96 Notes on Implements of the Bronze Age found in Wiltshire. 



counties of England, nor fens like those of East Anglia ; for it is 

 from rivers and fens and bogs, both in Ireland and in England, 

 that a large number of the later bronze implements have been 

 recovered. The chalk downs of Wiltshire offered far fewer facilities 

 either for the original loss of such implements or for their preser- 

 vation to remote ages when lost. This, however, does not account 

 for the absence of bronze-founders' hoards deliberately concealed,and , 

 so far as I am aware, only one such founder's hoard — that from Don- 

 head, now in Farnham Museum — has been discovered in the county. 

 Whatever may be the true reason, it is certain that Wiltshire 

 has, compared even with some of the neighbouring counties, very 

 few relics of this period to show, and such as there are have for 

 the most part never been recorded or described in any Wiltshire 

 publication.^ Before, however, coming to these later implements, 

 it may be worth while to mention a few of the more remarkable 

 of the earlier implements from the barrows which have been de- 

 scribed and illustrated by Hoare, Thurnam, and others. In at- 

 tempting, as I have done at the end of these notes, to compile a 

 catalogue of all the bronze objects (of the Bronze Age) recorded as 

 found in the county, the difficulty of attaining to anything like 

 accuracy is very great. I do not, indeed, think that any considerable 

 number of objects now existing either in museums or in private 

 collections has escaped notice;-^ but, on the other hand, in quite a 

 number of cases where " Brass Spear Heads " or " Lance Heads " 

 are mentioned in Ancient Wilts, ov elsewhere, there is no possibility of 

 identifying them with any specimens now existing. I have assumed 

 that these " Spear " or " Lance " heads, found in barrows, were in all j 

 cases really Daggers or small Knife Daggers, an opinion which Hoare 



1 " Notes on Objects of the Bronze Age found in Wiltshire," with the 

 illustrations comprised in five of the plates accompanying this paper, ap- 

 peared in The Reliquary and Illustrated Archceologist, Oct., 1908. The 

 illustrations given m the text are mostly from the Catalogue of the Stourhead 

 Collection^ and are in many cases reduced from the engravings in Hoare's 

 Ancient Wilts. 



2 The only objects as to which I am conscious that the list is imperfect, 

 are two or three Celts or Palstaves in the collection of Mr. J. W. Brooke, of 

 Marlborough, which I have not been able to include. 



