Some conical funnels of burnt clay, found in the Lake-dwellings near Laibach, have been regarded as having served to receive the metal in the casting process.
Runners of the same character as those already described have been found in different countries, including Denmark[1741] and Sweden.[1742]
We must now briefly consider the processes to which the castings were subjected before being finally brought into use. Where the objects had sockets cast over clay cores, those cores had to be removed, probably by means of pointed tools, such as that already described under Fig. 220. Where they were solid they seem in most cases to have undergone a considerable amount of hammering, which both rendered the metal more compact, and to a certain extent removed the asperities resulting from the joints in the mould. With edged tools and weapons, whether socketed or not, the edges especially were drawn down by means of the hammer.
These hammers, as has already been shown, were occasionally themselves of bronze, and so also were some of the anvils. It is, however, probable that in most cases both hammers and anvils were stones, either natural pebbles and flat slabs, or occasionally wrought into special shapes. In South Africa at the present day the iron assegais are wrought with hammers and anvils of stone. Judging from the unfinished condition of the tools and weapons in some of the old bronze-founders’ hoards, and from large deposits of socketed celts having been found with the clay cores still in them, it seems not improbable that the founders often bartered away their castings nearly in the state in which they came from the moulds, with only the runners broken off, and that those who acquired them finished their manufacture themselves. Possibly a hammering process upon the surface of the socketed spear-heads and celts would so loosen the cores that they would fall out or could be extracted with merely a pointed stick.
Fig. 538.—Kirby Moorside. ½ ————Fig. 539.—Hove. ½
After the hammering, the surface of most weapons and of some tools was further polished, probably by friction with sand, or with a rubbing-stone of grit. I have elsewhere described some of the stone rubbers which appear to have been in use in conjunction with sand, for the purpose of grinding and polishing the faces of different forms of perforated stone axes, which in Britain at all events belonged to the period when bronze was known. It is, therefore, probable that similar rubbers were employed for grinding and polishing the faces of bronze weapons; and the rubber shown in Fig. 538 appears to have been destined for this purpose. It was found with several socketed celts at Keldholm, near Kirby Moorside, North Riding of Yorkshire, and is now in Canon Greenwell’s collection. The material seems to be trap.
No doubt many other such rubbing-stones must exist, and it is possible that some of those which I have regarded as used for the grinding and polishing of weapons of stone may have served for those of bronze. Whetstones of various kinds have from time to time been discovered in company with bronze instruments. Near Little Wenlock,[1743] Shropshire, some spear-heads, a socketed celt, and part of a dagger were found in 1835, and with them are recorded to have been three or four small whetstones. In the Dowris hoard[1744] also some rubbers of stone with convex, concave, and flat surfaces were present. In my “Ancient Stone Implements”[1745] I have given an account of a number of whetstones found at various places in company with bronze relics, not unfrequently with interments in barrows, and I need not here repeat the details. I reproduce, however, in Fig. 539 a whetstone found in a barrow at Hove, near Brighton,[1746] with the remains of a skeleton, a stone axe-head, an amber cup, and a small bronze dagger.
Another whetstone, shown in Fig. 540, was found with the hoard in the Isle of Harty, and no doubt was employed by the ancient bronze-founder for finishing off the edges of the socketed celts and gouges in which he dealt. It is made from a sort of ragstone.
