A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



much to be regretted that the excavations did not receive that close 

 supervision which so important a discovery deserved. Sir Henry himself 

 did not visit the camp till more than half the area was dug over, thinking, 

 as he said in his paper, ' that another person was looking after the 

 excavations and taking notes and measurements.' The thanks of archso- 

 logists are due to the late Pickering Phipps, Esq., chairman of the 

 company, for the preservation of what articles were obtained. Mr. 

 Phipps made all the preparations he could to keep together anything 

 found, and paid the men for their trouble ; and when the digging in the 

 camp was finished he generously placed the collection in the Northampton 

 Museum. The number of pits discovered was over 300. This collection 

 is really a valuable one, and helps us to form a very fair idea of the con- 

 dition of the ancient Britons in this neighbourhood before the Romans 

 conquered it. The collection consists of numerous iron weapons and 

 implements, bronze scabbards, bronze ornaments, stone and bone articles, 

 vessels of hand-made pottery, remains of more than 400 pots of different 

 form and size (most of these were plain, but there are a few fragments 

 which are ornamented with the characteristic spirals of the Late Celtic 

 period), portions of more than 100 querns or millstones for grinding their 

 corn, some of the corn which the occupants of the camp cultivated, 

 spindle whorls used for weaving purposes, bone combs for carding the wool, 

 bones of man, the red deer, the roe deer, the short-horned ox, the goat, 

 the horse, pig and dog. There were fifteen or sixteen peculiar triangular- 

 shaped bricks perforated at each corner with a hole. The use of these 

 bricks is not yet definitely known ; by some persons they are supposed to 

 have been used as loom weights to hold the warp tight ; Sir Henry thought 

 they might have been used to hobble horses or cattle with. To enumerate 

 these remains more fully, the iron articles comprise about twenty spear- 

 heads, some of which are leaf-shaped, several of which correspond in 

 make and shape to those found at Marin in Switzerland and figured in 

 Dr. Keller's work.' These are very unlike the Anglo-Saxon spearheads, 

 a characteristic feature of which is a longitudinal slit in the socket which 

 received the wooden shaft ; remains of several iron knives, some still in 

 their haft of deer-horn. A long sword found with the remains of a 

 scabbard mounted with bronze, pieces of two other sword-like weapons 

 though thicker than a sword resembling some found at Hod Hill, a 

 British camp a few miles from Blandford. Similar articles have been 

 found in different localities, notably at Bourton- on -the -Water in 

 Gloucestershire and at Meon Hill, Gloucestershire, in 1824. Five 

 daggers, one still in its iron sheath, which has the heart-shaped 

 termination peculiar to the Late Celtic period ; fragments of several 

 scabbards of swords, some showing traces of bronze binding ; five saws, 

 one remaining in its deer-horn handle. These fragments of saws very 

 much resemble a saw in bronze figured in Keller's Swiss Lake Dwellings ; 

 similar saws have been found at Glastonbury ; the teeth of the Hunsbury 



1 The Lake-Dwellings of Switxerland and other parts of Europe, by Dr. Ferdinand Keller, translated by 

 John Edward Lee, 2 vols. (1878). 



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