In looking over these pages, it will have been observed, that though socketed celts occur in numbers throughout the British Isles, yet that those found in England for the most part differ in form from those found in Ireland, and that some few types appear to be peculiar to Scotland. Traces of continental influence are, as might have been expected, most evident in the forms found in the southern counties of England, and are barely, if at all, perceptible in those from Ireland and Scotland. Some few of the socketed celts from both England and Scotland are of the type Fig. 167—a type so common in Ireland as to be characteristic of it—and these appear for the most part, though by no means exclusively, to have been found in western counties. Although, therefore, the first socketed celts in Britain were doubtless of foreign origin, there was no regular importation of them for use over the whole country; but the fashion of making them spread through local foundries, and different varieties of pattern originated in various centres, and were adopted over larger or smaller areas as they happened to commend themselves to the taste of the bronze-using public. The use of socketed celts would, from their abundance, seem to have extended over a considerable period; and from their having apparently been found with objects belonging to the Late Celtic Period they must have been among the last of the bronze tools or weapons to be superseded by those of iron. A socketed celt, somewhat like Fig. 116 but more trumpet-mouthed, is stated to have been found in company with a looped spear-head, two pins like Figs. 453 and 458, a bronze bridle-bit, and some portions of buckles of a late Celtic character on Hagbourne Hill, Berks. These objects are now in the British Museum, and there seems reason to believe the account of their discovery given in the Archæologia.[522] Some coins of gold and silver are said to have been found with them, but these are not forthcoming. Socketed celts have also been found associated with clasps like Figs. 504 and 505 at Dreuil, near Amiens, while at Abergele such clasps accompanied buckles almost, if not quite, late Celtic in character.
No doubt the final disuse of socketed celts was not contemporaneous throughout the whole of the country, and their employment probably survived in the north and west of Britain and in Ireland to a considerably later date than in the districts more accessible to Gaulish influences. The chronology of our Bronze Period will, however, have to be considered in a subsequent chapter. The transition from bronze to iron cannot so readily be traced in this country as on the Continent; but socketed celts, &c. formed of iron, and made in imitation of those in bronze, have occasionally been found in Britain. One (4 inches) with a side loop, and a part of its wooden handle, was found in Merionethshire, and is now in the British Museum. It has been figured in the Archæologia Cambrensis.[523] Another of the same type was found in North Wales.[524]
I have one (5¼ inches) with a rounded socket and no loop, found at Gray’s Thurrock, Essex.
I have another (4 inches) with a square socket, from Pfaffenburg in the Hartz; and others of longer proportions with round sockets from Hallstatt. The metal has been carefully welded together to form the sockets, in which there is no slit like those commonly to be seen in more modern socketed tools of iron. There are ornaments round the mouth of some of the Hallstatt[525] socketed celts, and both they and the iron palstaves are frequently provided with a side loop, in exact accordance with those on their analogues in bronze. Some of the socketed celts in iron from the cemetery of Watsch,[526] in Carniola, are also provided with a loop.
As an illustration of the view that similar wants, with similar means at command with which to supply them, lead to the production of similar forms of tools and weapons in countries widely remote from each other, I may mention a socketed celt (10¾ inches) found in an ancient grave near Copiapo, Chili.[527] In general form it is almost identical with some of the Italian bronze celts, but it is of copper, and not bronze; and is not cast, but wrought with the hammer. The socket has, therefore, been formed in the same manner as those of the early iron celts from Hallstatt, with which it also closely corresponds in outline. The surface, however, has been ornamented by engraving; and among the patterns we find bands of chevrons, alternately plain and hatched, closely allied to the common ornament of the European Bronze Age. What is, perhaps, more striking still is that the Greek fret also occurs as an ornament on the faces.
The method in which socketed and other celts were hafted will be discussed in the next chapter.
CHAPTER VI.
METHODS OF HAFTING CELTS.