Issue no 47, September 1999

Research on Anglo-Saxon warfare highlights the use of the slashing sword and spear. Richard Underwood reports

The Anglo-Saxons first came to Britain as mercenaries and invaders, and later steadfastly resisted the Vikings. Their popular image has always been that of fierce fighting men. Yet what was it actually like to encounter an Anglo-Saxon - or indeed to be an Anglo-Saxon - in battle?

Archaeology helps to answer this question, and we are fortunate that the Anglo-Saxons often chose to bury their dead with the weapons and armour that demonstrated their status as warriors. To understand how and why the weapons were used, however, we have to rely more on literary records.

Unfortunately, records written by the Anglo-Saxons about themselves tell us little about the way in which war was conducted, and we are forced to supplement them with accounts of other Germanic societies, in particular from earlier Roman writings and later Viking sagas. What we learn is that although the style of weapons changed over the Anglo-Saxon period, the way in which they were used remained broadly the same.

Two weapons largely defined the Anglo-Saxon social order, the spear and the sword. Slaves were denied the right to bear arms, and consequently ownership of a spear defined a man as free and a warrior in Germanic society. The cost and prestige of a sword, however, marked its owner as a man of rank. Both the axe and the seax, the eponymous weapon of the Saxon, were primarily domestic implements and appear to have only rarely been employed as weapons.

Although finds of archery equipment are rare, literary and artistic evidence suggest that archery was more common than the grave evidence would suggest. This should not be surprising since neither bow staves nor arrows are likely to survive in English soil.

Unlike continental German tribes such as the Franks and the Goths, the Anglo-Saxons seem not to have employed cavalry.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 1055 records how the army (or fyrd) from Herefordshire, in battle with the Welsh, fled before a single spear was thrown because they had been ordered to fight on horseback, contrary to their custom. Armies did, however, use horses to increase their strategic mobility. At the battle of Maldon in 991, fought against Viking invaders, the Anglo-Saxons rode to the battlefield but then dismounted and fought on foot.

The spear is by far the most common type of weapon found and was the primary armament of the Anglo-Saxon warrior from king to ceorl. It comprised an iron spearhead and a wooden shaft, traditionally of ash, around 2m long.

Spears were usually wielded onehanded, with a shield held in the other hand. In this way they could be used both as missiles and as thrusting weapons for hand to hand combat. The spear would have had limited use in single combat; to be effective, ranks of spearmen stood together in what is now called a `shieldwall'.

The Anglo-Saxons had several names for this formation: scyldburh, `shield-fortress', bordweal, `board-wall' and wihagan,`war-hedge'. In this way the warriors gained mutual protection from each other's shields, whilst presenting a thicket of spearpoints to the enemy.

It is generally assumed that the men stood close together, with the edges of their shields almost touching or even overlapping, often in a formation several ranks deep. In practice the thickness and depth of the shield-wall would probably have varied, depending on the size of the battlefield and the number of men involved.

An Anglo-Saxon sword had a broad two-edged iron blade typically 90cm long and 5cm wide. Most Anglo-Saxon sword-blades were forge welded from many small pieces of iron into a single blade - a result of the poor quality of the iron available. However, the strongest swords were made by a process known as pattern welding in which iron rods were twisted together and then forge welded, producing patterns on the surface of the blade that were highly prized.

The weight and balance of Anglo-Saxon swords suggest they were mainly used for heavy cutting strokes rather than thrusting and parrying. Anglo-Saxon sources, however, rarely have sufficient detail to give insight into exactly how the sword was used. The Viking sagas, although composed later, provide a more vivid picture.

Three main strokes appear to have been made: to the head, either downwards to land on the head or shoulders, or sideways aimed at the neck, both clearly intended as killing blows; to the lower (left) leg, below the shield; and to the sword arm. The following descriptions of combat show the damage these blows could inflict:

Then Thorbjorn rushed upon Grettir and struck at him, but he parried it with the buckler in his left hand and struck with his sword a blow which severed Thorbjorn's shield in two and went into his head, reaching the brain. (Grettir's Saga)

Then he turned upon Gunnar himself and struck a blow that severed his shield right across below the handle, and the sword struck his leg below the knee. Then with another rapid blow he killed him. (Grettir's Saga)

