—— Fig. 271.—Dunbar. ½ —————— Fig. 272.—Dunbar. ½
—— Fig. 273.—Dunbar. ½ —————— Fig. 274.—Ireland. ½
Another, without midrib, from the Heathery Burn Cave, is, by the permission of Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., shown as Fig. 270.
An example from Wiltshire[777] in the Stourhead Museum (now at Devizes) is more barbed at the base and rounded at the top, in which there is neither notch nor perforation.
It is difficult to assign a use for the small hole usually to be seen in these blades. It may possibly be by way of precaution against the fissure in the blade extending too far, though in most cases the notch in the end of the blade does not extend to the hole.
Razors of this character have been discovered in Scotland. Three which are believed to have been found together in a tumulus at Bowerhouses, near Dunbar,[778] Haddingtonshire, about 1825, are shown in Figs. 271, 272, and 273. They are all in the Antiquarian Museum, at Edinburgh, together with a socketed celt found with them.
Fig. 275.—Kinleith. 1/1
Razors of the class last described have been found in Ireland, and three are mentioned in Wilde’s Catalogue[779] of the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, to the Council of which body I am indebted for the use of Fig. 274. The midrib of the specimen here shown is decorated with ring ornaments formed of incised concentric circles, an ornament of frequent use in early times, though but rarely occurring on objects of bronze in Britain. There is a large razor of this kind in the Museum of Trinity College, Dublin. Several unornamented blades of this character were present in the Dowris hoard. Two which were found in a crannoge[780] in the county of Monaghan were regarded as bifid arrow-heads. One of these (2⅝ inches) is in the British Museum.