BRACERS, AND ARTICLES OF BONE.
Another object in stone, not unfrequently found in graves, and of which
the use is now comparatively certain, is a rectangular plate usually
round on one face, and hollow on the other, with perforations at either
end. These plates are commonly formed of a close-grained green chlorite
slate, are very neatly finished, and vary considerably in length and
proportions.
[Illustration: Fig. 353.—Isle of Skye. 1∕2]
* * * * *
The specimen shown in Fig. 353 is in the National Museum at Edinburgh,
and has already been engraved by Sir D. Wilson,[2026] and roughly
figured in the _Wiltshire Archæological Magazine_. It was found
alongside of a human skeleton, in a rudely-vaulted chamber in a large
tumulus on the shore of Broadford Bay, Isle of Skye. It is formed of
pale-green stone polished, and has at one end an ornamented border
of slightly indented ovals. In the same Museum[2027] is another of
longer proportions, being 4 1∕2 inches by 1 1∕4 inches, formed of
fine-grained greenish-coloured stone, and having at each corner a small
perforation. It was found, together with an urn and the remains of a
skeleton, in a short cist on the farm of Fyrish, Evantown, Ross-shire.
It is shown in Fig. 354. There is also, in the same Museum, a fragment
of a flatter specimen formed of indurated clay-slate of a lightish
green colour, perforated at one end with three small holes. It was
found in a stone circle called “The Standing Stones of Rayne.”[2028]
Another example was found in a grave at Dalmore,[2029] Ross-shire. It
is, however, imperfect. In the Arbuthnot Museum, Peterhead, is another
object of this class, 4 1∕4 inches long, with a hole at each corner,
and slightly rounded on one face and hollow on the other. It was found
at Cruden,[2030] Aberdeenshire, |426| in a cist surmounted by a small
tumulus. In the cist, were the skeletons of an adult and a youth, as
well as portions of that of a dog. They were accompanied by two rude
urns, several flint arrow-heads, and two flint knives.
The earliest recorded discovery of these objects in England is that
which has already been mentioned as having taken place at Tring Grove,
Herts, about 1763.[2031] In this case, a skeleton was found in sinking
a ditch in level ground; between the legs were some flint arrow-heads,
and at the feet “some small slender stones, polished, and of a greenish
cast; convex on one side, and concave on the other; the larger were
four inches long and one broad; the smaller not quite four inches long
nor one inch broad, somewhat narrower in the middle, with two holes at
both ends.” The interment was accompanied by two urns, and a ring of
jet, perforated for suspension at the edge. To judge from the plate and
description, the longer of the “slender stones” had not been bored with
holes at either end.
[Illustration: Fig. 354.—Evantown. 1∕2]
[Illustration: Fig. 355.—Devizes. 1∕2]
An oblong piece of chlorite slate, 5 3∕8 inches long, 1 3∕4 inches
broad, and 1∕4 inch thick, rounded on one face and hollowed on the
other, was found in a gravel-pit at Aldington, Worcestershire.[2032] It
has four holes through it, one at each corner, just large enough on the
rounded face to allow a fine ligament to pass through, and countersunk
on the other face. The plate of chlorite slate shown in Fig. 355 is
flat, instead of hollowed, and the holes at the corners are countersunk
on both faces. It was found in a barrow on Roundway Hill,[2033] near
Devizes, in front of the breast of a skeleton, between the bones of the
left forearm, and had, when found, a small fragment of bronze, possibly
the tang of a knife, much corroded, adhering to it. In the same barrow
was a |427| 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,[2034] Wilts, has only two out of the four
holes finished. A third is incomplete. Dr. Thurnam[2035] regards those
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.[2036] It is about 4 3∕4 inches by 1 inch,
and 1∕4 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 4 1∕2 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[2037] in
illustration of some remarks by Sir A. Wollaston Franks.
