Fig. 262.—Cottle.
A Danish[758] knife of this character has five circular loops along the hollowed back. A Mecklenburg[759] knife has three such loops and corded festoons of bronze between.
The bronze knife or razor, shown full size in Fig. 262, was found at Cottle,[760] near Abingdon, and is now in the British Museum. It is of a peculiar and distinct type, but somewhat resembles in character the oblong bronze cutting instrument found at Plonéour, Brittany, already mentioned. It is thinner and flatter than would appear from the figure. A Mecklenburg[761] knife or razor figured by Lisch is analogous in form.
I have a rough and imperfect blade of somewhat the same character as that from Cottle, but thinner and more curved. It has no hole through it, but thickens out at one end into a short boat-shaped projection about ½ inch long. It was found near Londonderry.
A diminutive pointed blade which appears to be too small to have been in use as a dagger, and which from the rivet-hole through the tang can hardly have served as an arrow or lance head, is shown in Fig. 263. This specimen formed part of the Reach Fen hoard. A very small example of this kind of blade, from a barrow near Robin Hood’s Ball, Wilts, has been figured by the late Dr. Thurnam, F.S.A., in his second exhaustive paper on “Ancient British Barrows,” published in the Archæologia,[762] from which I have derived much useful information.
A small blade with the sides more curved is shown in Fig. 264, which I have copied from Dr. Thurnam’s engraving.[763] The original was found in Lady Low, Staffordshire.
A smaller example, with a longer and imperforated tang, found in an urn at Broughton,[764] Lincolnshire, and now in the British Museum, has been thought to be an arrow-head; but I agree with Dr. Thurnam in regarding both it and the small blades described by Hoare[765] as arrow-heads, as being more probably small double-edged knives.
| Fig. 263. Reach Fen. ½ | Fig. 264. Lady Low. ½ | Fig. 265. Winterslow. ½ | Fig. 266. Priddy. ½ |