Kingston Down Grave 3

In the third, and at about the same depth, I found a skeleton, lying due east and west, the bones of which were almost entirely decayed and gone. Here were very plain signs of a coffin. On the left side, on the outside of the coffin, was the head of a pilum or dart. Here I found also a broken piece of stick, one inch and a half long, which, on examination, I found to be headed or armed with a little iron spike half an inch long; the length of the whole is two inches [M6112]. Its strig, which is very slender, runs through the whole, and has, from its rust, preserved the stick from crumbling, it being, as it were, impregnated with its rust. It is inserted or fixed into the stick at a knot (which still is protuberant), in order perhaps, to hinder the stick from splitting so readily as it otherwise would have done. It has a kind of shoulder, to hinder it from driving when the stroke was given. The knot is very rudely cut; the stock is about the size of the largest end of the strig of a tobacco-pipe; and seems by the knot to have been blackthorn. Whether or not it was designed for an arrow, is more than I dare affirm; though it seems to have been made for some such use. Here also was a small brass buckle; a piece of horn (as it seems), like a peg of a modern violin, seven-eighths of an inch broad [M 6110]; the little points at the top and sides are small bits of brass wire: the iron blade of a knife. Here were also several fragments of a small urn of black earth, which, I believe, was now broken by the carelessness of the workmen.