One of the first type, from the Golden barrow at Upton Lovel, is engraved by Hoare,[666] and is shown in Fig. 223. With it were two cups, a necklace of amber beads, and a small bronze dagger. It is almost the longest of those found by Sir R. Colt Hoare, which were upwards of thirty in number. The only longer specimen was found in a barrow near Lake,[667] and there also some beads and a bronze dagger accompanied the interment. It is considerably thicker than Fig. 223, and the tang for insertion in the handle is broader and flatter. A smaller awl of the same character was found in a barrow on Upton Lovel Down,[668] opened by Mr. Cunnington. In this instance there were two interments in the same grave, and several flint celts and a perforated stone battle-axe were found, as well as numerous instruments of bone, and a necklace of beads of jet or lignite.
| Fig. 223. Upton Lovel. 1/1 | Fig. 224. Thorndon. ½ | Fig. 225. Butterwick. 1/1 |
An awl of this kind (31/10 inches) found, with a spear-head, hammer, knife, and gouge of bronze, at Thorndon, Suffolk,[669] most of them already described, is now in the British Museum, and is shown in Fig. 224.
Several such instruments, some of them not more than an inch in length, were found by Canon Greenwell[670] in his exploration of the Yorkshire barrows. In nine cases awls or prickers accompanied interments of unburnt bodies, and in three cases they were found among burnt bones. In most instances instruments of flint were found with them. An aged woman in a barrow on Langton Wold[671] had three bronze awls or prickers, as well as an assemblage of bone instruments, animal teeth, marine shells, and other miscellaneous property, buried with her. Dr. Thurnam regarded these as drills used with a bow, but I think such an use is doubtful. Some of the awls from the Yorkshire barrows, instead of being flattened at one end, are drawn down to a point at both ends, leaving the middle of larger diameter so as to form a kind of shoulder. These, I presume, are included under Dr. Thurnam’s Type II. Sometimes this central part of the blade is square and sometimes the tang is square, like that described by Stukeley[672] from a barrow near Stonehenge as “a sharp bodkin round at one end, square at the other where it went into a handle.”
An awl, square at the centre, and round at each end in section, is shown in Fig. 225. It was found by Canon Greenwell in a barrow at Butterwick, Yorkshire, in company with the celt (Fig. 2), and other objects. The point has unfortunately been broken off.
A typical example of Dr. Thurnam’s second class from a barrow at Bulford,[673] Wilts, is shown in Fig. 226. Another was found at Beckhampton, and a small pricker of the same type was found with a burnt interment at Storrington,[674] Sussex. Like those found by Sir R. C. Hoare, this was regarded as the pin for fastening the cloth in which the bones were collected from the funeral pyre. The fact of several of them having been found still inserted in their hafts, as will subsequently be seen, will suffice to prove that this view is mistaken.
Several awls pointed at both ends were found by the late Mr. Bateman during his researches in the Derbyshire barrows. In Waggon Low[675] at the right shoulder of a contracted skeleton were three instruments of flint, and a small bronze awl 1½ inches long, tapering each way from the middle, which is square. Another, pointed at each end, lay with a drinking cup and a rude spear- or arrow-head of flint near the shoulder of a youthful skeleton in a barrow near Minning Low.[676] Another of the same kind was found in a barrow on Ilam Moor,[677] Staffordshire. Another was found with calcined bones in a barrow in Larks-Low,[678] Middleton.
| Fig. 226. Bulford. 1/1 | Fig. 227. Winterbourn Stoke. ½ |