A still warmer discussion than any which has taken place in England or France, one, in fact, almost amounting to an international war of words, has in more recent times arisen between some of the German antiquaries and those of the Scandinavian kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden.
So early as 1860[95] my friend Dr. Ludwig Lindenschmit, of Mainz, had commenced his attack on “the so-called Bronze Period,” and shown a disposition to regard all bronze antiquities of northern countries as of Italian origin, or, if made in the countries where found, as mere homely imitations of imported articles. Not content with this, he in 1875[96] again mustered his forces and renewed the campaign in even a more formal manner. He found a formidable ally in Dr. Hostmann, whose comments on Dr. Hans Hildebrand’s “Heathen Period in Sweden” are well worth the reading, and contain a vast amount of interesting information.
Dr. Hostmann’s method of dealing with Dr. Hans Hildebrand brought Dr. Sophus Müller[97] to the rescue, with whom Dr. Lindenschmit[98] at once grappled. Shortly after Dr. Hostmann[99] again appears upon the scene, and before engaging with Dr. Sophus Müller goes so far as to argue that while Greek swords of iron are known to belong to the eighth century B.C., no bronze sword of that country can with safety be assigned to an earlier date than the sixth century, and, indeed, these may have been only weapons of parade, or possibly funereal offerings in lieu of efficient swords. Rector Genthe[100] also engages in the fight upon the same side.
These three antagonists bring Sophus Müller[101] again to the front, and as one great argument of his opponents was that bronze objects could not be produced with the finish and ornamentation which is found upon them without the use of iron and steel tools, he brings forward an official document signed by four authorities in the museum at Copenhagen, and stating that precisely similar ornamentation to the spirals, zigzags, and punched lines which occur on Scandinavian bronze antiquities had been produced in their presence by a workman using bronze tools only on a plate of bronze. Both plate and tools were of the same alloy, viz. 9 of copper to 1 of tin.
On this a final charge is made by Professor Hostmann[102] and Dr. Lindenschmit, the former of whom produces a kind of affidavit from the late director of the Polytechnic School at Hanover and the court medallist of the same town, to the effect that certain kinds of punched work cannot be produced with bronze punches, and the editors of the Archiv think it best to close the discussion after Dr. Lindenschmit’s final retort.
I have not thought it worth while to enter into all the details of this controversy, as even to summarise them would occupy more room than I could spare. It seems to me, however, that a considerable amount of misconception must have existed in the minds of some of the disputants, both as to the accepted meaning of the term Bronze Age, as applied not chronologically, but to a certain stage of civilisation, and as to the limitation of the objects which can with propriety be referred to that age. No antiquary of experience will deny that many bronze ornaments, and even some bronze weapons, remained in use long after iron and even steel were known, any more than he would deny that the use of stone for certain purposes continued not only after bronze was known, but even after iron and steel were in general use, and, in fact, up to the present time, not only in barbarian but in civilised countries. Our flint strike-a-lights and our burnishers are still of much the same character as they were some thousands of years ago, and afford convincing instances of this persistent use.
The real question at issue is not whether any bronze weapons co-existed with those of iron and steel in Western Europe, but whether any of them were there in use at a period when iron and steel were unknown. Moreover, it is not a question as to whence the knowledge of bronze was derived, nor whether at the time the Scandinavians or Britons were using bronze for their tools and weapons, the inhabitants of Greece and Italy were already acquainted with iron and steel; but it is a question whether in each individual country there arrived a time when bronze came into use and for certain purposes superseded stone, while iron and steel were practically unknown.
This is a question to be solved by evidence, though in the nature of things that evidence must to some extent be of a negative character. When barrow after barrow is opened, and weapons of bronze and stone only are found accompanying the interments, and not a trace of iron or steel; when hoards of rough metal and broken bronze, together with the moulds of the bronze-founder and some of his stock-in-trade, are disinterred, and there is no trace of an iron tool among them—the presumption is strong that at the time when these men and these hoards were buried iron was not in use. When, moreover, by a careful examination of the forms of bronze instruments we can trace a certain amount of development which is in keeping with the peculiar properties of bronze and not with those of iron, and we can thus to some extent fix a kind of chronological succession in these forms, the inference is that this evolution of form, which must have required a considerable amount of time, took place without its course being affected by any introduction of a fresh and qualifying influence in the shape of iron tools and weapons.
When, however, in various countries we find interments and even cemeteries in which bronze and iron weapons and instruments are intermingled, and the forms of those in bronze are what we have learnt from other sources to regard as the latest, while the forms in iron are not those for which that metal is best adapted, but are almost servile copies of the bronze instruments found with them, the proof of the one having succeeded the other is almost absolutely conclusive.
The lessons taught by such cemeteries as that at Hallstatt, in Austria, and by our own Late Celtic interments, such as those at Arras, in Yorkshire, are of the highest importance in this question.