File:Bronze Age socketed hammer (FindID 591781).jpg

English: Late Bronze Age socketed hammer, face rectangular, 23.5 x 21.0mm but with convex sides. Section waisted expanding into a 14.8mm flared collar separated from the body by a slight step its section developing from 18.4 x 19.1mm square to almost circular at the mouth. The mouth has a diameter of around 17.2mm, the socket is 44.8mm deep and tapers down to a flat, oval area at its base. Lines of casting flash mark the mould joint lines down the two sides. One of these is slightly curved the other is set at 12 degrees to the axis of the hammer. Much of the hammer's original surface is lost but what remains is covered with fine, transverse striations suggesting finishing. The face of the hammer is rounded and set at 6 degrees to its axis, although worn it retains traces of striations. The casting flash abuts transverse mouldings run, parallel to the face, across each side of the hammer.

While cast bronze hammers are known from Middle Bronze Age hoards this object finds it best parallels in the late Bronze Age and resembles examples from the Reach Fen, Cambs. Hoard (Inventaria Archaeologia GB 17/3, no. 34 (1956) 3rd set), Isle of Harty, Kent (ibid. GB 18.3, no 22) , Thorndon Suffolk, (ibid. GB 11, 1955, 2nd set) and Rosebury Topping, North Yorkshire, Catalogue fo the Bateman Collection, Sheffield Museum 1899, 88.