Another form of bronze torque found in Britain is made from a plain piece of wire, hammered out at each end into a broad, nearly quadrangular, plate.
That shown in Fig. 470 lay near the head of a contracted skeleton at Yarnton, four miles from Oxford, at a spot which seems to have been a prehistoric cemetery. I obtained it through the kindness of Professor Rolleston when visiting the place. The ends are ornamented by hammer marking. In a line with the wire forming the torque is a slightly raised flat band perpendicularly fluted; the expanding parts above and below are fluted horizontally. A herald would engrave “azure, a fesse gules” in the same manner, but with the lines much closer together. Two torques of the same character, found at Lumphanan, Aberdeenshire, are in the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh.
The form probably belongs to the close of the Bronze Period, if not indeed to the Late Celtic or Early Iron Age.
Fig. 471.—Montgomeryshire. ⅔
A torque about 5 inches in diameter, described as of copper, made of a simple wire, with the ends turned back so as to form hooks, and on each a lenticular button of metal, was found near Winslow, Bucks,[1467] and may also be Late Celtic.
Another form of torque is made from a stout wire expanding into small flat discs at the end, a type which is also common among bracelets both in bronze and gold. A torque of this kind, together with a bracelet, is shown in Fig. 471, kindly lent by the Council of the Society of Antiquaries.
These objects were found with seven others in the parish of Llanrhaiadaryn-Mochnant, Montgomeryshire.[1468] One of them is said to have had pendants upon it. Several of them were too small to have served as torques for the neck, and were most probably bracelets or anklets. To these penannular ornaments I shall have to refer further on.
The other varieties of torques found in Britain seem decidedly to belong to the Late Celtic rather than to the Bronze Period, so that a brief notice of them will suffice. They are frequently made in two halves, hinged or dowelled together, and are often decorated with a series of ornamental beads.