What seems to be a tanged curved knife of this kind formed part of the great Bologna hoard.
Another form of knife, which appears to be intermediate between those with sockets and those with merely a flat tang, is shown in Fig. 250. In this there are loops extending across the blade on either side, which would receive the ends of the two pieces of wood or horn destined to form the handle, so that a single rivet sufficed to bind them and the blade between them firmly together.
The original was found in Reach Fen, Cambridgeshire, and is now in my own collection. The blade has the appearance of having been originally longer, but of being now worn away by use. I know of no other specimen of the kind. The power to cast such loops upon the blade is a proof of no ordinary skill in the founder.
A palstave with a loop of this kind instead of a stop or side-flanges was found at Donsard,[742] Haute Savoie.
Another form of knife or dagger has merely a flat tang, in some cases provided with rivets by which it could be fastened to a handle, in others without rivets, as if it had been simply driven into a handle.
The blade shown in Fig. 251 was found in the same hoard as that engraved as Fig. 241. The rivets are fast attached to the blade, and the handle through which they passed was probably of some perishable material, such as wood, horn, or bone.
Another blade (5¼ inches), with a broad tang and two rivet-holes, was found in the Thames.[743]
In the British Museum is a knife much like the figure, 8 inches long, and showing three facets on the blade, found in the Thames at Kingston.
The knife-blades with broad tangs, which were not riveted to their handles, were in some instances provided with a central ridge upon the tang, which served to steady them in their handles, and in others the stem or tang was left plain.
One of the former class, from the Heathery Burn Cave, is shown in Fig. 252. It is in the collection of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S.