A Continental Palstave from the Ancient Field System on Horridge Common, Dartmoor, England

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Abstract
The ancient field system on Horridge Common, Ilsington, on the southern slopes of Dartmoor (fig. 1) has been known to scholars since 1954 but has never been studied in detail. In 1964 the owner of the adjoining Bagtor wood felled some timber and in order to remove it, had a broad track bulldozed from the Rippon Tor rifle range north-eastwards along the hill-side and across the field system, despite the fact that this was a scheduled ancient monument. In September 1965 Mr W. J. Hopkins, a ‘small-scale reviser’ of the Ordnance Survey, plotted the new track and noticed the palstave in the loose soil which had been churned up recently. The implement was eventually sent to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum at Exeter, where I saw it; in May 1966, Mr Hopkins kindly visited the site with me and marked the exact position of the discovery (fig. 2). It was obvious that the palstave was not the usual south-western type and that its discovery within a Dartmoor field system was of particular interest; accordingly Mr Dennis Britton was asked to describe it and with the assistance of Mr D. Walling a survey was undertaken of the relevant group of huts and fields adjoining (fig. 2).

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