The first view, of an intruding and conquering race having introduced the use of bronze into their country, has been held by most of the Scandinavian antiquaries, and Professor Boyd Dawkins seems to regard a Celtic invasion and conquest of the Iberic peoples in Britain as having been the means by which the knowledge of bronze was extended from Gaul to these islands. The osteological evidence in favour of the bronze-using Britons having as a rule been of a different race from the stone-using people of our Neolithic times is strongly corroborative of such a view; as is also the change which is to be noted in the burial customs of the two periods. Such an immigration or conquest must, however, have taken place at a very early period if we accept Sir John Lubbock’s[1764] view, that between b.c. 1500 and b.c. 1200 the Phœnicians were already acquainted with the mineral fields of Britain, a period at which it must not be forgotten the use of bronze had long been known in Egypt. Although it is true that at present we have no satisfactory proof of any Phœnician influence on the people of our Bronze Age, yet if at so early a period there was an export of tin from this country, the search for that metal and the means employed for its production would almost of necessity tend to an acquaintance with copper also, even supposing, what is improbable, that those who traded for tin in order to manufacture bronze with it kept the knowledge of this latter alloy from those with whom they had commercial relations, or that the natives of Britain were not already acquainted with more metals than tin when the trade first began. But to this subject I shall recur. It may be observed by the way that the date assigned for this Phœnician intercourse corresponds in a remarkable manner with the date assigned for the earliest instances of the use of bronze in Britain, which was suggested on other grounds.
The second view of the independent discovery of bronze in different regions has little or nothing to support it so far as the different countries of Europe are concerned, though there is a possibility that the discovery of copper and of the method of alloying it with tin, so as to produce bronze, may have been made independently in America. But it may even there be the case that the knowledge of bronze was imported from Asia.[1765] In Europe, however, when once the use of the metal was known, there were certain types of weapons and implements developed in different countries which in a certain sense may be regarded as instances of independent discoveries.
The third view, that the art was discovered at some single spot at which subsequently implements were manufactured and disseminated by commerce must, at least to a limited extent, be true. Wherever the discovery of bronze may have been made, there is ample evidence of its use having spread over the greater part of Europe if not of Asia; and at first the spread of bronze weapons and tools was in all probability by commerce. Even subsequently there were local centres, such as Etruria, from which the manufactured products were exported into neighbouring countries, as well as to those lying to the north of the Alps. Some even of the bronze vases found in Ireland, though themselves not of Etruscan manufacture, bear marks of Etruscan influences in their form and character. In each country in Europe there may have been one or more localities in which the manufacture of bronze objects was principally carried on, though it may now be impossible to identify the spots. Such large hoards of unfinished castings as those of Plénée Jugon, and other places in Brittany, prove that district, for instance, to have been at one time a kind of manufacturing centre. Indeed, a socketed celt of Breton type, unused, and still retaining the burnt clay core, has been found on our southern coast.
The process of casting, as practised by the ancient bronze-founders, was, moreover, one requiring a great amount of skill; and though there appear to have been wandering founders, who, like the bell-founders of mediæval times, could practise their art at any spot where their services were required, yet there were probably fixed foundries also, where the process of manufacture could be more economically carried on, and where successive generations passed through some sort of apprenticeship to learn the art and mystery of the trade.
The fourth opinion, that the use of bronze spread from some single centre, though implements were manufactured in greater or less abundance in each country where the use of bronze prevailed, is one that must commend itself to all archæologists. It does not, of course, follow that in any given district the bronze tools and weapons were all of home manufacture, and none of them imported. There is, on the contrary, evidence to be found in most countries that some, at least, of the bronze instruments found there are of foreign manufacture, and introduced either by commerce or by the foreign travel of individuals.
