Weaving-combs from the West Village 69
Northamptonshire-Most of the weaving-combs found at Hunsbury were
mentioned in Glastonbury Lake Village, pp.275, 279, but instead of seven
combs, nine were found - eight in Northampton Museum, and one in the British
Museum. (The latter is figured in Arch. Journ., XCIII, Plate xii; the
eight specimens, op. cit., Plate viii.
Oxfordshire-A comb with an almost circular enlargement and having
twelve teeth was found in 1928 at Chastleton Camp, and is figured in the
Antiq. Journ., XI, fig. 2, and see p.389. (Ashmolean Museum).
A much broken coarse comb, with remains of five teeth, was found at Mount
Farm, Dorchester. (Oxoniensia, II, 1937, p.39, Plate ivb, 1. (Ashmolean
Museum).
Somerset, etc.-Three weaving-combs of antler, quite plain, were
found on Little Solisbury Hill, Bath, and were before the war in the Museum
of the Spelaeological Society, University of Bristol. Another, a shaft
only, is decorated with finely dotted chevrons, a fifth specimen is incised
with lines, and a sixth has an oval enlargement at the end of the handle.
(Figured in Proc. Spel. Soc., IV, 192, and Plate iii facing p.186). Perhaps
all blitzed.
Eleven weaving-combs were found in Wookey Hole, and Mr. H. E. Balch, F.S.A.,
figures them in 'Wookey Hole : its Caves and Cave Dwellers', Plate xxia,
pp. 107-111 ; and three of them are figured in Archaeologia, LXII, Plate
lxxviii. He showed one of the combs curved in section at the 'business-end
to Miss Lloyd of the Somerset Weavers, Clevedon, where she was using vertical
looms, and she suggested that 'the only purpose which could be served
by the curvature of the teeth, so far as she could discern, was the working
of patterns, in which case certain of the weft is worked up above the
rest '.
At least three more combs have been found on Ham Hill, South Somerset,
since the publication of G.L. V., Vol.1. One of Type 4, complete, with
thirteen teeth, and ornamented, was found on Site D'10, July, 1913, Walter
Collection, Som. County Museum (Proc. Som. Arch. Soc., LXI, p. lvii).
Two others are in the A. V. Corrish Collection (at Minehead) ; one has
an ornamented handle (Proc. Som. Arch. Soc., LX, i, 94); the other, found
in 1922, has seven of the nine teeth remaining.
The greater part of a weaving-comb, ornamented with 'incised concentric
circles', was dug up in the neighbourhood of Baldwin Street, Bristol.
(Proc. Spel. Soc., University of Bristol, IV, 155).