The discovery of beads made in sets like those of glass, of a bracelet, buttons, pins, and hooks, all, in Dr. Thurnam’s opinion, formed of ivory, gives indications in the same direction; for though billiard balls have been manufactured from Scottish mammoth ivory of the Pleistocene Period, the fossil tusks found in Britain are, as a rule, too much decomposed to be any longer of service, and in this respect differ materially from the fossil mammoth tusks of Siberia, which still furnish so much of our table cutlery with handles.
For the jet and amber ornaments of the Bronze Period we have not, of necessity, to go so far afield as for glass. Abundance of jet is to be obtained in our own country, and the usual type of jet necklace,[1771] with a series of flat plates, seems to be essentially British. Some of the amber plates found at Hallstatt are, however, of the same form, and perforated in the same manner, so that possibly these jet necklaces may have been made in imitation of foreign prototypes in amber. How far the amber ornaments of the Bronze Period in Britain were of native production we have no good means of judging; but the circumstance just mentioned is suggestive of Hallstatt and Britain having been supplied from a common source, which may have been on the shores of the Baltic. On the other hand, our amber ornaments differ, as a rule, from those of Scandinavia, and, as already remarked, our eastern coast would furnish an ample supply of the raw material without seeking it abroad. It must, however, be remembered that some of the forms of our bronze instruments show traces of German influence, and that in Strabo’s time both amber and ivory were among the articles exported from Celtic Gaul to Britain. The remarkable amber cup from the Hove barrow, near Brighton, I have described elsewhere.[1772]
It remains for me to say a few words as to the general condition of the inhabitants of Britain during the Bronze Age; but on this subject, apart from the light thrown upon it by the tools, weapons, and ornaments which I have been describing, and by the contents of the graves of the period, we have in this country but little to guide us. Such a complete insight into the material civilisation of the period as that afforded by the Lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, and Northern Italy is nowhere vouchsafed to us in Britain. The Irish crannoges, which, in many respects, present close analogies with the pile-buildings, have remained in use until mediæval times, and in no instance has the destruction of a settlement by fire contributed to preserve for the instruction of future ages the household goods of the population. The nearest approach to a Lake-dwelling in England is that examined in Barton Mere,[1773] Suffolk, where, however, the results were comparatively meagre. A single spear-head was found, apparently of the type of Fig. 406, and the remains of various animals used for food, including the urus and the hare, which latter in Cæsar’s time the Britons did not eat.
The information to be gained from the burial customs and the contents of the graves has already been gathered by the late Dr. Thurnam and by Canon Greenwell, as well as by other antiquaries, and I cannot do better than refer to the forty-third volume of the “Archæologia,” and to “British Barrows.”[1774] I may, however, shortly depict some of the principal features of the external conditions of the bronze-using population of these islands, taken as a whole, for no doubt the customs and condition of the people were by no means uniform throughout the whole extent of the country at any given moment of time.
As to their dwellings, we seem to have no positive information, but they probably were of much the same character as those of the Swiss Lake population, except that for the most part they were placed upon the dry land, and not on platforms above the water. Their clothing was sometimes of skins, sometimes of woollen cloth, and probably of linen also, as they were acquainted with the arts of spinning and weaving. Of domesticated animals they possessed the dog, ox, sheep, goat, pig, and finally the horse. They hunted the red deer, the roe, the wild boar, the hare, and possibly some other animals. For the chase and for warfare their arrows were tipped with flint, and not with bronze: and some other stone instruments, such as scrapers, remained in use until the end of the period. At the beginning, as has already often been stated, the axe, the knife-dagger, and the awl were the only articles of bronze in use. For obtaining fire, a nodule of pyrites and a flake of flint sufficed. Some cereals were cultivated, as is shown by the bronze sickles. Pottery they had of various forms, some apparently made expressly for sepulchral purposes; but they were unacquainted with the potter’s wheel. Some vessels of amber and shale, turned in the lathe, may have been imported from abroad. Ornaments were worn in less profusion than in Switzerland; but the torque for the neck, the bracelet, the ear-ring, the pin for the dress and for the hair, were all in use, though brooches were unknown. Necklaces, or gorgets, formed of amber, jet, and bone beads were not uncommon; and the ornaments of glass and ivory, such as those lately mentioned, were probably obtained by foreign commerce. Gold, also, was often used for decorating the person, though coins, and apparently even the metal silver, were unknown. They appear to have been accomplished workers and carvers of wood and horn, and there were among them artificers who inlaid wood and amber with minute gold pins almost or quite as skilfully as the French workmen of the last century, who wrought on tortoise-shell. In casting and hammering out bronze they attained consummate skill, and their spear-heads and wrought shields could not be surpassed at the present day. The general equipment of the warrior in the shape of swords, daggers, halberds, spears, &c., and the tools of the workman, such as hatchets, chisels, gouges, hammers, &c., have, however, all been dealt with at large in previous pages. They contrast with the arms and instruments of the preceding Neolithic Age more by their greater degree of perfection than by their absolute number and variety. The material progress from one stage of civilisation to the other was no doubt great, but the interval between the two does not approach that which exists between Palæolithic man of the old River-drifts and Neolithic man of the present configuration of the surface of Western Europe.
So far as the general interest attaching to the Bronze Period is concerned, it may readily be conceded that it falls short of that with which either of the two stages of the Stone Period which preceded it must be regarded. The existence of numerous tribes of men who are, or were until lately, in the same stage of culture as the occupants of Europe during the Neolithic Age, affords various points of comparison between ancient and modern savages which are of the highest interest, while there exists at the present day not a single community in which the phases of the Bronze culture can be observed. The Palæolithic Age has, moreover, a charm of mysterious eld attaching to it as connected with the antiquity of the human race which is peculiarly its own.
The Bronze Age, nevertheless, from its close propinquity to the period of written history, is of the highest importance to those who would trace back the course of human progress to its earliest phases; and though in this country many of the minute details of the picture cannot be filled in, yet, taken as a whole, the broad lines of the development of this stage of civilisation may be as well traced in Britain as in any other country. It has been a pleasure to me to gather the information on which this work is based; and I close these pages with the consolatory thought that, dry as may be their contents, they may prove of some value as a hoard of collected facts for other seekers after truth.
FINIS.