As to the other three kinds of hoards, the small group from Wallingford[1750] (No. 60 in the following table), consisting of a socketed celt, gouge, and knife, and a tanged chisel and razor, may be taken as a good instance of a private deposit. That of Stibbard[1751] (No. 8), consisting of seventy palstaves and ten spear-heads, some of them rough from the mould, would appear to have belonged to a merchant; and the Harty hoard (No. 105), described in the last chapter, affords a typical example of the stock-in-trade of a bronze-founder.
In some other cases, deposits, especially when consisting exclusively of ornaments, may possibly be of a sepulchral character.
The value of the evidence afforded by hoards, especially by those of the first and second kinds lately mentioned, is great and unquestionable in determining the synchronism of various forms of instruments—as, for instance, of plain and looped palstaves with socketed celts. In the case of the bronze-founders’ hoards of old metal, it is of course possible that the fragments contained may belong to various periods. Nevertheless the objects, as a rule, appear to be such as were in use at the time, and which, being worn out or broken, were collected by the bronze-founder for the purpose of re-melting. In order to make them at once more portable and more ready for placing in the crucible, he generally broke the larger and longer articles into fragments, broken spear-heads, swords, &c., being frequently present in the hoards, as well as the jets or waste pieces of metal broken off from castings. In some instances fragments of various instruments have been inserted in the sockets of others, so as to diminish the space occupied by the whole.
As will subsequently be seen, by far the greater number of the undoubted bronze-founders’ hoards belong to a time when socketed celts were already in use, and therefore to the close rather than the beginning of our Bronze Period.
M. Ernest Chantre has divided the principal hoards of the Bronze Age discovered in France into three principal categories, to which he has applied the terms “Trésors,” “Fonderies,” and “Stations.” The first, as a rule, comprise articles which have never been in use, and are, in fact, of the same character as the hoards which I have classed under the head of “Personal” or “Merchants.” The principal trésors, those of Réallon, Ribiers, Beaurières, Manson, Frouard, are characterized by the presence of socketed instruments; and in two instances—those of La Ferté-Hauterive, and Vaudrevanges, Rhenish Prussia—either an ingot or a mould of metal was present. I should, therefore, have classed these two among the “fonderies.”
M. Chantre has, however, in the main, restricted this term to hoards consisting principally of broken objects, and of these fonderies he has examined some fifty in France. In the southern part of that country these hoards are by no means so constantly characterized by the presence of socketed celts and other socketed instruments as in Britain. In the north of France, however, the socketed forms are more frequent in the hoards.
The stations are considered to represent habitations of the Bronze Age of the same character as the Lake-dwellings, but fixed on terra firma instead of on piles or artificial islands. Some of the hoards placed under this head appear from the presence of moulds and lumps of metal to be those of founders.
Hoards of broken objects of bronze have been found in other parts of Europe, but it seems needless to do more than mention the fact. I may, however, refer to the hoards of Camenz and Grossenhain, in Saxony,[1752] of which I gave an account to the Society of Antiquaries some fifteen years ago.
In the following lists I have divided the principal hoards discovered in the United Kingdom into two main categories, the one, in which socketed celts, gouges, or other tools were absent; the other, in which they were present in greater or less abundance. This is perhaps the simplest method of arriving at what may be regarded as a fairly trustworthy chronological division. Some of the results of an examination of the lists will subsequently be discussed. In the first list I have given the precedence to those hoards in which flat or flanged celts were present. Second, I have placed those in which there were palstaves. Third, those in which ornaments were found; and last, those mainly characterized by swords and spear-heads, or spear-heads and ferrules, but in which both palstaves and socketed celts were absent.
In the second list I have placed at the head the hoards in which socketed celts, sometimes accompanied by palstaves, were found associated with swords or spears, while mere tools, such as gouges and hammers, were absent. Next come a few cases in which socketed celts occurred either in company with ornaments or alone. Then follow the hoards in which chisels, gouges, or hammers were found, but no lumps of metal were present. After these are placed the bronze-founders’ hoards, in which lumps of metal and the jets or waste pieces from castings were found, including one or two Scotch and Irish hoards; and, finally, those in which moulds were present.