| Fig. 392. Culham. ½ | Fig. 393. Athenry. |
A spear-head (6½ inches) in the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh, found near Forfar, is ornamented with two bands of three parallel lines round the socket.
The sockets of some Irish spear-heads are highly decorated. That of a long leaf-shaped specimen from Athenry, Co. Galway, is shown in Fig. 393, kindly lent me by the Royal Irish Academy. It is Fig. 382 in Wilde’s Catalogue, in which also some other examples are engraved. The chevron ornament and the alternate direction of the hatching are highly characteristic of the style of the Bronze Period.
A similar decoration is found on English specimens. One found at Bilton, Yorkshire,[1221] with other spear-heads, fragments of swords, and socketed celts, has round the socket three bands of triangles alternately hatched and plain, and the blade is ornamented with a single row of the same kind on each side of the central rib. One from Edington Burtle, Somerset (4½ inches), in the Taunton Museum, has a band of hatched triangles above three bands of parallel lines with transverse lines between.
A broken spear-head from the Broadward[1222] find has the blade ornamented in the same way. A row of plain triangles is left on each side of the midrib, while the rest of the blade is hatched, the set of parallel lines in each point between the plain triangles being alternately to the right and to the left.
A fragment of a blade from the Haynes Hill hoard,[1223] Kent, has ring ornaments engraved along each side of the midrib.
As has already been observed, the edges of this class of spear-heads are not unfrequently fluted, but it occasionally happens that the whole blade is ornamented by minute ribs and flutings. The spear-head (10½ inches) found with two swords and two ferrules at Fulbourn, Cambridge,[1224] affords an example of this kind. On each side of the central rib containing the socket are two sharp ridges one below the other, next comes a hollow fluting, then a ridge, and then the fluting which forms the edge. To judge from the engraving, another found at Gringley, Nottinghamshire,[1225] must also have been fluted in a somewhat similar manner.
Fig. 394.—Thetford. ½