Fig. 185.
Fig. 186.
Fig. 187.
Other forms of celts are shown on the accompanying series of figures ([184], [185], [186], and [188] to [195]), and another excellent example is [fig. 196], which has the loop (as also [fig. 197]) for attaching to the handle by means of a thong. A great many other varieties are also met with.
The bronze daggers which barrows have afforded vary in length from two and a half or three, to five and a half or six, inches, on the average; the larger ones being an inch and a half to three inches in breadth at their broadest part, where the handle has been attached, from whence they taper gradually down to the point. They are sometimes ribbed or fluted. In most instances the handle has been attached by three rivets; in some cases, however, as in [fig. 198], only two have been used, and occasionally there is evidence of the attachment being effected by thong or other ligature. The handles were of horn or wood, and were usually semi-lunar where attached to the blade; in one instance, however, the blade has a “tang” or “shank,” which has fitted into the square-ended handle, to which it has been fastened by a single peg. The blades occasionally present incontestible evidence of long use, having been worn down by repeated sharpenings. In the instance of the dagger found at Stanshope, which had been fastened to the handle by a couple of rivets as well as by ligatures, evidence existed of its having been enclosed in a sheath of leather, and this example also presented the somewhat curious feature of impressions of maggots, which had probably made their way from the decaying body into the inside of the sheath, between it and the blade, and had there remained, and thus gradually become marked upon the corrugated surface of the bronze.
Fig. 188.
