PARISH OF BUTTERWTCK. 189 



heels ; moreover, from the presence of decayed wood on the sides 

 of the blade, it would seem as if the axe had been protected by a 

 wooden sheath. To all appearance the weapon had been worn 

 slung 1 from the waist. The blade is of the simplest form, modelled 

 on the pattern of the stone axe, and may, it is probable, be regarded 

 as the earliest type of bronze axe, antecedently to the appearance 

 of either flanges or socket. It is 4 in. long, 2f in. wide at the 

 cutting edge, and 1J in. at the smaller end. It had evidently 

 been fixed into a solid handle to a depth of two inches, and that 

 part of the blade which had been inserted into the handle has a 

 perfectly different appearance on the oxidised surface of the metal 

 from that part which has been exposed. The wood of the handle 

 had no doubt remained for many centuries more or less undecayed, 

 and so had prevented that end of the axe-head covered by it from 

 being acted upon, by one agency or another, to the same extent 

 that the exposed end had been. 



In the grave, but not in close connection with the body, were 

 several flint chippings, a long flint scraper, much used, three pieces 

 of a richly-decorated ' food vessel,' and some charcoal. On the 

 bottom of the grave, at the east side, was a layer of dark matter 

 like decayed wood, 2 ft. long, 9 in. wide, and 1 in. thick. In the 

 material of the barrow were several bones, belonging to four oxen 

 and one pig, together with half the lower jaw of an adult bos 

 longifrons. 



In regard to the variety of articles found associated with an 

 individual interment, this is one of the most instructive I have 

 met with; and it enables us to bring together the knife-dagger 

 and the simple axe-head, and to class them' as belonging to one 

 and the same, and that an early, time in the Bronze Age. From 

 the type of either of these implements singly, we might well 

 assume it to be an early specimen of metal-work, but the additional 

 support given to this view, from the circumstance of their being 

 associated, is of considerable force. The fact of a flint implement 

 forming a part of the buried man's equipment w T ould not in itself 

 prove that the burial belonged to the early bronze period ; because, 

 as is fully ascertained, both flint and other stone were in use for 

 certain purposes throughout the whole of the Bronze Age. Still 

 of course, so far as it is significant of date, it is in favour of an 

 early one. We seem to learn, from the concomitants of this burial, 

 what the general nature of barrow burials ever tends to prove 

 though not to the same extent, for it is seldom that so many 