Then he drew his sword and smote at Modolf; but Modolf made a cut at him too, and Kari's sword fell on Modolf's hilt, and glanced off it on to Modolf's wrist, and took the arm off, and down it fell, and the sword too. (Njal's saga)

Archaeological evidence of weapon injuries on the skeletal remains of the dead suggests that the violence of these passages is not exaggerated. For example, in a recent survey of six skeletons from the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Eccles, Kent, all of which showed evidence of weapon injuries, three bore single long sword-cuts to the left hand side of the skull. The other three had multiple injuries. One had been hit three times on the left hand side of the skull. The second had been hit in the spine by a projectile, either an arrow or a javelin, which probably disabled him, followed by a single sword-cut to the head.

The third had suffered a particularly brutal death with evidence of at least 18 separate sword-cuts. There were a minimum of seven blows to the head, three to the arms and eight to the back. The cuts to the arms would have severed the muscles, preventing him from making any effective resistance. This was then followed by the blows to the head and back that must certainly have been fatal. Indeed on all the victims the blows to the head would have been incapacitating, if not immediately fatal.

It should be remembered that the injuries listed above represent only those that were deep enough to damage the bone. The victims may have suffered other soft tissue injuries, such as piercing blows from spear thrusts.

For defence against injury the Anglo-Saxon warrior relied almost exclusively on his shield. Nearly a quarter of male burials contain evidence of a shield. In contrast, the other types of protective equipment, helmets and ring-mail body armour, were reserved for only the richest and most important warriors. Only four helmets have been found, all bar one elaborately decorated. Mail, although frequently described in verse, has only survived once in the richest Anglo-Saxon burial ever found - Sutton Hoo.

Anglo-Saxon shields were made from a circular wooden board, between 35 and 90cm in diameter, at the centre of which was fitted an iron boss. The board behind the boss was cut away and a grip fitted across the opening, by which the shield was held. The shield was often covered with leather and decorated with fittings of iron or bronze.

The wide variation in the size of shields may reflect variations in the style of warfare. A small shield is by virtue of its size much lighter and more manoeuvrable; it is therefore more suited to single combat or small skirmishes. In contrast larger shields are more useful in pitched battles, particularly against missile weapons.

The most important element of warfare, however, is morale. In many ways the whole of Anglo-Saxon society was centred on the development of espirit de corps within the warband. This was forged as the warriors spent their days together hunting, and their nights together at the mead bench. Status within the group was everything and was worth dying for. Time after time warriors `earned their mead' defending their lord, standing by him in the shieldwall and, in the end, dying alongside him.

Thought shall be the harder, heart the keener, mood shall be more, though our might diminishes.

Here lies our lord, hewn down,
the good man lies in the dirt. May he lament
who now from this war-play thinks to leave.
I am an old man, I will not go,
but beside my lord,
by that dear man, do I think to lie.
(Battle of Maldon, 312)

Dr Richard Underwood works as a defence analyst and is a member of an Anglo-Saxon and Late Roman re-enactment group. His book, Anglo-Saxon Weapons & Warfare, was published by Tempus earlier this year priced £18.99.

Finds from one of the most important excavations of the 1990s have now produced a vivid portrait of a Romano-British village, writes Mark Atkinson

It was originally thought to be the site of a Roman town and port. It turned out to be a village - and a fairly scruffy one at that, at least in its latter years. Boggy in places, lots of weeds and mud; not perhaps the nicest place for a Romano-Briton to have lived.

Yet archaeologists working at Heybridge were far from disappointed with the site. So extensive were the 1993-95 excavations, near Maldon on the south-eastern Essex coast, that a detailed portrait has been drawn of a Late Iron Age and Roman village throughout its 500-year life.

Archaeologists have recreated the work the inhabitants carried out, the food they ate, the clothes they wore. The village street plan, with a temple at its heart, has been worked out; and it is possible to see how, once smartly designed and constructed, the fabric of the village gradually slipped into decay. Weeds have been identified which began to grow in people's gardens.

Coins have been found that fell out of the villagers' pockets as they bought goods at the village market place. Pots and platters that were smashed at the end of some great ceremonial feast have also come to light. Graves have survived belonging to villagers whose remains stayed in the ground centuries after the village itself was forgotten.

