The Ancient Bronze Implements, Weapons, and Ornaments, of Great Britain and Ireland.

by John Evans

In a barrow in the parish of Butterwick,[533] Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., found what he describes as “an axe-blade of bronze,” engraved as Fig. 2, which lay with a skeleton, and “the handle, which had been under two feet in length, could be plainly traced by means of a dark line of decayed wood extending from the hips towards the heels; moreover, from the presence of decayed wood on the sides of the blade, it would seem as if the axe had been protected by a wooden sheath. To all appearance the weapon had been worn slung from the waist.” In this case the blade had been fixed, apparently after the manner of Fig. 182, into a solid handle to the depth of two inches, as is evident from the surface of the metal being oxidized on that part of the blade differently from what it is elsewhere.

In a barrow at Shuttlestone,[534] near Parwich, Derbyshire, Mr. Bateman found about the middle of the left thigh of a skeleton a bronze celt, of “the plainest axe-shaped type. The cutting edge was turned upwards towards the upper part of the person, and the instrument itself has been inserted vertically into a wooden handle by being driven in for about two inches at the narrow end—at least, the grain of the wood runs in the same direction as the longest dimension of the celt.” “A fact,” adds Mr. Bateman, “not unworthy of the notice of any inclined to explain the precise manner of mounting these curious implements.” It may be remarked, however, that no part of the handle itself, beyond this grain upon the bronze, was preserved, and that this direction of the grain of the wood would be quite consistent with the blade having been mounted in a side branch from the shaft, after the manner of the Swiss stone celt shown in Fig. 183.

It appears to me possible that in other cases where the marks of the grain of the wood, or even the traces of the wood itself, have been found upon celts, running along and not across the blade, the somewhat hasty conclusion has been drawn that they were attached to the end of straight shafts instead of into side branches; and that possibly this opinion, when once accepted, may have affected insensibly the reports of the position of the blade of the celts with regard to the bodies with which they were found, and to the traces of their shafts.

The opinion first enounced by J. A. Fabricius that the celt was the ancient German framea or spear mentioned by Tacitus, seems also insensibly to have affected observers.

There is an account given by Thorlacius[535] of the discovery in a tumulus near Store-Hedinge, in Denmark, of a palstave with the wooden shaft an ell and a quarter long, into which the blade was inserted; the wood, as might have been expected, running down between the side wings; at the other end of the shaft there was a leather strap wound round for about a quarter of an ell. The whole was so decayed that not the least part of it could be taken out of the ground. Although nothing appears to be said with regard to the position of the palstave with respect to the shaft, this has been cited by Lisch[536] and others in evidence of this form of instrument having been mounted spud-fashion, as a kind of chisel-ended spear. A more conclusive instance is that adduced by Westendorp,[537] who has figured a socketed celt without a loop, found in a fen in the province of Groningen, Holland, mounted in this manner on a straight shaft. I have, however, already remarked that some of the socketed celts of this character were probably used as chisels.

Fig. 184.—Bronze Axe, Hallein.

Whatever reliance may be placed upon the older discoveries, all those of more recent times are in favour of the instruments of the palstave form having been mounted as axes, hatchets, or adzes. In the museum at Salzburg, Austria, there are at least four crooked handles for this kind of blade, found in the salt-mines of Hallein, one of which is shown in the annexed cut. I am not, however, sure whether the blade was actually found with the haft in which it is now placed, nor, if so, whether it was originally in its present position with the loop outwards. It looks much more like an Italian than a German specimen, which has been added to the haft in recent times, and it has not the appearance of having been exposed for centuries to the action of salt. It seems more probable that the salt, which has fortunately had the power of preserving the wood, would in course of years have dissolved the whole of the metal, assuming that at the time when the haft was lost, or left in the mine, a blade was still attached to it, than that it should have left the metal, as here, almost uninjured. In this instance, moreover, the haft is perfect, and not, as in some of the other cases, broken, so as to raise an inference of their having been thrown away. The position of the blade with the loop outwards is also suspicious.

A broken example of the same kind of haft, also from the salt-mines of Hallein, has been figured by Klemm,[538] and is to be seen in the British Museum. There are others in the museum at Linz.