Fig. 278.—Driffield. ½
One, only 3¼ inches long, and much like Fig. 278 in form, was found in an urn with burnt bones in Moot Low,[797] near Middleton, Derbyshire.
Another was found with burnt bones in a barrow at Lady Low,[798] near Blore, Staffordshire. The end of the handle in this instance was straight, and not hollowed. One (5⅜ inches) with a broad tang, through which passes a single rivet, was found in the Thames.[799] It is now in the British Museum.
What Sir R. C. Hoare terms a lance-head (3 inches), found with amber beads in the Golden Barrow,[800] Upton Lovel, appears to have been a knife-dagger of this character.
A knife, 1 inch wide, which had been fastened to its haft of ox-horn by a single rivet, was found by Canon Greenwell in a barrow at Rudstone, Yorkshire.[801] With the same interment was an axe-hammer of stone and a flint tool. A blade like Fig. 278 (3 inches), from the sand-hills near Glenluce,[802] Wigtonshire, has been figured.
Daggers, or possibly spear-heads, with a broad tang, as well as the moulds in which they were cast, were discovered by Dr. Schliemann on the presumed site of Troy.[803]
The more ordinary form of instrument is that of which the blade was secured to the handle by two or more rivets at its broad base. These may be subdivided into knife-daggers with thin flat blades, and daggers which as a rule have a thick midrib and more or less ornamentation on the surface of the blade. The former variety is now generally accepted as being the more ancient of the two, and may probably have served as a cutting instrument for all purposes, and not have been intended for a weapon.
Fig. 279, representing a knife-dagger from a barrow at Butterwick,[804] Yorkshire, E.R., explored by Canon Greenwell, will give a good idea of the usual form, though these instruments are not unfrequently more acutely pointed. This specimen was found with the body of a young man, and had been encased in a wooden sheath. The haft had been of ox-horn, which has perished, though leaving marks of its texture on the oxidized blade. In the same grave were a flat bronze celt (Fig. 2), a bronze pricker or awl (Fig. 225), a flint knife, and some jet buttons. Another blade of the same character, but rather narrower in its proportions, was found in a barrow at Rudstone,[805] Yorkshire. The handle had in this instance also been of ox-horn. In the same grave were a whetstone, a ring and an ornamental button of jet, and a half-nodule of pyrites and a flint for striking a light. Of the shape of the handles I shall subsequently speak; I will only here remark that at their upper part, where they clasped the blade, there was usually a semicircular or horseshoe-shaped notch, in some instances very wide and in others but narrow. This notch is more rarely somewhat V-shaped in form.
Fig. 279.—Butterwick. ½