An instrument in the British Museum, in form much like Fig. 216, found at Vienne (Isère?), has only a small square hole in the socket, and may have served as an anvil rather than as a hammer. A hammer also with expanded end was found near Chalon,[638] and another in the Valley of the Somme.[639]
A cylindrical hammer or anvil was found in the hoard of the Jardin des Plantes at Nantes.[640]
Cylindrical hammers have been found among the Lake-dwellings of the Lac du Bourget,[641] Savoy, one of them provided with a loop. M. Rabut, of Chambéry, has a stone mould from the same lake for casting such hammers. Another hammer-mould of stone was found at the Station of Eaux Vives, near Geneva.
In my own collection is one of these looped socketed hammers, nearly square in section, from Auvernier, in the Lake of Neuchâtel. Others from Swiss Lake-dwellings, both with and without loops, are engraved by Keller. Professor Desor has a hammer expanding towards the end from the Lake of Neuchâtel.[642] A hammer found at Mœrigen[643] seems to have been formed from a portion of a looped palstave. The Lake-dwellers frequently utilized such broken instruments. Another hammer, from the Lake of Bienne,[644] is hexagonal in section, and ornamented with reversed chevrons on its faces.
They are occasionally found in Hungary. I have seen one ornamented with chevrons in relief upon the sides. One with saltires on the sides, and some fragments of others, were in the Bologna hoard.
The object engraved by Madsen[645] as possibly the ferrule of a lance may be a hammer of this kind.
A solid bronze hammer (4½ inches), of oblong section, with two projecting lugs on each side for securing the handle, found near Przemysl, Poland, was exhibited at the Prehistoric Congress at Pesth. It was found with a bronze spear-head, and is in the Museum of the Academy of Sciences at Cracow.
As to the manner in which these socketed hammers were mounted we have no direct evidence. It seems probable, however, that many of them had crooked hafts of the same character as those of the socketed celts. It is worth notice that on some of the coins of Cunobeline[646] there is a seated figure at work forging a hemispherical vase, and holding in his hand a hammer which in profile is just like a narrow axe, the head not projecting beyond the upper side of the handle. A seated figure on a hitherto unpublished silver coin of Dubnovellaunus, a British prince contemporary with Augustus, holds a similar hammer, or possibly a hatchet, in his hand. But though when in use as hammers they were mounted with crooked shafts, it is quite possible that some of these instruments may have been fitted on to the end of straight stakes and have served as anvils. The Rev. W. C. Lukis, F.S.A., informs me that at the present day the peasants of Brittany make use of iron-tipped stakes, which, when driven into the ground, form convenient anvils on which to hammer out the edges of their sickles, and which have the great advantage of being portable. Though such anvils are not, so far as I am aware, any longer used in this country, traces of their having been formerly employed appear to be preserved in our language, for a small anvil to cut and punch upon, and on which to hammer cold work, is still termed a “stake.”
It is worthy of remark that an implement of the same kind as these so-called socketed hammers, and made in the same manner, of a very hard greyish alloy, was found in the cemetery at Hallstatt,[647] and was regarded by the Baron von Sacken as a small anvil. A bronze file was found with it.
It is also to be observed that of the two hammer-like instruments found together in the Harty hoard one is much larger than the other, and may have formed the head of a stake or anvil, while the other served as a hammer. Still, as a rule, a flat stone must have served as the anvil in early times, as it does now among the native ironworkers of Africa, and did till quite recently, for many of the country blacksmiths and tinkers of Ireland.[648] Among Danish antiquities some carefully made anvils of stone occur, but I am not certain as to the exact age to which they should be assigned.