Three Bronze Age Hoards recently added to the National Collection, with Notes on the Hoard from Duddingston Loch

Abstract

The Auchnacree hoard of bronze objects consisted of two flat axes, the cutting half of another, two knives and an armlet. At Quoykea two bronze implements, a socketed knife and a razor were recovered. Two flat bronze axes were found in Nairnshire. The Duddingston hoard discovered in 1778 was described as follows: A quantity of Roman arms consisting of 23 pieces of the heads of the hasta and jaculum; 20 pieces of the blades, and nine of the handles of the gladius and pugio; a ring three inches in diameter, fastened to the end of a staple; and a mass of different pieces of these arms, run together by fire, all of brass; sculls and other human bones, together with the horns of animals of the deer and elk species, dragged out of the middle of a bed of shell marie at the bottom of his loch of Duddingston." Many of the items are now lost and the remaining objects comprise the ring of a cauldron, thirty-two fragments of swords, the point of a rapier blade, the larger part of a small dagger or knife and fragments of fourteen spear-heads.