The excavations at Heybridge began because of the impending development of the site by Bovis Homes. Earlier finds had indicated that substantial Iron Age and Roman remains lay underground, and the new development promised to uncover almost 75 acres of this settlement site and its surrounding landscape. Such a large area of a Roman settlement had rarely before been available for detailed archaeological exploration. In the end, two seasons of excavation were carried out by Essex County Council's Field Archaeology Unit (see BAN, November 1994).

Settlement at Heybridge began in the Late Iron Age (c 50BC onwards). The village survived the Roman period but was abandoned soon afterwards.

Although lifestyles may have changed from the Iron Age to Roman periods, this reflects a gradual progression rather than a radical break. In the archaeological record of Heybridge, the Roman conquest shows as a very blurred boundary, and the two periods are best considered together.

What did the settlement look like? It was clearly a village, because no features were found that would suggest a town in any sense that a Roman would recognise. There were no defences, no administrative buildings, no military presence. There were no baths, no theatre, no statues or inscriptions, nothing resembling a forum, no public architecture except a temple. Agriculture was always the primary occupation of the majority of the inhabitants.

In the Late Iron Age, the settlement seems to have been dispersed, with clusters of huts representing family units spread out over a developed agricultural landscape which was sub-divided by boundary ditches, gardens and trackways. A focus of this dispersed settlement may well have been a pair of shrines found under the Roman temple.

By the beginning of the Roman period, the village was already well ordered with the tracks replaced by gravel-surfaced roads. The main road led into the village from the north, with three side streets leading off to the east. These were only surfaced in the centre of the village and quickly petered out into tracks.

This network of roads dominated the layout of the settlement. Regular plots of land, bounded by ditches, fences and perhaps hedges, fronted onto them and each one was occupied by a house.

In the middle of the village, particularly around the temple, large areas of land were stripped of topsoil and surfaced with gravel. One of these, just north of the temple, may have been a market place. Another, to the east, looks as if it was associated with the temple's rituals. The village may have looked impressive when its gravel roads and surfaces were first laid, but it seems that after a time these were not kept clean and were allowed to become overgrown with weeds. Soils composed mainly of animal dung suggest that animals may have been wandering freely.

To make matters worse, some lower-lying areas were probably prone to seasonal or periodic flooding. The villagers attempted to combat this by dumping soil and rubbish to raise the ground surface. This seems to have been reasonably successful, as occupation continued on top of this build-up.

Within this gradually declining environment, the villagers led their daily lives. If not working in the fields, people carried out domestic and manufacturing activities close to the family dwelling. It seems that cookery was carried out outside, presumably to reduce the risk of setting the house, with its thatched roof, on fire. This was obviously a real possibility - excavation revealed the charred footings of a building which burnt down in the late 2ndcentury.

Bread was a staple food. Wheat may also have been made into a sort of porridge. Meat seems to have been readily available, either fresh or salted. Hunted game might have been consumed on feast days. Although few remains of fish were recovered, these must also have been common meals. Fruit and vegetables leave little trace, but would have been regular parts of the diet. Grain was malted to make beer or ale. Milk would also have been in plentiful supply, and could also have been used to make cheese. The head of a single honey bee suggests that honey may have been eaten either by itself or as a sweetener.

The villagers themselves would not have been dressed as we might picture Roman citizens - they certainly did not wear white togas! The large number of 1st century brooches on the site show that cloaks, or other garments fastened by a brooch, must have been common.

Wool and leather would have been the chief fabrics used for clothing. Most garments were probably fairly plain and coarse.

Heybridge contained, at most, around 50 individual land plots, perhaps one per family, suggesting a maximum population of some 350-400 people. The true population figure is likely to have been lower for most of the life of the site, perhaps rarely passing 200. With no good source of building stone nearby, virtually all the buildings in the village were wooden.

These have only left partial traces of their existence in the form of postholes and slots.

In the Late Iron Age, buildings took the form of circular huts, arranged in clusters or compounds. Huts normally had an east-facing doorway, sometimes with a porch. This traditional style of dwelling continued into the Roman period, but in time were replaced by rectangular buildings. Whether round or rectangular, all were of similar construction with wooden upright posts supporting a thatched roof. The walls were of wattle and daub.

