The Bronze Age and the Celtic World

by Harold Peake

We need not discuss the whole of this hypothesis, which is concerned with a much wider area than the lands we are considering. One of the most essential features, however, of this interesting thesis is that the people, whoever they were, who spread the cult of megalithic monuments and allied practices, were travelling in search of gold, silver, copper, tin, amber and pearls; they were, in fact, merchants in search of precious and easily portable commodities.

Now Perry,[132] who has specially worked at this part of the hypothesis, maintains that megalithic monuments are invariably found in association with metalliferous deposits, amber coasts and pearl fisheries, and he has produced maps which appear at first sight very convincing. A careful examination of his megalith map shows that he has copied that of Fergusson, published in 1872,[133] and which represents far less accurately the distribution of these monuments than does that published by Colonel A. Lane-Fox in 1869.[134] Neither of these maps, however, gives us a really reliable summary of the facts. Much work has been done on this subject since these maps were produced, many fresh areas have been added, and two at least have been deducted; but no one has recently attempted to make a map of the European megaliths, or those of any country except Holland.[135] The French anthropologists have made a list of the dolmens in France, and published a summary giving the number noted in each department,[136] a catalogue of the British megaliths is in process of formation.

Wherever it has been possible to test it with sufficient accuracy, we find that Perry’s contention is substantially true, and that there is a definite relation between many areas rich in megalithic structures and deposits of metal which are known to have been worked in early days; the megalithic areas of the Baltic coincide fairly well with the coasts producing amber. Nevertheless there are many spots, rich in metals, and which are known or suspected to have been worked in early days, where megaliths, have not hitherto been noted, and on the other hand, dolmens and other such structures occur, sometimes with great frequency, in areas devoid of metals or other precious commodities. The problem is not quite so simple as it would appear from Perry’s account.

Still, looking at the matter broadly in the light of information available at present, it does seem that, in western Europe at any rate, the megalithic monuments cluster thickest in or around those regions which produced gold, copper, tin and amber, and which were readily accessible to maritime traffic, and that they coincide very closely with the lines of trade which I described in the last chapter. The exceptions, too, are not destructive to the hypothesis. In the British Isles we find that the megaliths in the main coincide with the metalliferous areas, though in some cases more closely with lead ores than with the metals previously mentioned. As lead does not seem to have been used in north-west Europe before 1000 B.C., these monuments must, if any connection be implied, date from a much later period than that which we are discussing. But a large number of megalithic structures are found in the region surrounding Salisbury Plain and in certain parts of the Cotswolds. These are some of those open chalk and limestone areas already mentioned, which were the early centres of population in this country. As we have seen, certain trade routes to Ireland seem to traverse these regions, and here the merchants would have obtained their supplies of food for the rest of their journey; it would not surprise us, therefore, if they introduced their cult here, and that these populous areas formed fresh centres of dispersion.

The long barrows of Wiltshire and the Cotswold areas, and the same is probably true of those in South Wales, have been thought by some Scandinavian archæologists to be closely related to the types peculiar to the Baltic region. Dr. Knut Sterjna[137] believed that the English chambered long barrows represented a stage in the evolution from the dolmens to the chambered barrows (sépultures à galerie) of Denmark and Sweden. The stone circles, which are conspicuous in the Salisbury plain area, are absent in France, and seem to have originated by the Baltic. It would seem, then, that some at any rate of our English megaliths were introduced, not so much by merchants coming from the south as by those adventurers who came later from the Baltic region, some of whom we have seen passed across this country to the port at Warrington.

In France, too, though megaliths are more numerous and finer in the Morbihan, where we have seen that tin and gold were found, than elsewhere in that country, yet they cluster thickly in Finistère, and in a curved line from that department to the Mediterranean coast near Narbonne.[138] The occurrence of so many megaliths in Finistère and the adjoining departments may be due to the need of the early traders to take refuge in the inlets of that region, while endeavouring to round the dangerous promontory. That they did so not infrequently is shown by the occurrence near these inlets of numerous hoards of bronze implements, most of which date from the time which we are discussing.[139]

The band across the country clusters most thickly just north-east of the line, running through the Carcassone gap, now followed by the canal du midi. This seems to indicate that a land route through the pass was in use at this time, as a safer alternative to rounding the Iberian peninsula by sea. From this line the cult seems to have spread north-eastwards, though these monuments grow scarcer the further we leave this line.

Lastly, there are certain islands in which these monuments are found, which do not seem to have produced any wealth of the type required, notably Sardinia and Malta. We have also an isolated group near Taranto. It seems probable that such islands, and points en route with good harbours like Taranto, would have been convenient points of call to these traders, as Tarentum was afterwards to the Phœnician and Greek merchants. Here, and perhaps too at Syracuse, they may well have had depôts, but from the wealth of its megalithic monuments we may well believe that Malta was the base of operations for the western and northern trade. Here we have a small island, very isolated and with excellent ports, with a population primitive and docile; such a spot would be a safe depôt in which to collect and store valuable merchandise, until it was convenient to ship it through the more traversed and perhaps pirate-infested seas of the east. Thus, though there are more exceptions to his rule than Perry would lead us to suspect, these exceptions do not seem to weaken his hypothesis, but rather help to prove the rule.

Now in Britain and the north generally these monuments, or at any rate some of them such as dolmens and long barrows, are believed to date from the neolithic age, albeit from its latest phases; nevertheless there are instances in Scandinavia and Brittany of the discovery of copper tools and gold beads in these tombs.[140] Further south the evidence of metal in association with them is clearer, but in Malta the only bronze implements discovered, the hoard found in 1915 in the temple of Hal Tarxien,[141] had been deposited above three feet of silt which had accumulated on the temple floor. This at first sight seems to militate against the theory that these structures were the tombs and temples of miners.