PARISH Oi' 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|- 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], 



Fig. 104, i. 



2| in, long^ The section at the middle is square; it then becomes 

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

 at both ends^. 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^. The jet buttons* [fig, 105] vary in size, from 

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

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



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

 metal having decayed since the implement was discovered. 



■^ I have fovmd fom- like this but smaller, one in a barrow on Flixton Wold [No. Ixxi], 

 two in one barrow at Rudstone [No. Ixii], and the foiu-th on Goodmauham Wold 

 [No. cxv]. One was met -w-ith 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 \vith burials after cre- 

 mation. 



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

 coniunction 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 wei-e two highly polished ornaments made fi-om a kind of 

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

 on the front to allow of two pei-forations, which meet in an oblique direction, on the 

 back.' Vestiges, pp. 68, 69. 



* The button figured has been a failm-e iu the first instance, so far as the iierfora- 

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