In a barrow near Sutton,[2038] Sir R. Colt Hoare found, under the right
hand and close to the breast of a contracted skeleton, a plate of
blue slate, 4 1∕2 inches long and 2 3∕4 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.[2039]
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,[2040]
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 1 1∕8 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.[2041] One of grey slaty stone
with a countersunk hole at each end accompanied an interment at
Sittingbourne,[2042] Kent, and is now in the British Museum. Another
was found at Lancaster.[2043] I have another from Sandy, Beds, but
cannot say whether it accompanied any interment. Another, 3 1∕2 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,[2044] already mentioned, and is shown in |428| Fig. 356. One
(3 1∕4 inches) was found in Mull,[2045] two (3 3∕8 and 3 inches) came
from Fyvie and Ballogie,[2046] Aberdeenshire, and one (2 1∕4 inches)
from Glenluce.[2047] Another (3 1∕2 inches) in the Museum at Edinburgh
came from the North of Ireland.[2048]
[Illustration: Fig. 356.—Isle of Skye. 1∕2]
A few specimens of the same character as Figs. 353 and 356 have been
found in Ireland. In that country, also, the same slaty material was
used, sometimes green, and sometimes red in colour.
The curious plate of fine soft sandstone, 4 inches long and perforated
at each end, found in the Genista Cave, at Gibraltar,[2049] may
possibly belong to this class, but it is by no means certain. Some
objects of the same kind, with a hole at each end, have been found in
the Côtes du Nord.[2050] France. Some early Spanish[2051] whetstones
have one and even two perforations at each end.
* * * * *
The material of which this class of objects is formed is not
exclusively stone. A plate of bone, now in the Devizes Museum, about
3 1∕4 inches by 3∕4 inch, bored through at each end from the sides
and back, so as not to interfere with the face, was found with a
small bronze celt mounted as a chisel in stag’s horn, and with bone
pins and two whetstones, in a barrow near Everley.[2052] A fragment
of another bracer made of bone was found at Scratchbury Camp, Wilts.
It is doubtful whether the richly-ornamented flat plate of gold, with
a hole at each corner, found with a bronze dagger in a barrow[2053]
at Upton Lovel, was destined for the same purpose. It led Sir R. C.
Hoare, however, to regard the slate plate from the barrow near Sutton
as a mere ornament, “an humble imitation of the golden plate found at
Upton Lovel.” Others have regarded these stone plates as amulets or
charms;[2054] as destined to be affixed to the middle of a bow;[2055]
or as personal decorations.[2056] Wilson has called attention to
their similarity to the perforated plates of stone, of which such
numerous varieties are found in North America.[2057] The holes in
these, however, are very rarely more than two in number, and sometimes
only one, and these almost always near the middle of the stone; their
purpose possibly being to serve as draw-holes for equalizing the size
of cords, in the same manner as twine is |429| polished and rendered
uniform in size, by being drawn through a circular hole by European
manufacturers at the present day. They may, however, have served as
ornaments, or even in some cases as wrist-guards. One engraved by
Squier[2058] is much like Fig. 356, but thinner, and with the holes
rather farther from the ends. Schoolcraft,[2059] suggests their
employment to hold the strands or plies apart, in the process of twine
or rope making.
The Rev. Canon Ingram, F.G.S.,[2060] was the first to suggest that
these British plates were bracers or guards, to protect the arm of
the wearer against the blow of the string in shooting with the bow,
like those in use by archers at the present day. In corroboration of
this view, he cites the position of the plate in the Roundway barrow,
between the bones of the left forearm, and the fact of so many of them
being hollowed in such a manner as to fit the arm; while he argues
that the similarity in the character and position of the perforations,
in the hollowed and flat varieties, affords presumptive evidence
that the use of both kinds of tablets was the same. I am inclined to
adopt Canon Ingram’s view, though, unless there was some error in
observation, plates of this kind have been occasionally found on the
right arm. In a barrow at Kelleythorpe, near Driffield,[2061] examined
by the late Lord Londesborough in 1851, was a chamber containing a
contracted skeleton, the bones of the right arm of which “were laid in
a very singular and beautiful armlet, made of some large animal’s bone”
(actually of stone),[2062] “about 6 inches long, and the extremities,
which were a little broader than the middle, neatly squared; in this
were two perforations about half an inch from each end, through which
were bronze pins or rivets, with gold heads, most probably to attach it
to a piece of leather which had passed round the arm and been fastened
by a small bronze buckle, which was found underneath the bones.” These
objects are now in the British Museum. In the cist was also a bronze
dagger, with a wooden sheath and handle, some large amber beads, a
drinking-cup, and the upper part of the skull of a hawk. Possibly this
ancient warrior was left-handed, like the seven hundred chosen men of
Benjamin,[2063] every one of whom could yet “sling stones at an hair
breadth, and not miss.” |430|
It may be observed that left-handedness is thought to have been
very prevalent in early times, both in the Old World[2064] and the
New.[2065] Certainly this plate strapped upon the arm is curiously
similar in character to the bracer in use in England in later times,
which, though sometimes of other materials, consisted, according to
Paulus Jovius,[2066] of a bone tablet. A bracer of carved ivory, of
the sixteenth century, is in the Meyrick Collection,[2067] and Mr.
