The third of the torques already mentioned as found at Wedmore is shown in Fig. 469.
It is of a type which occurs more frequently in gold than in bronze, and in the former metal has often been found in Scotland. Several such were discovered under a large stone at Urquhart, Elginshire. Others have been found at Culter, Lanarkshire;[1465] Belhelvie, Aberdeenshire; Little Lochbroom, Ross-shire; Rannoch, Perthshire; and elsewhere. Some of these are in the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh.
There are three or four such in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy.
A gold torque of this class found at Clonmacnoise,[1466] King’s County, has oval balls at each end instead of hooks.
So far as at present known, the funicular torques of bronze are more abundant in the southern and western counties than in the other parts of England. They appear to be unknown both in Scotland and Ireland, though torques of Late Celtic patterns occur in those countries.
Fig. 470.—Yarnton. ½
The inference is that, although socketed celts are rarely if ever found with them, these twisted neck-rings belong to the close of the Bronze Period, and were introduced into Britain from the Continent. The form is, however, rare in the North of France, and the nearest analogues to the English torques with which we are acquainted are to be seen among those from Northern Germany and Denmark.
The Danish form, with broad expanding ends terminating in spirals, and the derivatives from it in which the spirals are represented by solid cast plates with volutes upon them, are nevertheless unknown in Britain, as is also that with the twist alternately to the right and to the left.