apparently made of lignite, were found in an urn with burnt bones and a bronze pin in a barrow near Winterbourn Stoke.[1] One of them was perforated near the edge as if for suspension.
Fig. 385.—Ty Mawr. 11
A flat ring, from one of the ancient circular habitations at Ty Mawr,[2] in Holyhead Island, is shown, full size, in Fig. 385. It was found by the late Hon. W. O. Stanley, F.S.A., who obligingly lent me the cut. It is supposed to have been used as a brooch. There is a slight notch on each side, which might have served to catch the pin.
He subsequently found a ring of the same kind made from a piece of red "Samian" ware. The presumption, therefore, is that the other rings are also Roman or post-Roman. A ring and a pendant of lignite were found with burnt bones in a barrow at Aldbourne,[3] Wilts. The latter resembles a mediæval finger-ring. A flat, oval, pendant,[4] of close-grained stone, was found in another barrow at the same place.
In Scotland, a curved pendant of jet was found at Glenluce.[5] Rings of shale, from Wigtownshire,[6] have been figured, as also a ring of stone from a crannog at Glenluce.[7] A peculiar ring of shale, hollowed externally, was found near West Calder.[8] In Ireland, some rings of shale were found in a cinerary urn at Dundrum,[9] co. Down.
Another form of personal ornament, or, more probably, amulet or charm, consisted of pebbles, usually selected for their beauty or some singularity of appearance. They are very frequently accompaniments of ancient interments, and are sometimes, though rarely, perforated. In a barrow near Winterbourn Stoke,[10] there had been deposited near the body, "a perforated pebble-stone, about 2 inches long, and very neatly polished," which Sir R. Colt Hoare thought might have been suspended as an amulet from the neck.
In another barrow, in the same group,[11] the interment comprised "a pair of petrified fossil cockle-shells, a piece of stalactite, and a hard flat stone of the pebble kind," besides a brass or bronze pin and other objects.
In a third, near Stonehenge,[12] there was at the left hand of the skeleton a dagger of bronze, and close to the head, a curious pebble described as "of the sardonyx kind, striated transversely with alternate spaces that give it the appearance of belts; besides these striæ, it is spotted all over with very small white specks, and, after dipping it in water, it assumes a sea-green colour."
In another barrow near Everley[13] a heap of burnt bones was sur-- ↑ Hoare's "South Wilts," p. 114, pl. xiii.
- ↑ Arch. Journ., vol. xxvi. p. 304.
- ↑ Arch., vol. lii. p. 52.
- ↑ Op. cit., p. 56.
- ↑ Proc. S. A. S., vol. xv. p. 269.
- ↑ Proc. S. A. S., vol. xxiii. p. 219.
- ↑ Proc. S. A. S., vol. xv. p. 268. Munro, "Lake-dw.," p. 50.
- ↑ Proc. S. A. S., vol. ix. p. 538.
- ↑ Wood-Martin, "Rude Stone Mon. of Ireland," 1888, p. 60.
- ↑ Hoare, "South Wilts," p. 124.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Op. cit., p. 165.
- ↑ Op. cit., p. 183, pl. xxii.