It is difficult to know how ornate the carpentry in these houses may have been. However, waterlogged timbers preserved as linings in Roman wells show that wood-working techniques were sophisticated and that the carpenters were quite capable of producing substantial buildings which possibly lasted for centuries. The surfaces of the well timbers still bore tool marks which showed that the Roman carpenter had a range of chisels, axes, adzes, and saws in his kit.

Village life revolved around the agricultural year, with arable farming being the main occupation. North of the village, an area of landscape was investigated which revealed large fields, divided from one another by ditches, in which cereal crops were cultivated - probably wheat for the most part. Corn driers within these fields indicate that the crops were processed close to where they were harvested. Once brought into the village, the grain was stored or converted into flour. Querns, large grinding stones, were common finds.

Vegetables and fruit were also grown - probably in gardens in the village itself. Tools such as pruning hooks and pollarding axes were found, as were iron sickle blades which were used for gathering the straw from the cereal crops, valuable as thatch for roofing.

There were also areas of pasture where the villagers grazed their livestock - cattle, sheep and pigs. While the cattle were herded in the pastures of the valley bottom, sheep would most likely have been grazed in the saltmarshes along the estuary. Pigs may have been allowed to roam in the woodland. The animals supplied meat, hides, wool, milk and bone. A small number of horses and dogs were kept for transport and hunting, and cattle may have provided traction for ploughing or pulling carts.

Woodland was another important resource. Oak timbers from wells show that, by the 2nd century, the slow-grown woodlands near the village had mostly been cleared. Thereafter, the wood was from fast-grown trees in more open plantations, which could only be converted into narrower planks. Hazels were coppiced to produce withies for the wattling used in the walls of houses. Felling, conversion and curing of timber would have been undertaken during the winter months.

Inshore marine and freshwater fishing was no doubt practised in the Blackwater estuary. Fish bones recovered from pits and wells indicate that flounder and plaice were the most commonly caught species, presumably on lines or in shoreline traps. During the Roman period, oysters were harvested - an imported taste as none were found in Iron Age deposits.

The villagers were not wholly occupied in agriculture. Living in what was a relatively isolated rural area, they had to be self-sufficient.

Crafts involving the working of leather, wood and bone were all carried out in order to provide people with day-to-day items such as clothing, furniture and even personal items such as hair-pins and combs.

The spinning and weaving of wool to produce cloth was carried out in the home. Spindle whorls were used to make wool into thread which was then woven on looms. Vertical looms were used in the Late Iron Age and many broken, triangular-shaped, loomweights were found in the pits of this date. The horizontal loom was introduced by the Romans. This did not require weights to tension the threads and so none were found in Roman pits.

One of the major `industrial' activities was the forging and casting of metals - mainly iron and bronze. Tools and domestic implements were the principal items made, though objects of ornamentation such as jewellery or figurines may also have been produced. Amongst the large number of iron artefacts from the site are hammers, chisels, awls, axes, knives, shears and saw blades.

Tile hearths in the `back yards' of house plots may have been used for the heating of bronze. Pits close by often contained quantities of slag and bronze waste and even broken clay moulds - debris from the casting of bronze. There is no sign that metal-working was the preserve of a specialist, such as a village blacksmith. Rather, each house-plot produced some evidence, which suggests that every family possessed some skill in these crafts.

Pottery was manufactured on a small scale, judging from the five kilns found on the site. These kilns probably produced grey domestic vessels such as bowls and jars for use within the village. Pottery production was probably a seasonal activity, undertaken in the summer months when the clay could be left outside to dry before being fired.

Away from the site, in the saltmarshes of the Blackwater estuary, villagers may have extracted salt from sea water. Fragments of the clay evaporation tanks used for this have been found within the settlement. As well as a condiment, salt would have been used as a preservative for meat.

Even before the Roman conquest, there were people in the village wealthy enough to import fine pottery from as far afield as Gaul and Southern Italy. These people were even drinking Italian wine, which arrived in amphorae.

Early in the Roman period, the supply of pottery from other parts of Britain and the continent increased, giving the impression that the settlement enjoyed a period of prosperity. However, from the 2nd century the range of foreign pottery and other rich imports dropped steadily. By this time only one type of imported fine pottery, a red tableware called samian, arrived at the settlement in any quantity, along with Spanish amphorae now containing olive oil or fish sauce rather than wine.

Other items which reached the village through trade included glass vessels and metal brooches. Quernstones, though basic items, could not be produced locally; lava querns were imported from the Rhineland and querns made of Millstone Grit from the Pennines.

