It is not, however, to be supposed that even in countries by no means geographically remote from each other the introduction either of iron or bronze must of necessity have taken place at one and the same chronological period. Near the shores of the Mediterranean the use of each metal no doubt prevailed far earlier than in any of the northern countries of Europe; and though the knowledge of metals probably spread from certain centres, its progress can have been but slow, for in each part of Europe there appears to have been some special development, particularly in the forms of bronze instruments, and there is no absolute uniformity in their types extending over any large area. In each country the process of manufacture was carried on, and though some commerce in tools and arms of bronze no doubt took place between neighbouring tribes, yet as a rule there are local peculiarities characteristic of special districts.
So marked are these that a practised archæologist can in almost all cases, on inspection of a group of bronze antiquities, fix with some degree of confidence the country in which they were found. To this rule Britain offers no exception, and though some forms of instruments were no doubt imported, yet, as will subsequently be seen, our types are for the most part indigenous.
As to the ornamentation of bronze by bronze tools, I have seen none in this country on objects which I should refer to the Bronze Age but what could have been effected by means of bronze punches, of which indeed examples have been discovered in bronze-founders’ hoards in France,[103] and what are probably such also in Britain. Such ornamentation is, however, simple compared with that on many of the Danish forms, and yet I have seen the complicated Scandinavian ornaments accurately and sharply reproduced by Dr. Otto Tischler, by means of bronze tools only, on bronze of the ordinary ancient alloy.
But even supposing that iron and steel were known during some part of the so-called Bronze Age, I do not see in what manner it would affect the main features of the case or the interest attaching to the bronze objects which I am about to describe. “De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio” is a maxim of some weight in archæology as well as in law; and in the absence of iron and all trace of its influence, it matters but little whether it was known or not, except in so far as a neglect of its use would argue some want of intelligence on the part of those who did not avail themselves of so useful a metal. It will be seen hereafter that some of the objects described in these pages actually do belong to an Iron Period, and nothing could better illustrate the transition of one Period into another, or the overlapping of the Bronze Age upon that of Iron, than the fact that in these pages devoted to the Bronze Period I must of necessity describe many objects which were still in use when iron and steel were superseding bronze, in the same manner as in my “Ancient Stone Implements” I was forced to describe many forms, such as battle-axes, arrow-heads, and bracers, which avowedly belonged to the Bronze Period.
A point which is usually raised by those who maintain the priority of the use of iron to that of bronze is, that inasmuch as it is more readily oxidized and dissolved by acids naturally present in the soil, iron may have disappeared, and indeed has done so, while bronze has been left; so that the absence of iron as an accompaniment to all early interments counts for nothing. Professor Rolleston,[104] in a paper on the three periods known as the Iron, the Bronze, and the Stone Ages, has well dealt with this point; and observes that in some graves of the Bronze Period the objects contained are incrusted with carbonate of lime, which would have protected any iron instrument of the Bronze Period as well as it has done those of Saxon times. Not only are the iron weapons discovered in Saxon cemeteries often in almost perfect preservation, but on the sites of Roman occupation whole hoards of iron tools have been found but little injured by rust. The fact that at Hallstatt and other places in which graves have been examined belonging to the transitional period, when both iron and bronze were in use together, the weapons and tools of iron, though oxidized, still retain their form and character as completely as those in bronze, also affords strong ground for believing that had iron been present with bronze in other early interments it would also have been preserved. The importance attaching to the reputed occurrence of bronze swords with Roman coins as late as the time of Magnentius cannot be better illustrated than by a discovery of my own in the ancient cemetery of Hallstatt. In company with Sir John Lubbock I was engaged in opening a grave in which we had come to an interment of the Early Iron Age, accompanied by a socketed celt and spear-heads of iron, when amidst the bones I caught sight of a thin metallic disc of a yellowish colour which looked like a coin. Up to that time no coin had ever been found in any one of the many hundred graves which had been examined, and I eagerly picked up this disc. It proved to be a “sechser,” or six-kreutzer piece, with the date 1826, which by some means had worked its way down among the crevices in the stony ground, and which from its appearance had evidently been buried some years. Had this coin been of Roman date it might have afforded an argument for bringing down the date of the Hallstatt cemetery some centuries in the chronological scale. As it is, it affords a wholesome caution against drawing important inferences from the mere collocation of objects when there is any possibility of the apparent association being only due to accident.
In further illustration of the succession of the three Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron in Western Europe, I might go on to cite cases of the actual superposition of the objects of one age over those of another, such as has been observed in several barrows and in the well-known instance of the cone of La Tinière, in the Lake of Geneva, recorded by Morlot.
It will, however, be thought that enough, if not more than enough, has already been said on the general question of a Bronze Age in a book particularly devoted to the weapons and instruments of bronze found in the British Isles. It is now time to proceed with the examination and description of their various forms; and in doing this I propose to treat separately, so far as possible, the different classes of instruments intended each for some special purpose, and at the same time to point out their analogies with instruments of the same character found in other parts of Europe. Their chronological sequence so far as it can be ascertained, the position in time of the Bronze Period of Britain and Ireland, and the sources from which our bronze civilisation was derived, will be discussed in a concluding chapter.
I begin with the instrument of the most common occurrence, the so-called celt.