. The ancient stone implements, weapons, and ornaments, of Great Britain. or in orderto prevent the blade from cutting the ligaments by which it wasattached to a handle. For the latter purpose, however, therewould be no advantage in rounding the butt-end; and as this,moreover, is frequently the thickest part of the blade, it seemsmost probable that the majority of the instruments were intendedfor holding in the hand, so that the term dagger appears mostappropriate to this form. Other blades, with notches on the opposite sides, seem to havebeen mounted with handles or shafts, and may have serve
. The ancient stone implements, weapons, and ornaments, of Great Britain. or in orderto prevent the blade from cutting the ligaments by which it wasattached to a handle. For the latter purpose, however, therewould be no advantage in rounding the butt-end; and as this,moreover, is frequently the thickest part of the blade, it seemsmost probable that the majority of the instruments were intendedfor holding in the hand, so that the term dagger appears mostappropriate to this form. Other blades, with notches on the opposite sides, seem to havebeen mounted with handles or shafts, and may have served asdaggers, or possibly as spear-heads. I have figured four specimens showing some difference in shape,mainly in consequence of the different relative positions of thebroadest part of the blades. This in Fig. 265 may be, to someextent, due to the point having been chipped away by successive sharpening of the edge by secondarychipping, in the same manner as wefind some of the Danish daggers wornaway to a stump by nearly the whole ofthe blade having been sharpened In Fig. 264 is shown a beautiful daggerof white flint, which was found in a bar-row on Lamborne Down, Berks, in com-pany with a celt and some exquisitelyfinished stemmed and barbed arrow-headsof the same material. It is now in theBritish Museum. Its edges are sharp allalong, and not blunted towards the butt-end. It may have been an entirely newweapon, buried with the occupant of thebarrow for use in another state of exist-ence, or it may have had moss wrappedround that part, so as to protect the hand,like the blade* of flint with Hypnum bre-virostre wrapped round its butt-end toform a substitute for a handle, which wasfound in the bed of the river Bann, inIreland. Some North American imple-ments of similar character are, as has pointed out, hafted by in-sertion into a split piece of wood into which they are bound by a from the north-west coast, thus mounted, is in the British Museum. * Arch.
Size: 918px × 2724px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookidancientstone, bookyear1872