C. J. Longman has a collection of them, many artistically engraved,
dating from the 16th and 17th centuries. Among the archers of ancient
Egypt,[2068] we find that similar guards were in use for the left
arm. These were not only fastened round the wrist, but secured by a
thong tied above the elbow. The material of which they were formed
appears to be unknown. On a Roman monument[2069] found in the North of
England, a soldier is represented with a bow in his hand, and a bracer
on his left arm. The Eskimos[2070] of the present day also make use
of a guard to save the wrist from the recoil of the bow-string. It is
usually composed of three pieces of bone, about 4 inches in length, but
sometimes of one only, and is fastened to the wrist by a bone button
and loop. An ivory guard, attached by a strap and buckle to the arm, is
still worn in India. Whatever was the purpose of those in stone they
seem to belong to the latter part of the Stone Period, and to have
continued in use in that of Bronze.
These bracers have occasionally been found in Denmark. One of red
stone, 4 inches long, and with four holes, was found in a dolmen near
Assens. It is ornamented with parallel lines along the ends, and part
of the way along the sides. Another, 3 inches long, from a dolmen in
Langeland, is of bone, with but two holes, and is ornamented with cross
bands of zigzag lines. Both are engraved in the “Guide illustré du
Musée des Antiquités du Nord.”[2071] What appears to be one of bone,
found in a barrow in Denmark,[2072] with two skeletons, but with no
other objects, has also been engraved. A second was found under similar
circumstances. |431|
One of fine-grained sandstone (4 1∕2 inches) with four holes was found
near Prenzlow[2073] in North Germany, and another of chocolate-coloured
material, probably slaty stone, accompanied an interment at
Ochsenfurt,[2074] Lower Franconia.
Although, possibly, not strictly within the scope of the present work,
it may be well here to make a few observations relating to the various
articles formed of bone which are occasionally found in association
with those of stone.
* * * * *
More than three dozen bone instruments were found in the Upton
Lovel Barrow,[2075] already frequently mentioned. Most of them were
pointed, varying in length from about 3 to 9 inches, and formed
apparently from the leg-bones of different mammals. They, for the
most part, show a portion of the articular surface at the end which
has not been sharpened, at which also they are perforated. Mr.
Cunnington, their discoverer, was of opinion that they had been used
as arrow-or lance-heads; and possibly some of the larger specimens
served as javelin-points, even if the smaller were merely pins to
aid in fastening the dress, to which they were secured by a string
passed through the hole, so as to prevent their being lost. Numerous
other bone instruments from barrows are described and figured by Dr.
Thurnam[2076] and Canon Greenwell. I have two that are decidedly
lance-heads, about 6 inches long, made from leg-bones, probably of
roe-deer, which have been pointed by cutting the bone obliquely
through, so as to show a long elliptical section, while the articular
end has been excavated into the cavity of the bone, so as to form
a socket for the shaft, which was secured in its place by a pin,
passing through two small holes drilled through the bone. One was
found in Swaffham Fen, and the other at Girton, near Cambridge. Other
spear-heads of much the same character, from the same district, from
Lincolnshire,[2077] and from the River Thames, are in the British
Museum, and some of them have been described and figured by Sir
Wollaston Franks.
I have also a bone dagger with the blade about 4 inches long, with a
rivet hole through the broad tang. It was found in the Thames near
Windsor, and was given to me by Mr. F. Tress Barry, M.P., in 1895. I
have also bones worked to a dagger-like form, but without any tang,
from the Cambridge Fens.
A pin or awl of bone,[2078] 4 1∕2 inches long, made from the _fibula_
of some small animal, probably a roe-deer, split, and then rubbed to a
point, was among the objects found by the Canon Greenwell, at Grimes’s
Graves, Norfolk, as well as the rounded piece of bone already mentioned
at p. 34.
