EARLY MAN 



Bronze Palstave 



FOUND AT StIBBARD. 



kind was that of the famous Carlton Rode hoard.^ At this place, 

 situated about three miles south of Attleborough, a labourer employed in 

 digging a ditch in or about the year 1845, turned up a hoard of bronze 

 implements, etc., comprising four gouges, three of 

 which were furnished with sockets and one with a 

 shank to be inserted in a handle. There were also 

 bronze punches, palstaves, a hammer, chisels, celts and 

 portions of celts, and several pieces of metal. 



The association of celts with so many forms of 

 mechanical tools suggests that the former were not 

 invariably used for fighting purposes, but that they 

 were used in hewing or roughly shaping wood. The 

 hoard indeed may well have comprised the working 

 tools of a carpenter of the Bronze age. The gouge 

 furnished with a shank was doubtless intended to be 

 fixed in a wooden handle and used, as the modern 

 carpenter uses a similar tool, in the hands without 

 the assistance of a mallet. 



Another remarkable Norfolk hoard was that discovered at Stibbard^ 

 near Fakenham in 1837. This was essentially the hoard of a bronze- 

 merchant or a bronze-worker, as the implements, eighty in all, were 

 fresh from the moulds, many of them still retaining the marks of the 

 seams of the moulds. Seventy of the objects found were palstaves, 

 and although many of them seemed similar in form 

 and size yet when tested it was found that no two 

 were precisely alike. It is evident therefore that 

 new or at any rate different moulds were used for 

 each. 



Ten of the articles found were spearheads, and one 

 of them now in the British Museum has been described 

 by the late Sir A. Wollaston Franks^ as having been 

 formed in a mould which consisted of four parts besides 

 the core. 



The methods employed in casting articles in bronze 

 in this early age were very ingenious. In some cases it 

 appears that when a mould of a good pattern was obtained 

 numerous implements were cast, but that in order to 

 preserve the mould from damage by too frequent use a 

 model was sometimes cast in lead, which was then made 

 to serve as the pattern for the making of moulds in clay, 

 which were made in two pieces. 



Other hoards of bronze found in Norfolk are those 



' Evans, Bronze Implements, pp. 78, 94, 113, 119, 121, 122, 133, 167, 

 171, 173, 175, 178, 424, 467 ; Anhceological 'Journal, ii. p. 80 ; Arch,eo!ogia, Bronzh Spearhead 

 xxxi. p. 494 ; Architological Aisociation Journal, i. p. 59 ; C. R. Smith, Collectanea found at Stibbard. 

 Antiqua, i. p. 105. 



* Evans, Bronze Implements, pp. 84, 328, 457, 464; Archaeological Institute 

 'Norwich Volume' xxvi. ^ Hora Ferales, p. 154, pi. vi. fig. 2Z. 



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