Where the original centre was placed, from which the European use of bronze was propagated, is an enigma still under discussion, and one which will not readily be solved. Appearances at present seem to point to its having been situate in Western Asia;[1766] but the whole question of the origin and development of the Bronze civilisation has been so recently discussed by my friend Professor Boyd Dawkins, in his “Early Man in Britain,” that it appears needless here to repeat the opinions of which he has given so good an abstract. Suffice it to say, that it has been proposed to regard the bronze antiquities of Europe as belonging generally to three provinces,[1767] the boundaries of which, however, cannot be very accurately defined. These provinces are—the Uralian, comprising Russia, Siberia, and Finland; the Danubian, which consists of the Hungarian, Scandinavian, and Britannic sub-divisions or regions; and the Mediterranean, composed of the Italo-Greek and Franco-Swiss sub-divisions.
I must confess that I do not attach such high importance to this classification as at first sight it would seem to merit; for on a close examination it appears to me to involve several serious incongruities. Take, for instance, the Danubian province, and it will be found that the differences in type of bronze instruments belonging to the Hungarian region, when compared with those of the British, are on the whole greater than the difference presented when they are compared with the types of the Italian region, which, however, is made to belong to another province. There is, moreover, a difficulty in synchronizing the antiquities belonging to different provinces or regions, so as to be sure that any comparisons between them are of real value. Taking, for example, the Uralian province, it will at once be seen that though in Finland some Scandinavian types occur, such as swords and palstaves, yet the great majority of the bronze antiquities belonging to it, so far as at present known, consist of socketed celts, often with two loops; of daggers, with their hafts cast in one piece with the blade; and of perforated axes, sometimes with the representations of the heads of animals; in fact, of objects which evidently belong to a very late stage in the evolution of bronze, and which, as Mr. Worsaae has pointed out, not improbably show traces of Chinese influence. Such objects can hardly be satisfactorily compared with those of a province in which the whole development of bronze instruments, from the flat celt and small knife, to the socketed celt and the skilfully cast spear-head and sword, can be traced.
All things considered, I think it will be better and safer to content ourselves for the present with less extensive provinces; and, so far as these are concerned, the sub-divisions already enumerated may be accepted, and are quite sufficiently large, if, indeed, they are not too extensive. In the Britannic province, a part of France is included by M. Chantre, and there are certainly close analogies between many of the types of the south of England and those of the north and north-west of France. For the purpose of the present work, though accepting M. Chantre’s boundary in the main, I shall, however, restrict the Britannic province to the British Isles.
On a general examination of our British types it is satisfactory to see how complete a series of links in the chain of development of the bronze industry is here to be found, though many of them bear undoubted marks of foreign influence, and prove that though some of the types were of native growth, yet that others were originally imported. On general grounds, I have assigned an antiquity of 1,200 or 1,400 years b.c. to the introduction of the use of bronze into this country, but it is a question whether this antiquity will meet all the necessities of the case; for we can hardly imagine the Phœnicians, or those who traded with them, landing in Britain and spontaneously discovering tin. On the contrary, it must have been from a knowledge that the inhabitants of Britain were already producers of this valuable metal that the commerce with them originated; and the probable reason that tin was sought for by the native Britons was in order to mix it with copper, a metal which occurs native in the same district as the tin. If, therefore, the Phœnician intercourse, direct or indirect, commenced about 1500 b.c., the knowledge of the use of tin, and probably also of copper, dates back in Britain to a still earlier epoch.
A comparison of the various British types of tools and weapons with those of Continental countries has been frequently instituted in the preceding pages, but it will be well here to recapitulate some of the principal facts. We have in Britain the flat form of celt in some abundance, though none of the specimens exhibit traces of being direct imitations of hatchets formed of stone, as would probably have been the case in any country where the use of metal for such instruments originated. And yet many of our British flat celts exhibit a certain degree of originality, inasmuch as they are decorated with hammer- or punch-marks in a manner peculiar to this country, and others in a fashion but rarely seen abroad. We can trace the development of the flanged celt from the flat variety, through specimens with almost imperceptible flanges, the result merely of hammering the sides, to those with the flanges produced in the casting. At the same time, the flanges are never so fully developed as in some of the French examples.