Bone pins or skewers, closely resembling those from British barrows,
are of frequent occurrence on the sites of Roman occupation. In the
name of _fibula_, as applied to the small bone of the leg, we have an
|432| acknowledgment of its adaptability for making such pins; in
the same way as its concomitant _tibia_ was the bone best adapted for
making into flutes.
Bone pins, perforated at one end, were found in several of the barrows
explored by the late Mr. Bateman,[2079] both with burnt and unburnt
bodies. Canon Greenwell has also found them in the Yorkshire tumuli:
in three instances with burnt bodies. I found one also in a disturbed
barrow at Sutton Cheney, Leicestershire, which I opened in 1851.
Others without the hole, some of which are termed spear-heads by Mr.
Bateman, were found in Derbyshire and Staffordshire barrows,[2080]
with burnt and unburnt bodies, associated with instruments and
arrow-heads of flint. Another was found with burnt bones in a barrow at
Hacpen Hill,[2081] Wilts; and part of one in the Long Barrow at West
Kennet.[2082]
It seems probable that many of these pointed instruments may have been
used as awls, for making holes in leather and soft materials. Others,
as Mr. Bateman and Canon Greenwell suggest, may, with the unburnt
bodies, have fastened some kind of shroud; and with the burnt, have
served to pin a cloth in which the ashes were placed, after being
collected from the funeral pile.
In the Heathery Burn Cave, where so many interesting bronze relics
were found, there also occurred a large number of bone pins or awls,
a cylindrical bone bead 7∕10 inch long, a bone tube 1 1∕2 inches long
with a small perforation at the side, a pierced disc of bone 1 5∕8
inches in diameter and 1∕4 inch thick, and a flat bone blade, somewhat
resembling in form a modern paper-cutter, 7 3∕4 inches long and 1 1∕4
inches broad. This same flat form of instrument, about 6 1∕2 inches
long and 3∕4 inch broad, occurred in the Green Low Barrow,[2083]
Derbyshire, but then, in company with a fine flint dagger and stemmed
and barbed arrow-heads, and with a bone pin. Mr. Bateman[2084] thought
that these instruments might have served as modelling tools for making
pottery, or as mesh rules for netting. One, 12 inches long, with a
drinking-cup and various instruments of flint, accompanied a contracted
interment in a rock-grave on Smerrill Moor,[2085] Derbyshire. With
a similar interment in a barrow on Haddon Field[2086] was one 6 1∕4
inches long, cut from the horn of a red-deer, a flint arrow-head, and a
small bronze awl. Two others, cut from the ribs of a large animal, and
two barbed flint arrow-heads, were found inside a “drinking-cup” at the
head of a contracted skeleton in Mouse Low;[2087] and others, again,
with barbed flint arrow-heads, occurred with calcined bones at Ribden
Low.[2088] They have also been found in Dorsetshire, perforated.[2089]
Whether these instruments really served the purposes suggested by Mr.
Bateman it is impossible to determine; but they seem well adapted
either for finishing off the surface of clay vessels, or for netting,
an art with which the Swiss Lake-dwellers of Robenhausen[2090] |433|
were acquainted, though in that settlement but slight traces of a
knowledge of metal are exhibited.
Although needles of bone, carefully smoothed all over, and having
a neatly-drilled eye, have been found in the cave-deposits both
of Britain and France, but few such implements have, as yet, been
discovered in these countries associated with objects of the Neolithic
and Bronze Periods.
A bodkin or needle of wood, 6 inches long, and of the ordinary form,
was, however, found in company with a small bronze dagger-blade, in an
urn containing burnt bones near Tomen-y-mur,[2091] Carnarvonshire.
Needles of bone, both with the central hole (like some of those of the
Bronze Age) and with the eye at the end (like those of the present
day), have also been found in the Swiss Lakes.[2092] One of the latter
class was discovered in the Genista Cave at Gibraltar.[2093] It is
hard to say to what period it belongs. Needles of both forms have
been found with arrow-heads and other articles of flint, in Danish
grave-chambers.[2094]
The pins or awls, already described, are so rude and clumsy, and so
large at the perforated end, that they could never have been intended
for use as needles; and when we consider that the principal material
to be sewn must have been the skins of animals, and that, even at the
present day, needles are hardly ever employed for sewing leather, but
bristles are attached to the end of the thread, and passed through
holes prepared by an awl, it seems possible that needles, if ever
they were used for this particular purpose, may have been superseded
at a very remote period. The small bronze awl, so frequently found in
barrows, is singularly like the “cobbler’s awl” of the present day,
though straight and not curved.
