Frazer and Johnson — On Five Gold Fibiilce. 781 



fusion. It would be necessary to have a small orifice at the base for 

 the purpose of applying a bellows of considerable power in order to 

 get up the required heat for the fusion of fine gold. The crucible 

 would be buried in the centre of the glowing mass, covered on all 

 sides with charcoal ; and it is necessary to add a *' flux," such as salt- 

 petre or borax, in order to make the gold flow. The next stage was 

 the casting of the ingot. 



An indentation cut in stone or the pressure of a piece of wood of the 

 required form into the soft blue clay would, when baked, answer the 

 purpose. Into this the gold was carefully poured, and they would 

 thus have pieces of metal somewhat near the required shape. Mere 

 castings would not do, for in this stage gold is of a porous and spongy 

 nature ; it then requires to be well hammered, as all these ancient 

 gold ai'ticles have the strongest evidence of being very close in the 

 grain. 



Fibula marked A, the largest one of the five, weighs 17 oz. 

 lOdwt. lOgrs., and is made of five separate pieces (figs. 1,2, PL XXX.). 

 The bow shown in figure 3 is a solid bar of gold which has been 

 hammered from the ingot, and finished by the process known as swaging, 

 as follows : — A tapering hollow cut in a stone is finished to a nice 

 smooth surface ; this would act as the anvil, and a corresponding hollow 

 cut in a smaller stone would form the swage. The gold would be put 

 between those grooves and the swage struck with the hammer repeatedly 

 while the gold was turned at every blow ; thus it would obtain a smooth 

 surface and be quite circular. Some such method must have been 

 adopted in making this bar as it shows no hammer marks, the ingot 

 being forged straight and afterwards bent. More difficult forgings are 

 the two cups for the ends of the fibula as shown in fig. 4 : these 

 would require two or three different kinds of " belchering tools " 

 or shaped anvils to form them : the socket fitted accurately the end 

 of the bow and was " sweated " on to it. This " sweating " is in fact 

 surface meli iug, and gold has this peculiar property that under a high 

 temperature the extreme surface becomes molten so that two surfaces 

 like the bow in the socket when so treated join together and in fact 

 weld ; nothing of the nature of solder {i.e. inferior gold that melts at 

 a lower temperature) is ever found in any of these fibulae. Gold of 

 inferior quality cannot be sweated together ; when it arrives at the 

 fusing point it suddenly collapses into the molten state. A slight 

 projecting of the collar of these cups beyond the line of the bow shows 

 conclusively that they were " put on " in the manner described and 

 were separate pieces. Now, the edge had to be attached, and one 



