Fig. 187.—Wooden Handle
with Bronze Sickle (1⁄3).
The smaller figure shows
the manner of using
this implement.
In the category of objects used for the toilet and personal ornament we have a large assortment of new and fanciful forms, such as bracelets, pendants, necklaces, fibulæ, pins, combs, belt-clasps, finger-rings, buttons, studs, earrings, chains, as well as a few ornaments of gold, amber, and glass.
First in importance are the armlets or anklets, which greatly differ as regards size, form, and ornamentation ([Fig. 188], etc.). They are closed or open. The former are solid or hollow rings, and either plain or ornamented with the usual geometrical figures of incised lines, circles, and dots variously combined. The open bracelets are more numerous, and have a wider range of style and pattern. Some consist of a stout wire, spirally grooved, in single or double ply ([Fig. 3], No. 15), or a flat band with a terminal hook and eye for fastening when worn over the arm. Others are penannular, with flat expansions at each end, and the more massive are hollowed in the centre so as to reduce their weight. These latter are peculiar to the palafittes of Western Switzerland, having their greatest development in the lakes of Neuchâtel, Bienne, and Morat. They occur in Lake Bourget, but not to the same extent as the solid forms. Jet bracelets are rare, only one or two being recorded from the Swiss palafittes ([Fig. 11], No. 14); but they are more numerous in Lake Bourget. One is of tin ([Fig. 188], No. 3).
Pendants and such like ornaments affect so many different forms that it would be idle here to attempt to classify them. They have all one common element, viz. a perforation or ring at the top for suspension, and it is probable that many of them are merely individual parts of a compound ornament, like that found at Auvernier, and figured by Dr. Gross (B. 392, Pl. xxiii. 33), in which there are no less than fourteen different pendants hanging from a central wheel. But no doubt many of them, especially the larger forms, such as those found on the palafitte at Onens ([Fig. 189], Nos. 1 to 3), must have been used as single decorations.
Fig. 188.—Bronze and Tin Bracelets. All 1⁄2 real size.
Necklaces formed by stringing together beads of various materials, such as that represented on [Fig. 11], No. 1, were probably a common method of personal adornment; but of course they are seldom met with except as individual beads. Solid rings for the neck, or torques, are extremely rare, their entire number recorded from the lake-dwellings of the Bronze Age being less than half-a-dozen. They are all of one type, and similar to the two illustrations given in [Fig. 10], No. 3, from Cortaillod, and [Fig. 63], No. 19, from Peschiera.