Among the Danish[2095] antiquities of bronze, we find a remarkable form
of needle or bodkin, about 2 1∕2 or 3 inches long, bluntly pointed at
each end, and provided with an oval eye in the centre, so that it could
be passed through a hole in either direction. This, with a bronze awl
for boring the holes, and a pair of tweezers to assist in drawing the
needle through, appears to have constituted the sewing apparatus of
that day. I mention this form of needle because in Ribden Low,[2096]
Staffordshire, together with a burnt interment, and some barbed
arrow-heads of flint, were bone implements “pointed at each end” and
“perforated through the middle,” which may possibly have served such a
purpose. No dimensions are given by Mr. Bateman, but a bodkin of the
same kind from a barrow at Stourpaine, Dorset, is 4 inches long. It is
in the Durden collection in the British Museum. In a barrow, at Bailey
Hill,[2097] some calcined bones were accompanied by a pair of bone
tweezers, neatly made and perforated for suspension.
Some of the needles of horn or bone in use among the Indians of North
America[2098] were in shape much like miniature elephants’ tusks.
Another bone implement appears to have been a chisel, of which a
good specimen was found by the Rev. W. C. Lukis, F.S.A., in a |434|
chambered barrow at Temple Bottom,[2099] Wilts. It is formed of a
portion split from a leg-bone of some mammal, about 3 1∕4 inches long,
and 5∕8 inch wide, sharpened from both faces to a segmental edge at one
end. A broader instrument of the same character was found with some
long bone pins or awls near Cawdor Castle;[2100] and “a celt-shaped
instrument, 5 inches long, with a cutting edge, made from part of the
lower jaw of a large quadruped, rubbed down,” was found with calcined
bones in a barrow near Monsal Dale.[2101]
As has already been mentioned, bone instruments in the shape of a
chisel occur in considerable numbers in the Swiss Lake-dwellings
and elsewhere, and have been regarded as tools used in making and
ornamenting earthen vessels.[2102] That bone chisels are, however,
susceptible of more extensive use, is proved by the practice of the
Klah-o-quat Indians of Nootka Sound,[2103] who, without the aid of
fire, cut down the large cedars for their “dug-out” canoes with chisels
formed from the horn of the Wapiti, struck by mallets of stone hafted
in withes, or like dumb-bells in shape.
* * * * *
The only other forms of implement I need mention are those of a
hammer and a hoe, formed of the lower end of a stag’s horn, cut off
and perforated. A hammer, or possibly a celt-socket, was found with
a skeleton in Cop Head Hill barrow,[2104] near Warminster, together
with fragments of flint “polished by use;” another in a barrow at
Collingbourn,[2105] Wilts, and a third in a barrow near Biggin,[2106]
with a contracted interment, and in company with flint celts,
arrow-heads, and knives. Canon Greenwell has likewise found one in a
barrow at Cowlam, Yorkshire, with an unburnt body, and together with
a stone axe-hammer among burnt bones in a barrow at Lambourn,[2107]
Berks. They have also been found in some numbers in the Thames, near
Kew.
I have already spoken of the use of stag’s horn for pick-axes, and for
sockets for stone-hatchets; occasionally, also, the horn itself was
sharpened and used as an axe or hoe.[2108] One from the Thames[2109]
near Wandsworth, with its wooden handle still preserved, has been
recorded by Mr. G. F. Lawrence. Stag’s-horn axes occur in various
countries on the Continent. They are by no means rare in Scandinavia,
except in the case of those having ring and other ornaments engraved
upon them.[2110] On an adze of |435| this kind, in the Stockholm
Museum, is engraved the spirited representation of a deer. In one
instance,[2111] an axe has been made from the _ulna_ of a whale.
Lindenschmit[2112] has engraved several of stag’s horn, principally
from Hanover. They occur also in France.[2113] Beads and buttons of
bone[2114] have been found with early interments; but the curious bone
objects discovered in a pit at Leicester,[2115] and in the caves at
Settle, Yorkshire,[2116] belong apparently to too recent a period to
be here discussed. A kind of bone chisel has remained in use until
recent times for the purpose of removing the bark from oak-trees for
the supply of tanners. Some beads and ornaments formed of bone will be
mentioned in a subsequent chapter.
|436|