110 On a Piece of Perforated Slate 



would appear to be not an improbable supposition, that it served 

 the purpose of a brace or shield to protect the left arm of the 

 wearer against the rap of the string in shooting with the bow, a 

 weapon with the use of which the early inhabitants of this island 

 were familiar, as we are aware from the flint arrow heads found 

 deposited with their sepulchral remains. This opinion which I 

 have formed concerning the part of the body on which the slate 

 tablet was worn, is strengthened by observing that on the edges of 

 its concave side opposite two of the holes a slight depression is 

 visible, apparently caused by the friction of the ligament, whether 

 fibre of bark, or sinew of an animal by which it was attached to 

 the arm. As a collateral support of my theory regarding its use, 

 may be considered the position in which an oblong flat piece of the 

 chlorite slate 4i 0 inches in length and lfo inches in breadth, similarly 

 smoothed, pierced with holes at the corners the same in number, 

 but countersunk on both sides, was discovered in a barrow on 

 Roundway Hill near 'Devizes, in front of the breast of a skeleton, 

 between the bones of the left fore arm, nearly the situation which it 

 would have occupied on the person of the individual when living, 

 had it been worn in accordance with my conjecture about the use 

 of the hollowed slate as a shooting brace, (vide pi. vii. fig. 2.) 

 A flint arrow head deposited in the same tumulus with this body, 

 indicating it to have been that of a person who had been a bowman 

 in his life time, seems also to add force to the supposition that the 

 plate had been employed for the purpose which I have suggested. 

 The adherence however to this plate of a small bronze pin much 

 corroded, though not on account of its proximity necessarily con- 

 nected with the use of the slate, and the absence of convexity and 

 of any depression similar to those opposite to the holes on the 

 Worcestershire slate, renders it not at all surprising that its use as a 

 wrist shield in shooting with the bow, did not suggest itself to so 

 sagacious an antiquary as Mr. Cunnington its discoverer and des- 

 criber in the Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine, vol. iii., p. 186. He 

 doubtless was led to or at least confirmed in his conclusion by the 

 opinion of Sir Richard C. Hoare, concerning the use of a somewhat 

 similar slate tablet asserted by him in his Ancient Wiltshire to 



