Armstrong — Some Irish Bronze-Age Finds. 



145 



The exact purpose these penanniilar cup-ended rings were intended to 

 serve is uncertain. It has been considered that they passed as a form of 

 currency,' on account of their similarity in form to the so-called African 

 manillas, used as a medium of exchange by the natives of the West Coast of 



Fig. 7. 

 Bronze rings, &c., from Brockagh, Co. Westmeatli (i). 



Africa, the date of such mcmillas, as shown by the Benin castings, going 

 back at least as early as the sixteenth century. Another view is that some 

 forms of these rings were used as brooches for fastening the dress.^ 



' Betham, Trans. Royal Irish Academy, xvii, pp. 7-17 and 91-96 ; also Coffey, 

 Bronze Age in Ireland, pp. 69, 70. 



- Wilde, "Catalogue of Gold Antiquities," p. 59. 



