stemmed and barbed flint arrow-head like Fig. 327, and a tanged bronze dagger. This bracer has been kindly lent to me by Mr. Cunnington, of Devizes, who discovered it. Another flat wrist-guard from a barrow at Aldbourne,[1] Wilts, has only two out of the four holes finished. A third is incomplete. Dr. Thurnam[2] regards these flat examples as breast-plates or gorgets. One, found with an interment at Calne, Wilts, is in the British Museum. It resembles Fig. 354.
A bracer, formed of a green-coloured stone, was found in a gravel-pit at Lindridge, Worcestershire.[3] It is about 434 inches by 1 inch, and 14 inch thick; but it has been perforated at one end only, with a countersunk hole in each of the two corners, a third hole between them being only partly drilled. The other end is somewhat sharper and undrilled.
In the Christy Collection, is a plate of pale-green stone 412 inches long, with both faces somewhat rounded, one of them polished, and the other, which is rather flatter, in places striated transversely by coarse grinding. At each end are three small countersunk perforations in a line with each other. It was found with two small ornamented urns near Brandon, Suffolk. This bracer has been figured[4] in illustration of some remarks by Sir A. Wollaston Franks.
In a barrow near Sutton,[5] Sir R. Colt Hoare found, under the right hand and close to the breast of a contracted skeleton, a plate of blue-slate, 412 inches long and 234 inches wide, with three small countersunk holes arranged in a triangle at either end. Near it were two boar's tusks and a drinking-cup. It has been thought to be too wide for a wrist-guard. A narrower specimen with six holes at each end is also in the Stourhead Collection.[6]
Another variety has but one hole at each end, and is flat and broadest in the middle. In a cist in a barrow on Mere Down, Wiltshire,[7] were two skeletons, near the left side of the larger of which was a small bronze dagger, with a tang for insertion in the hilt, and a piece of grey slaty stone about 4 inches long, and 118 inches broad in the middle, perforated at the ends. There were also present a drinking-cup, and an instrument of bone, as well as two circular ornaments of gold. A similar thin stone, with a hole at either end, was found with part of a bronze spear and other objects, associated with burnt human remains in a barrow at Bulford, Wilts.[8] One of grey slaty stone with a countersunk hole at each end accompanied an interment at Sittingbourne,[9] Kent, and is now in the British Museum. Another was found at Lancaster.[10] I have another from Sandy, Beds, but cannot say whether it accompanied any interment. Another, 312 inches long, nearly an inch broad in the middle, and only the fifth part of an inch in thickness, was found near the tumulus at Broadford Bay, Isle of Skye,[11] already mentioned, and is shown in- ↑ Arch., vol. lii. p. 56.
- ↑ Arch., vol. xliii. p. 428.
- ↑ Arch. Journ., vol. vi. p. 409. Allies' "Worcestersh.," p. 142. Arch. Journ., vol. xviii. p. 160.
- ↑ Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd S., vol. v. p. 272. Arch., vol. xliii. p. 429, fig. 122.
- ↑ "South Wilts," p. 103. Arch., vol. xliii. p. 429, fig. 121. "Cat. Devizes Mus.," No. 63.
- ↑ "Cat. Devizes Mus.," No. 232.
- ↑ Hoare's "South Wilts," p. 44.
- ↑ Arch. Journ., vol. vi. p. 319.
- ↑ Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd S., vol. x. p. 29. Payne's "Coll. Cant.," p. 12.
- ↑ Arch. Assoc. Journ., vol. xxxiii. p. 126.
- ↑ Wilson, "P. A. of S.," vol. i. p. 223. I am indebted to Messrs. Macmillan & Co. for the use of this cut.
