Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T18:04:37.012Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Celtic Balance-beam of the Christian Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

F. G. Skinner  and
R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

During excavations carried out in 1937 by Mr. G. J. H. Neely on a Viking and pre-Viking site at Ronaldsway in the Isle of Man, a bronze balance-beam was discovered on the edge of a disturbed grave with a lead weight close by. A full account of the excavations appears in this number of the Antiquaries Journal. The balance-beam is, however, of unique interest, and it has been decided to make it the subject of a separate paper which is based on a comparison of the balance with recognized Viking, Saxon, and Romano-British types and on the results of an experiment conducted at the Science Museum, South Kensington. The balance and weight are now in the Manx Museum.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , January 1940 , pp. 87 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1940

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 87 note 1 With the kind permission of the Inspector of Ancient Monuments, replicas of the balance and of the weight have been prepared by the British Museum and are now on exhibition in the Metrology Section of the Science Museum, South Kensington.

page 87 note 2 A fifth cut on the opposite side appears to be an accidental scratch.

page 88 note 1 Weight of steel-wire hook 1·2 grains; original hook would not exceed 3 grains.

page 92 note 1 Arch. xxxviii, 1859, p. 344Google Scholar.

page 92 note 2 Grave 26. Arch. Cantiana, vi, 1866, 161Google Scholar; Brown, Baldwin, Saxon Art and Industry in the Pagan Periods, pp. 417–18, pl. xcviiiGoogle Scholar.

page 92 note 3 Grave 66. Fausset, Bryan, Inventorium Sepulchrale, 1856, p. 22, pl. 17, I, 2, and 3Google Scholar.

page 92 note 4 Smith, Roach, Collectanea Antiqua, iii, 1855Google Scholar, pl. iv, and pp. 1 sqq. Scales were also found. in a Saxon grave in the cemetery at Wheatley, Oxon., by Mr. Leeds, : P.S.A. xxix (1916), p. 56Google Scholar, but the beam was not preserved. Mr. Leeds there quotes the scales published by , Douglas in Nenia Britannica, p. 51, pl. xii, figs. 8–9Google Scholar; but only a fragment of the beam and fulcrum survives of this too.

page 92 note 5 e.g. Catalogue of the Guildhall Museum, p. 36, no. 1, pl. xxiii, 8; Wheeler, R. E. M., London in Roman Times (London Museum Catalogues, no. 3), p. 85, fig. 22, 2Google Scholar; etc.

page 93 note 1 , Hencken, ‘Cahercommaun, a stone fort in County Clare’, Roy. Soc. Antiquaries of Ireland, 1938, extra vol., p. 29Google Scholar.

page 93 note 2 P.R.I.A., xliii, sect. C, no. 5 (1936), fig. 47 b (p. 205).

page 94 note 1 7th Annual Report of the Warden of the Standards, 1873, p. 30Google Scholar.

page 95 note 1 Antiq. Journ. iii, 122 sqq. (1923)Google Scholar.

page 95 note 2 British Museum Guide to Anglo-Saxon Antiquities, 161.

page 95 note 3 Smith, Reginald, Numismatic Chronicle, 1921Google Scholar, and Antiq. Journ. i, 352 (quoting Brogger).

page 96 note 1 Reginald Smith, loc. cit.

page 96 note 2 Ridgeway, loc. cit.; Brøgger, op. cit. 77, footnote. The Roman system was 6 siliquae = I scrupulum; 24 scrupula = I uncia; 12 unciae = 1 libra (B.M. Guide to Roman Britain, 38). The siliqua was nearly 3 grains (that is, barley, or Troy grains), the scruple 17½, and the ounce 421. These values, however, appreciated slightly, and according to Ridgeway (loc. cit) the ounce, after the time of the Punic Wars, consisted of 432 grains, and the scruple had risen to 18. According to Ridgeway, this full Roman ounce of 432 grains was ‘in full use in Mediaeval Ireland’ (loc. cit. 404).

page 96 note 3 In metrological theory. In fact the correspondence is only approximate.

page 97 note 1 L. cit. 126.

page 98 note 1 There are in the Science Museum, South Kensington, however, two Arab steelyards of giant proportions which date from the early medieval period. They are of iron, and the numbers are inlaid in silver.

page 98 note 2 Munro, Robert, Lake-Dwellings of Europe, 393Google Scholar, footnote; P.R.I.A. vii, 1859, 155.

page 98 note 3 Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot, xli, 1906–1907, 443 and fig. 9.

page 99 note 1 The length of the beam is given in the report, p. 444, as 9½ in. Mr. R. B. K. Stevenson of the National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh, where the objects from this burial are deposited on loan, tells me that this is incorrect. The length of the beam is 7½ in.

page 99 note 2 Saga Book of the Viking Club, v, 172; quoted in P.S.A.S. xli, loc. cit.

page 99 note 3 Antiq. Journ. iii, 126.

page 99 note 4 Op. cit. 77, footnote.