PARISH OE BUTTERWICK. 



187 



the point has a rounded end. When deposited with its dead owner 

 it had been encased in a wooden sheath, the remains of which, 

 though completely decayed, were sufficiently apparent. Like most 

 of the so-called daggers which have been found in company with 

 buried bodies, this appears to be too short and too weak to have 

 served the purpose to which a dagger proper would commonly be 

 put ; and this is, as it seems to me, a conclusive reason for think- 

 ing they ought rather to be looked upon as knives, for which they 

 are well fitted, equally by their thin blades and sharp edges. 

 Upon the blade was laid a flint knife ; it is formed from a broad 

 flake, 2 f- in. long, which has the original skin of the flint left on one 

 face : both the edges are carefully chipped along nearly the whole 

 length. Below the blade was a bronze drill or pricker [fig. 104], 



Pig. 104. i. 



2f- in. long 1 . The section at the middle is square ; it then becomes 

 round and, tapering in each direction, terminates in a sharp point 

 at both ends 2 . In front of the chest were six round buttons, five 

 of jet and one of oolitic sandstone, which had been applied to fasten 

 the man's dress 3 . The jet buttons 4 [fig. 105] vary in size, from 

 1J- in. to If in. in diameter, and are slightly conical in form. 

 They have two' holes worked in obliquely at the back, one from 



1 The engraving does not show the sharp-pointed ends in consequence of the oxidised 

 metal having decayed since the implement was discovered. 



2 I have found four like this but smaller, one in a barrow on Flixton Wold [No. Ixxi], 

 two in one barrow at Rudstone [No. Ixii], and the fourth on Goodmanham Wold 

 [No. cxv]. One was met with by Mr. Bateman in a grave under a barrow near High 

 Needham, Derbyshire, where was ' a skeleton ... at the right shoulder were three 

 instruments of flint, and a small bronze awl, tapering each way from the middle, 

 which is square/ Ten Years' Diggings, p. 85. Similar instruments are commonly 

 met with in the Danish barrows, where they are associated with burials after cre- 

 mation. 



8 It will be found in the sequel that, in a barrow at Rudstone [No. Ixviii], a similar 

 conjunction of a bronze knife-dagger and jet buttons was met with. Mr. Bateman, 

 in his account of a barrow on Alsop Moor, Derbyshire, mentions the finding of a 

 skeleton at the centre, and that ' close to the right arm lay a large dagger of brass . . . 

 close to this dagger were two highly polished ornaments made from a kind of 

 bituminous shale . . . circular, and moulded round the edges, having a round elevation 

 on the front to allow of two perforations, which meet in an oblique direction, on the 

 back.' Vestiges, pp. 68, 69. 



4 The button figured has been a failure in the first instance, so far as the perfora- 

 tion is concerned, and that has been remedied by a second boring. 



