of a more simple kind, for instance of wood covered with leather, and sometimes also bordered with metal. There occur also round metal plates, with protruding points, which it is supposed must have covered the middle of such shields. They are in general very beautifully wrought, and adorned with the same kind of spiral ornaments as the battle-axe already mentioned.
Of helmets, one single relic alone has hitherto been discovered, namely the piece which covered the chin, together with two bars which went over the face. The chin-piece is partly gilded, that is, covered with a thin plate of gold, and on the whole of the exterior surface the most beautiful spiral ornaments are engraved. Though but a fragment, it is of
tenham or Day's Lock, upon the river Isis, about half a mile above the junction of that river with the Thame stream, and now in the British Museum.
It is ornamented with two series of round bosses between raised concentric circles, having a large boss or umbo in the centre. All the bosses are punched in the metal except four, two of which form the rivets to the handle within, and two are the rivets to the metal extremities apparently of a strap, these four bosses being consequently moveable. It is fully described in the Archæologia, vol. xxvii. p. 298.
For descriptions of two other specimens of bronze bucklers now at Somerset House, see pp. 16, 17 of Mr. Way's Catalogue of Antiquities, &c., in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries of London.—T.
