Page:VCH Warwickshire 1.djvu/263

POTTERY FOUND IN A SEPULCHRAL BARROW NEAR OLDBURV CAMP, WARWICKSHIRE. EARLY MAN (2) A flat celt, 4^ inches long, with expanding edge and sharpened at each end. (3) A fine palstave, 5! inches long, with one loop and well de- veloped stop-ridge. (4) A palstave, 4^ inches long, broken at the smaller end. (5) A palstave, 4 inches long, similarly broken. (6) A palstave, inches long, similarly broken. (7) A small socketed celt, 2 inches long, with one loop. (8) A celt-shaped piece of flat bronze, 4! inches long, probably a modern forgery. The series of three palstaves (4, 5 and 6), all broken obliquely at the top end, is of great interest on account of the evidence it affords of the uses to which bronze celts and palstaves were put. Cer- tain writers upon the question have assumed, perhaps too hastily, that they were all for military purposes. Dugdale, as we have seen, calls them battle-axes ; but a careful ex- amination of many specimens has led the writer to the opinion that many were car- penters' tools, used for hewing timber and for cleaving and splitting wood much in the same way as the rural maker of sheep-gates works. Of the numerous examples of bronze celts and palstaves now pre- served in the Rugby School Museum none apparently were procured from Warwickshire. A considerable advance in various branches of civilization is indi- cated by the remains of the bronze age. The use of metal enabled the husbandman to reap his corn by means of metal sickles, several of which have been found in England. Oxen were used for ploughing, and several plants such as beans and oats, not hitherto known, were cultivated. The lathe was used for turning stone objects, and pottery of an im- proved kind and ornamented by a series of impressed lines arranged in zig-zag fashion was made. The graves or sepulchral barrows of the bronze age were circular in plan, and used for the interment of the cremated remains of only one person. The earlier long barrows of the neolithic age were sometimes furnished with a central chamber or cist of stone, and generally more than one interment was made in each barrow. 219 POTTERY FOUND IN A SEPULCHRAL BARROW AT BRANDON, WARWICKSHIRE.