Coins were used at Heybridge before the conquest, but the large number of Roman coins shows that by this period money was necessary for engaging in trade. The Roman coins were nearly all low-value bronze types and were spread across the middle of the village, with far fewer towards the edges. This suggests that coins were being used as small change for market transactions. Close to the centre of this spread, next to the temple, was an open space which may have been a market place, where villagers and farmers from the surrounding countryside came together to sell their surplus crops and livestock. In return, they bought tools, domestic items such as pottery and perhaps clothing and jewellery. Before the Roman conquest, in about 10BC, a quantity of Italian wine amphorae and fine Gaulish platters, flagons and cups were broken and then burnt. They were then buried in a pit. We can speculate that this deliberate deposit was the aftermath of a great feast, maybe at a funeral. Up to 100 litres of wine may have been drunk from the amphorae in this one pit alone.

The presence of two buildings interpreted as shrines shows that Iron Age Heybridge had a religious focus, and this may have been the main reason for the village's expansion in the early Roman period. The Iron Age shrines were replaced by a far grander temple precinct which contained a circular temple and a number of other buildings - possibly smaller shrines or even priests' quarters. The temple was rebuilt in the mid-2nd century and probably survived until the end of the Roman settlement.

It is likely that large numbers of pilgrims were drawn to the site from the surrounding territory, perhaps on particular days of the Roman religious calendar. We cannot say which deity was worshipped here, for there are very few clues. The Roman god Mercury or the goddess Venus may be suggested by some of the finds, but it is more likely to have been a local god or goddess who became Romanised.

As well as formal religious observance, superstitious practice was a feature of day-to-day life. Small items which may be charms or amulets were found throughout the site.

A cosmological view of the rhythms of life seems to have been important. Houses were generally orientated with their doorways facing east, towards the rising sun. Pits and ditches were sometimes subject to a rite of closure when they passed out of use. When they were backfilled, complete pots, no doubt containing offerings, and sometimes animal carcasses were deliberately placed in them. This is very different from the normal disposal of broken pottery and bones as rubbish. A well which was back-filled in the late Roman period was found to contain the skeletons of at least three dogs and a cow.

Some of Heybridge's ancient inhabitants remained buried on the site, in both inhumation and cremation burials. Oddly, most cremation graves did not contain enough bone to represent the whole of the body. Burial rites seem not to have required the collection of all the bone from the ashes of the funeral pyre.

Roman burial custom was not always adhered to at Heybridge. In the Late Roman period, a detached human arm was placed in a small pit. This was cut by a similar pit which contained only a human skull. It is uncertain what these represent. Are they the reinterred remains of a burial which was disturbed in antiquity? Or do they have a ritual or darker significance?

Not far away, the skeleton of a young woman was unearthed in the top of a rubbish pit. This seems to represent the opportunist use of a convenient hole in the ground as a place of burial - scientific analysis of the bones has not identified any signs of foul play. All of these oddities were late Roman in date. It may be that the formal organisation of the village was disintegrating as its prosperity declined.

By the beginning of the 5th century the population of the village was decreasing; a reflection of the village's Late Roman economic decline. Around this time, the village acquired some characteristically Anglo-Saxon fashions, in both pottery and architecture. It may be that some Saxon newcomers settled at Heybridge, or the locals may have adopted Saxon styles - or a mixture of both.

Some features of the Late Roman village continued to be used into the Saxon period, including ditches and wells. One Roman ditch, for example, had Saxon pottery in its upper fills, and two Saxon buildings sat alongside it. Others, however, show clear disruption and discontinuity, such as where a building was constructed over a road junction, showing that the main road and at least one side road were no longer used. Many of the Saxon buildings were sited around the edges of the old village rather than properly within it.

By some time in the 5th or 6th centuries, the village was abandoned. Perhaps increased flooding led to a shift of the settlement onto slightly higher ground. Or, the villagers may have dispersed into individual farms along the valley. Some must also have moved across the River Chelmer to the hill where Maldon was later founded.

Mark Atkinson directed the excavations at Heybridge. A booklet, Hidden Heybridge, has now been published and is available from the Field Archaeology Unit at Essex County Council, County Hall, Chelmsford CM1 1LF, priced £2.50.

