In several instances there were traces of a wooden handle, as was the case with one, upwards of 3 inches long, which was found with a flint spear-head, a double-edged axe of basaltic stone, and objects of bone, among the calcined bones in a sepulchral urn from a barrow at Throwley.[679]
In a barrow at Haddon Field[680] there was a small drinking cup near the back of a contracted skeleton, and beneath this an arrow-head of flint, an instrument of stag’s-horn like a netting mesh, and a bronze awl showing traces of its wooden handle.
In another barrow near Gotam, Nottinghamshire,[681] there lay near the thigh of a contracted skeleton a neatly chipped spear-head of flint, and a small bronze pin which had been inserted into a wooden handle.
In a barrow near Fimber,[682] Yorkshire, opened by Messrs. Mortimer, there were found near the knee of a contracted female skeleton a knife-like chipped flint and the point of a bronze pricker or awl. With another female interment in the same barrow a bronze pricker was found inserted in a short wooden haft. The Britoness in this instance wore a necklace of jet discs with a triangular pendant of the same material.
A bronze pin, 1½ inches long, accompanied by a broken flint celt and some arrow-heads and flakes of flint, together with calcined bones, was found in an urn in Ravenshill barrow,[683] near Scarborough.
In some of the Wiltshire barrows more perfectly preserved handles have been found. One of these, copied from Hoare’s “Ancient Wiltshire,”[684] is shown in Fig. 227. It was found in the King barrow with what was probably a male skeleton buried in the hollowed trunk of an elm tree. With it was a curious urn of burnt clay and two bronze daggers, one near the breast and the other near the thigh. The handle is described as being of ivory, but I think Dr. Thurnam was right in regarding it as of bone. The awl in this instance is of the third type, having a well-marked collar round it. Another of the same character, but retaining only a small part of the haft, so that the shoulder is better shown, was found with burnt bones in an urn deposited in a barrow near Stonehenge.[685] No mention is made as to the nature of the material of which the haft was formed.
In the case of an awl of the first type, engraved by Dr. Thurnam, and here reproduced as Fig. 228, the handle is of wood, but the kind of wood is not mentioned.
Fig. 228.
Wiltshire. ½
One or two bronze or brass awls with square shoulders are in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy.[686] Several awls with their original wooden handles have been found in the Lake-dwellings of Savoy,[687] and others in hafts of stag’s-horn in the Swiss Lake-dwellings.