BRONZE KNII'E-DAGGERS. 



47 



the double purpose which the two weapons in question fulfilled, 

 and many of them are so short that they might almost be classed 

 amongst daggers. 



The circumstance that the knife-dagger, knife (of the barrows), 

 &c. are not found with swords, spear-heads, socketed celts, knives 

 (of the hoards), &c., is very difficult to account for, if they are all 

 to be referred to the same period. It may be said that knife- 

 daggers were manufactured specially for burial purposes, and would 

 not therefore be likely to occur in association with the ordinary 

 implements of daily use. The evident signs 

 of wear upon many of them is, however, 

 quite inconsistent wdth such an explana- 

 tion. Again, it may be said that imple- 

 ments like the knife-dagger or knife (of 

 the barrows) would be kept in use until 

 there was but little left of them, and that 

 therefore they would not be likely to 

 occur in many of the hoards, which seem 

 to have been collections of damaged and 

 broken implements gathered together for 

 the purpose of being recast. But articles of 

 quite as small a size as a knife-dagger would 

 ever be reduced to by whetting are common 

 enough in the hoards; and it must also 

 be remembered that many of the largo 

 finds have not been of broken articles, 

 but of those which were quite new, or, at 

 all events, perfect. 



The plain axe has been mentioned as 

 one of the bronze implements found in 

 barrows, and as the facts connected with 

 that implement have a very important 

 bearing upon the question of the age of 

 these places of sepulture, it becomes ne- 

 cessary to devote some consideration to 

 it. By the plain axe is meant the simple form of the implement, 

 like that figured at p. 45, which appears to have been based 



Fi- 11 



Arreton Downi, was discovered at Plymstock, Devon. There were no paalstabs of the 

 •later form, no socketed celts, spear-heads nor swords, but knife-daggers, an early, 

 though not perhaps the earliest, form of axe, a narrow chisel, &c. Arch. Journ. 

 xxvi. 316. 