London's new assemblage of Tudor finds has far more to offer than just an old banana, explains Geoff Egan

It was the Tudor banana that really caught the public's attention earlier this summer. And, of course, the side of a 13th century ship used to prop up the wall of the medieval-fishpond-turned-Tudor-rubbish-dump near where the banana was found.

Yet these were only two of the most spectacular finds in an extraordinary assemblage of Tudor objects, all from one site on the south bank of the Thames opposite the Tower of London. The site, excavated periodically by the Museum of London over the past 13 years, consisted of a network of fishponds, sluices and watercourses (ownership unknown), which went out of use in the mid-16th century. This was presumably because the Reformation brought an end to the rule that fish must be eaten on Fridays, causing a slump in the fish trade and putting some operators out of business.

The finds as a whole shed a bright new light on ordinary Tudor life. Despite the familiarity of the period from historical sources, the everyday material culture of urban living in the 16th century (ceramics aside) is unexpectedly elusive - it is much less well known, for example, than the culture of the Roman and high-medieval centuries that preceded it. Aristocratic objects are well known from paintings, but not the artefacts used lower down the social scale.

There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, in London at any rate, the medieval reclamation of the waterfront - with the consequent huge dumps of objects behind the revetments - comes to an end in about 1450 (see BA, June). Secondly, people began to build cellars in large numbers in the 16th century and it was the most recent deposits - at the highest stratigraphic levels - that were the first to be destroyed by the new cellars.

So, for example, about 500 buckles are known from finds in London from the period 1150-1450, but only about 20 from the succeeding century and a half. Most Tudor finds have hitherto been chance, single items, and our understanding of how styles developed and fashions changed have remained vague.

The new assemblage of stratified Tudor finds goes a long way towards changing that. Groups of shoes, for instance, many of them well-preserved with buckles and laces, allow us to chart the way shoe-fashions changed, from the more pointed style of the late medieval period to a flat-ended or round-ended style in the 16th century. Pattens, however - clog-like overshoes which kept the wearer from walking directly in the mud on the street - remained pointed, even in Tudor times.

The assemblages demonstrate, too, the fall from popularity around the mid-1500s of pewter brooches, which had been popular cheap dress accessories since Saxon times, but which were now perhaps too closely associated with pilgrim souvenirs - traditionally a pewter item. With the fall in the trade for pilgrim badges, pewterers had to branch out to survive; and we now find, for the first time, pewter mixed with copper alloy in objects such as clasps.

Since the Norman Conquest, there had been a tendency to use single metals in dress accessories, such as gold, silver, or copper alloy. The use of copper alloy together with pewter at this time may suggest a weakening of the power of the medieval guilds - such as the Girdlers - who had previously prevented manufacturers such as pewterers from having any share in their trade.

An interesting group of finds were partly-made metal objects discarded by the smith. These include a key, four knives (one with guidelines marking out the intended decoration on the handle), a horseshoe, several large washers, and a buckle made of wire still attached to its parent coil. Excellent preservation allows us to see that some were thrown away following smithing faults and accidental breaks. Oddly enough, the wire buckle seems perfect - it needed only to be cut off its coil with nippers.

Some 50 pieces of armour, both plate and chainmail, have been identified. As with the rest of the assemblage, the main interest lies in the lower-status items because these were previously the least well-known. One poor-quality piece of plate armour was little more than a sandwich of a series of sheets hammered together - a suit of armour, as it were, made out of flattened tin cans. Another find was a piece of brigandine, a fabric vest, on which little plates of armour were sewn.

At the other end of the scale, we have subtly shaped pieces of armour individually designed to glide easily over their neighbours as the wearer moved. One very smart piece, perhaps for parade use, has a still-red textile covering, crowded with about 60 decorative, tin-coated rivets. There are also fragments of an open helmet and hand armour - both unique finds in England.

The high-quality armour may have been discarded simply because fashions changed. We know, for example, that Henry VIII invited German armourers to update English fashions early in the 16th century. Ultimately, however, armour went out of fashion during the 16th and 17th centuries with the development of lead shot. Armour provides no defence against a bullet. This broad background change in military technology is reflected in the archaeology, with armour and bladed weapons found in the earlier 16th century deposits and finds of lead shot in the later. Here, we also have a priming pan from a very large late 16th century pistol - again a most unusual find.