Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/170

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162
PREHISTORIC BRITAIN

to a handle of bone encrusted with ivory or amber, and terminated in a gilded pommel of large dimensions. Of nine specimens, eight were in graves containing cremated bodies, and associated with them were one or more bronze vases. Other swords, some of iron and some of bronze, especially the latter, were not unlike the leaf-shaped bronze blades so common in the British Isles towards the end of the Bronze Age. There were also iron daggers, with handles of bronze terminating at the hilt in two horn-like projections, and knife-like blades of unusual size, not unlike a butcher's cleaver. The spear-heads were all socketed and mostly made of iron. Like the swords they show a combination of Bronze Age types together with a few new patterns, some of which closely resembled formes prevalent in La Tène.

Among articles of dress, fibulæ were conspicuous both as regards numbers and variety of form. Some were adorned with amber beads, and others had attached to them by chains a number of pendants in the shape of discs, crosses, wheels, miniature axes, and various kinds of animals reminding one of ducks or swans. The spiral fibula, with two or four discs, goes under the name of the "Hallstatt fibula," as it is seldom met with in North Italy, although common south of the Apennines. Bracelets—solid hollow, or in bands with or without knobs—were very common. One found in a Yorkshire barrow, at Cowlam, and figured by Canon Greenwell,