Note 758 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
See p. 181, n. 2, supra; Archaeologia, xliii, 1871, pp. 447-8; and Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age (Brit. Museum), p. 93. Sir John Evans (Anc. Bronze Implements, p. 310), referring to the tanged weapons of Arreton Down type and to certain blades found in the Wiltshire barrows, which (see pp. 145, 147, supra) he thinks ‘may have been the heads of spears rather than the blades of daggers’, remarks that ‘at the period to which they belong the art of making cores must have been known, as the ferrule found at Arreton Down will testify’. This is significant; but on p. 473 he refers the ‘tanged spear-heads or daggers’ to the second period of the Bronze Age,—earlier than that of palstaves and socketed celts.
Mr. C. H. Read (Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age, p. 24) observes that cinerary urns ‘possibly represent the period during which swords and spear-heads of bronze were manufactured ... by our population’. It is true that certain urns of overhanging rim type were contemporary with socketed weapons (Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxxv, 1905, pp. 262-4); but the oldest urns were much earlier. Cf. Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd ser., xviii, 1899-1901, pp. 251-3.