PARISH OF HELPERTHORPE. 



207 



of the bones of which were found in it. The unburnt body, with 

 the bone pin, there can be little doubt, was also an introduced one, 

 for disturbed bones were found about it. Six 

 feet west-north-west of the centre was a 

 body, laid upon the natural surface, as indeed 

 were all the others previously mentioned. 

 It was that of a strongly-made old man, who 

 was laid upon the left side, with the head 

 to the east. The left hand was up to the 

 face, the right in front of the knees, and 

 holding a bronze knife-dagger, the point of 

 which was touching the chin [fig. 108]. 

 Three bronze rivets, f- in. long, which had 

 fastened the two plates forming the sides of 

 the ox-horn handle, were within the bones 

 of the hand, and just clear of the hand was 

 the bone termination of the handle 1 [fig. 

 109], 1| in. long and J- in. deep, which had 

 been affixed to it by two pegs, probably of 

 wood. The blade had been fastened to the 

 handle (which had the usual semi-lunar 

 termination) by other two bronze rivets ; 

 these are still in the holes of the blade 

 and are T 5 g- in. long. This knife-dagger, 

 4Jin. long, is very thin, and has almost 

 certainly been brought to its present sharply-pointed form by long- 

 continued use and whetting 2 . It is the same type of instrument, 

 more intended for cutting: than for 



O 



stabbing, as that found in the barrow 

 at Butterwick [No. xxxix] with the 

 bronze axe and drill ; indeed, before 

 it was so much whetted away it was 

 probably not unlike that, so far at least as the blade is concerned. 



Fig. 108. 



Fig. 109. 



1 Bone terminations of the handle similar to this have been met with in barrows on 

 the wolds, at Garton and at Bishop Burton, and are engraved, Archseol., vol. xliii. p. 

 441, figs. 143, 145. One was found in the tree-coffin from Gristhorpe, and is now in 

 the Scarborough Museum ; it is figured in Crania Brit., pi. 52. They have occurred in 

 the barrows on the moors in the North Riding, and one from thence is in the pos- 

 session of Mr. Kendall of Pickering. Outside of Yorkshire they have been found in 

 Derbyshire and Wiltshire, and a very beautiful one, but made of amber, was dis- 

 covered by Mr. Spence Bate, F.R.S., in a barrow on Dartmoor. 



2 So far as can be judged from the exceedingly rude woodcut, one very like this 

 was found in Carder Lowe, near Hartington, Derbyshire. Bateman, Vestiges, p. 63. 



