6. That there are several instances of swords and scabbards, and spear-heads and ferrules being found together without either palstaves or socketed celts being with them.
7. That swords, or their fragments, are not found with flanged celts.
8. That socketed celts are often found with swords and spear-heads, or with the latter alone.
9. That socketed celts are often accompanied by gouges, and somewhat less frequently by hammers and chisels, though even where such tools occur, spear-heads are generally present.
10. That caldrons, or the rings belonging to them, have been discovered with socketed celts, both in England and Ireland.
11. That where metal moulds are found in hoards they are usually those for socketed celts.
12. That where lumps of copper or rough metal occur in hoards, socketed celts are, as a rule, found with them.
The general inferences are much the same as have already been indicated in former chapters, viz., that two of the earliest forms of bronze weapons discovered in the British Isles are the flat and the slightly flanged celts, and the thin knife-daggers. That these are succeeded by the more distinctly flanged celts, and the tanged spear-heads, with which probably some of the thick dagger-blades found in barrows are contemporary. That subsequently the celts with a stop-ridge and the palstave form came in and remained in use to the close of the Bronze Period, though to a great extent supplanted by the socketed celt which, as has already been shown, was probably evolved from one of the forms of the palstave; and it may here be remarked that flanged celts with a stop-ridge seem rarely, if ever, to occur in the hoards. That the socketed chisels, gouges, hammers, and knives are contemporary with the socketed celts, as are also socketed spear-heads and swords. That hoards in which palstaves only, and not socketed celts, are present rarely belonged to ancient bronze-founders; but that the deposits which these artificers have left behind them almost all denote a period when the art of coring, and thereby producing socketed tools and weapons, was already well known.
From this latter circumstance, and the comparative abundance of bronze-founders’ hoards, it may reasonably be inferred that in this country they belong for the most part to the close of the Bronze Period. To how recent a date bronze remained in use for cutting purposes is a question difficult of accurate solution. There are, indeed, two instances in which socketed celts are reported to have been discovered in company with ancient British coins, but in neither case is the evidence altogether satisfactory. Two uninscribed silver coins, of the type of my Plate F, No. 2[1753], are stated to have been found with a human skeleton and a bronze celt at Cann, near Shaftesbury, in 1849; but I believe that this statement would, if it were now capable of being sifted, resolve itself into the fact of the two coins, the celt, and some bones having been found near together by the same workman, without their being actually in association together. The type of the coins, though probably among the earliest in the British silver series, is one which was derived from gold coins struck some considerable time after the introduction of a gold coinage into this country, and probably belongs to the first century b.c. If such coins were in contemporary use with socketed celts, it is strange that none of the gold coins of earlier date have ever been found associated with bronze instruments.
It is true that in the account given in the Archæologia[1754] of the antiquities discovered on Hagbourn Hill, Berks., it is stated that at the bottom of a pit about four feet from the surface of the ground was a further circular excavation, in which, together with bronze bridle-bits and buckles of Late Celtic patterns, were socketed celts, and a spear-head of bronze, and, in addition, some coins. These, however, were not seen by the writer of the account, but he was informed “that one of them was silver and the other gold, the latter of which was rather large and flat, and perhaps one of the lower empire.” Looking at the Late Celtic character of some of the objects it seems possible that Ancient British coins might have been found with them; but, on the other hand, it is evident that the particulars given of the find were all derived from the workmen who dug up the objects, and not from personal observation; and it is possible that not only were the coins described not actually found with the bronze celts and spear-heads, but that these latter were not discovered in actual association with the Late Celtic bridle-bits. I have, however, provisionally accepted the account of their being found together, relying to some extent on the Abergele[1755] hoard, in which some buckles allied in form to those from Hagbourn Hill were present, associated with slides such as have been elsewhere found with socketed celts.