56 INTRODUCTION. 



know, nor do the bronze and bone articles possess that elaborate- 

 ness of form, diversity of pattern, and skill in manufacture, 

 which is displayed upon the necklaces and other ornaments 

 which have been met with in many parts of Britain. A bronze 

 knife-dagger has been found in a wold barrow, having the handle 

 ornamented with a pattern made by minute pins of bronze, but 

 Wiltshire has produced a similar one, where the pins or studs 

 were made of gold 1 . It may also be said of the weapons and 

 implements that, on the whole, they are inferior in design and 

 execution ; for, though the bronze knife-daggers are skilfully 

 made, they do not equal the beautiful specimens which the Wilt- 

 shire barrows have afforded. The only articles indeed discovered 

 in the wold barrows which can compare in beauty of design 

 and workmanship with any found elsewhere, are the pretty jet 

 buttons engraved with a cross pattern, and the jet rings, dis- 

 covered at Thwing and Rudstone, and these are surpassed, at 

 all events in material, by some of the Wiltshire buttons, which 

 are made of gold 2 . 



There is nothing in the implements and ornaments to show 

 that there was any traffic going on between the wold-dwellers 

 and other people at a distance, except to a very trifling extent. 

 The bronze and jet must have been imported, but bronze has 

 occurred in a very small quantity, and jet has not been found 

 in many barrows, though the material itself is the product of 

 a district lying within a few miles of the northern ridge of the 

 wold-range. Besides, many of the so-called jet articles are not made 

 of true jet, but of an inferior lignite. Flint, which is so abundant 

 in the shape of weapons and implements, is not generally the 

 product of the native chalk, though the flint of the district was 

 used to some extent ; but it is very common in the condition 

 of rolled pebbles upon the adjoining sea-beach, and the greater 

 part of what was used no doubt came from thence. It is sin- 

 gular that amber should not have been occasionally met with, 

 for it is sometimes thrown up on the neighbouring coast, 

 and it was used by the same people living in places much more 

 remote than the wolds from any spot where it could have been 

 procured. 



Londcsborough discovered, with an unburnt body in a cist, three amber buttons. 

 Archaeologia, vol. xxxiv. p. 255, pi. xx. 



1 Hoare, Ancient Wilts, vol. i. p. 204, pi. xxvii. 



2 I. c. y vol. i. p. 99, pi. x ; p. 201, pi. xxv. 



