In a barrow at Cowlam,[1530] “touching the temporal bones, which were stained green by the contact, were two ear-rings of bronze. They have been made by beating the one end of a piece of bronze flat, and forming the other end into a pin-shaped termination. This pin had been passed through the lobe of the ear and then bent round, the other and flat end being bent over it.” Thus the ear-ring must have been “permanently fixed in the ear.” One of these rings is, by Canon Greenwell’s kindness, shown as Fig. 490, as is one from Goodmanham,[1531] in Fig. 491.
—————— Fig. 490.—Cowlam. 1/1 ———— Fig. 491.—Goodmanham. 1/1
In the latter case there was a bronze awl, or drill, behind the head; the ear-ring here figured was at the right ear, and its fellow, in a more broken condition, lay under the left shoulder. The better preserved of the two is somewhat imperfect, and may, I think, have formed a perfect circle when whole.
Fig. 492.—Orton. 1/1
Mr. Bateman records finding in a barrow called Stakor Hill,[1532] near Burton, a female skeleton, “the mastoid bones of which were dyed green from contact with two small pieces of thin bronze bent in the middle just sufficiently to clasp the edge or lobe of the ear.” With the skeleton was a flint “javelin head,” and Mr. Bateman considered the interment to be the oldest he had met with in which metal was present.
By way of illustration, a much longer form of trough-shaped ear-ring may be adduced, though the metal in this instance is gold and not bronze. That shown in Fig. 492 was found with another in a stone cist at Orton, Morayshire.[1533]
It seems possible that a lunette or diadem of gold was buried with these ear-rings.
A pair of circular embossed plates, with a beaded ring on each and a smaller disc above, were found in a tumulus near Lake, Wilts, and have been regarded as ear-rings. They are in the collection of the Rev. E. Duke.