[Maursault]

> My guess has been that they are an item a journeyman blacksmith had to create to be promoted to master.

Seems pretty specific to span two centuries of known construction. Why would they be saved and not recycled? Nearly every medieval village had a blacksmith, with larger population centers supporting more, within the whole of medieval Europe thousands of blacksmiths at any one time, so why have only 116 of these turned up when there should be hundreds of thousands of them?

I think it's very interesting their construction appears to cease just in time for Christianity to take over Europe in the late 4th century. Previously, Rome had 12 principal deities.