It has been suggested that the absence of the later bronze forms with interments is due to a superstitious reverence for the older forms, so that the habit of burying the flat wedge-shaped axe[1760] and the dagger with the dead continued down to the later Age of Bronze; but I cannot accept this view.
In Scandinavia[1761] interments with which bronze swords and other weapons are associated, have frequently been discovered; and in some instances in which coffins, hollowed out in trunks of trees, have been used, even the clothing has been preserved. In this country also coffins of the same kind have occasionally been discovered, but the bronze objects which have been placed in them are of the same character as those which are found in the barrows of the district, and never comprise socketed weapons or swords. Stone weapons are also occasionally present. Remains of clothing made of skins and of woven woollen fabric have also been found. The best-known instance of the discovery of the latter was in a barrow at Scale House,[1762] near Rylston, Yorkshire, examined by Canon Greenwell, who has recorded other instances of these tree-burials. Neither bronze nor stone were in this instance present.
It is not, however, my intention to dilate upon the burial customs of our Bronze Age, as they have already been so fully discussed by Canon Greenwell, Dr. Thurnam, Sir John Lubbock, and others.
It will now be desirable to say something as to the sources from which the use of bronze in this country was derived, though on this subject also much has already been written.
The four principal views held by different authors have thus been summarized by Colonel A. Lane Fox, now General Pitt Rivers:—[1763]
1. That bronze was spread from a common centre by an intruding and conquering race, or by the migration of tribes.
2. That the inhabitants of each separate region in which bronze is known to have been used discovered the art independently, and made their own implements of it.
3. That the art was discovered and the implements fabricated on one spot, and the implements disseminated from that place by means of commerce.
4. That the art of making bronze was diffused from a common centre, but that the implements were constructed in the countries in which they were found.
For a full discussion of these hypotheses I must refer the reader to General Pitt Rivers’ Paper, but I shall here make use of some of the information which he has collected, premising that in my opinion there is a certain amount of truth embodied in each of these opinions.