in these there is usually an axe-like edge, though very narrow. A shuttle-shaped weapon of porphyritic stone, found in Upper Egypt,[2] is not unlike it, but is equally pointed at both ends. The perforation narrows from 34 inch to 14. The concave side of the Pelynt weapon is so much like that of some of the battle-axes, such as Fig. 137, as to suggest the idea that originally it may have been of this form, but having in some manner been damaged, it has been re-worked into its present exceptional shape.
It will have been observed that instruments, such as most of those engraved, have accompanied interments both by cremation and inhumation, and have, in some cases, been found in association with small daggers, celts, and pins or awls of bronze. Other instances may be adduced from the writings of the late Mr. T. Bateman, though sometimes the exact form of the weapons is not recorded. In the Parcelly Hay Barrow,[3] near Hartington, an axe-head of granite, with a hole for the shaft, and a bronze dagger, with three rivets for fastening the handle, had been buried with a contracted body, above the covering stones of the primary interment.[4] Another, of basalt, apparently like Fig. 126, broken in the middle, is said to have lain between two skeletons at full length, placed side by side in a barrow at Kens Low Farm.[5] On the breast of one lay a circular brooch of copper or bronze. With the axe was a polished porphyry-slate pebble, the ends of which were ground flat.
- ↑ 27th Report Roy. Inst. of Cornw., 1846, p. 35. I am indebted to the Secretaries of this Institution for permission to engrave the specimen. It is also figured in Borlase's "Nænia Cornubiæ," p. 191.
- ↑ Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. xiii. p. 347; xxvi. p. 398.
- ↑ "Ten Years' Diggings," p. 24.
- ↑ "Crania Brit.," vol. ii. xviii. pl. 2.
- ↑ "Vest. Ant. Derb.," p. 29. Smith, "Coll. Ant.," vol. i. pl. xx. 3.
