can belong to no other than the Roman, if not an earlier, period.'[1]
In the Liverpool Museum, two shoes belonging to the Rolfe collection, and said to have been found by M. Boucher de Perthes on the battle-field of Crêcy, near Abbeville, in 1851, are of the Gaulish or Roman period in shape. I can scarcely believe that they belong to the age in which the famous battle was fought. All my researches lead me to think that this form of shoe was out of use even long before the tenth century. It must not be forgotten, that the district in which the famous battle was fought, has been the scene of conflicts from the earliest times.
The sub-curator of this museum remarks in his notes to me on these specimens, that they 'are remarkable from the nails used to secure them being oblong throughout the shank, and with oblong and narrow flat heads, as is evidenced by the socketed holes.' The size of the first (fig. 25) is 4½ inches long by 4 inches wide; and the second is the same length, but only 3½ inches wide (fig. 26).
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| fig. 25 | fig. 26 |
- ↑ Constitutionnel, May 31, 1865.
