Some blades of this form were hafted in a rather different manner, as will be seen by means of Fig. 181.
Fig. 181.—Aymara Indian Hatchet. ¼
This represents an iron hatchet used by the Aymara Indians, of the province of La Paz, Bolivia, which was brought from that country and presented to me by my friend, the late Mr. David Forbes, F.R.S. In this form the handle is split, and the blade is secured by a leather thong, two turns of which pass under the two lugs of the blade, and thus prevent it from coming forward; two other turns pass over the butt-end, and thus prevent it from being driven backwards by any blow; while all the coils of the thong hold the cleft stick firmly against the two faces of the blade. Although no celts with the T-shaped butt-end have been found in Britain, or, indeed, in Western Europe, I have thought it worth while to engrave this curious example of the method of mounting such blades, especially as the central projections of the Irish form of celt, like Fig. 45, may have been secured by thongs in a somewhat analogous manner.
Fig. 182.—Modern African Axe of Iron. ¼
Turning now to the other British forms of celts, of which, as already observed, the flat and doubly tapering blades, like Fig. 2, seem to be the most ancient, it is probable that these were hafted by the butt-end being merely driven into a club or handle of wood, in the same manner as many stone celts appear to have been mounted. The modern iron hatchet, from Western Africa, shown in Fig. 182, will give a good idea of the manner in which the bronze celts that are so much like it in form were probably hafted. Another modern African axe has been engraved by Sir John Lubbock.[531] It is, of course, possible that some of the ancient flat celts were mounted after the manner of spuds, as is, by several German and Danish antiquaries, held to have been the case with those of the palstave form. It must, however, be borne in mind that as a rule the stone celts, which the earliest of those in bronze must in all probability have supplanted, were mounted after the manner of hatchets. Moreover, the few stone celts, the axis of the straight handle of which was in the same direction as the blade, appear to have been hafted with short handles as chisels, and not with long shafts as spuds. Among those found still attached to their hafts in the Swiss lake dwellings, some few were mounted in short stag’s-horn handles as chisels, but the majority were fitted for use as hatchets, with a club-like handle, in which a short stag’s-horn socket was mortised as affording a receptacle for the stone, harder and less liable to split than those of wood. In some cases, however, the handles were made from a bough of a tree with a short projecting branch, which was cleft to receive the stone. One of these, from Robenhausen, is shown in Fig. 183, which is copied from Dr. Keller’s work.[532]
Fig. 183.—Stone Axe, Robenhausen.
In Britain the traces of the original handles of bronze celts have been not unfrequently found, though the actual wood had perished.