104 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



quite coiDpery-looking, and is, no doubt, of copper, or a bronze poor in tin ; 

 and though somewhat unusual in type for Italy, there appears to be no 

 reason to doubt the locality of the specimen, which was acquired by Sir A. W. 

 Frankes in Lombardy. Pigorini, who saw this blade, compared it to Evans' 

 figui-e 334, a straight, triangular blade about 10 inches long, from Ballygalway, 

 County Tyrone/ Through the kindness of the authorities at the British 

 Museum, Mr. E. Armstrong has made an outline drawing of the blade, which 

 I reproduce here.^ Though there is a general resemblance between all these 

 heavy riveted blades, as in the case of that from Ballygalway, a close affinity 

 of type also exists to the blades from Stendal, with which region a relation may 

 be inferred from an early time by the Brenner Pass and the Upper Elbe valley. 

 The mark of the handle across the butt on both sides is irregularly curved, 

 which agrees with the slope in the line of the rivets, and indicates that the 

 blade was mounted with a slope downward; there appears to be no doubt 

 that it was a halberd. The rivet-holes are nearly square, wliich perhaps 

 recall the square hole in butt-ends of some of the primitive flat celts from 

 the ^gean.^ The copper character, and possibly the square form of the rivet- 

 holes, indicate an early date for this blade. 



As Montelius remarks, the halberd-blade can be distinguished from the 

 broad dagger by the mark of the handle, which is curved or indented in the 

 case of the dagger, but straight across in that of the halberd. This is generally 

 true ; but there seem to be some exceptions in the case of primitive blades, 

 as shown in the Siret plates. 



There is another point which has not been noticed hitherto, as far as I am 

 aware. The hindmost rivets, both in the case of blades with four rivets, and 

 those with three only, are shorter than those in front of them ; this I have 

 shown in the side-views of several specimens ; and the way in which the 

 heads of the rivets have been sloped when being burred by the hammering 

 further emphasizes this feature. The shortness of the end-rivets and slope 

 of the heads imply that the handle was rounded off behind the blade, as 

 would be the case with a transverse shaft. So there appears to be no room 

 for doubt as to the manner in which even the long scythe-shaped blades were 

 mounted on handles, though some uncertainty was formerly expressed on the 

 subject. 



In the great majority of examples, the halberds were mounted at right 

 angles to the shaft, and not inclined downwards, as was more usual in the case 

 of celts, even in the Stone Age, which was adapted to a controlled blow 



1 " Bulletino di Paletnologia Italiano," vol. 8 (1882), p. 171. 



- Also figured in Montelius' " La Civilisation rrimitive en Italie," PI. I. B. Sii. 



^ "British. Museum Guide," Bronze Age, fig. 119. 



