use, therefore, they must have been either grasped in the hand or fastened to a forked stick. The making of an eye was an operation so familiar to the Roman smith that one is tempted to wonder whether these strange tools may not have been the product of some Caledonian smithy of the pre-Roman period.
Associated with them on Plate LVIII. are some pieces of iron from the smith's stock in Pit XVI (Figs 1, 2, 9 and 13). Fig. 11 from the same pit is evidently the shod of a pole or spear, while Fig. 6 must have served a similar purpose. In Fig. 10 we have an object whose appearance at once suggests that it was used as a stirrup. It is almost circular, 4½ inches wide by 4 inches in height, and measures 4 inches across the tread from front to back. It is, however, doubtful whether the stirrup formed any part of the equipment of the Roman horseman, although an object recently found at Alesia has been thus classified.[1] Fig. 3 shows an iron peg, 15½ inches long, with a ring inserted near the upper end. This was doubtless driven into the earth as a means of tethering horses or other animals. It is, in fact, what is known in the north-east of Scotland to-day as a 'baikie.'
The Carpenter's Tools
Several tools can be identified as belonging to the carpenter. The most common of these were chisels. Two specimens came from Pit XIV (Plate LIX., Figs. 7 and 8). Both are socketed, and they measure 10¾ inches and 95⁄8 inches in length respectively. The former still preserves its short haft of deer-horn, 2 inches long. Two other chisels were among the tools in Pit XVI (Figs. 10 and 4). They are only 7¾ inches and 6¾ inches long. The larger of them had had a wooden haft, part of which remained in the socket. The smaller has a solid iron haft, the metal of which shows abrasion from hammering. They are no doubt morticing chisels. The head of one of the wooden mallets which would be used with them was found in Pit LIV (Plate LXXXIII., Fig. 3). It measures 8 inches long by 4½ inches by 3 inches. The eye, 1½ inches in diameter, is bored through the mallet. The handle is awanting.
A socketed gouge (Fig. 13, Pit XVI) was doubtless also a carpenter 5 tool. It is 6¾ inches long and has had a wooden haft. A smaller instrument of the same kind (Plate LIX., Fig. 3), 51⁄8 inches long, with unusually flat cutting edge, was found in the ditch of the early fort. Two larger gouge-like tools were perhaps augers. One (Plate LIX., Fig. 14), which was taken from Pit XVI, has a length of 11½ inches. It is a bar of iron roughly octagonal, terminating in a gouge at the lower end, while at the upper end
1 Espérandieu, 'Note sur un étrier gallo-romain,' Pro Alesia, vol. i. p. 17, plate iii.
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