The Ancient Bronze Implements, Weapons, and Ornaments, of Great Britain and Ireland.

by John Evans

Having already in a former work attempted the arrangement and description of the Ancient Stone Implements and Ornaments of Great Britain, I am induced to undertake a similar task in connection with those Bronze Antiquities which belong to the period when Stone was gradually falling into disuse for cutting purposes, and Iron was either practically unknown in this country, or had been but partially adopted for tools and weapons.

The duration and chronological position of this bronze-using period will have to be discussed hereafter, but I must at the outset reiterate what I said some eight or ten years ago, that in this county, at all events, it is impossible to fix any hard and fast limits for the close of the Stone Period, or for the beginning or end of the Bronze Period, or for the commencement of that of Iron. Though the succession of these three stages of civilisation may here be regarded as certain, the transition from one to the other in a country of such an extent as Britain—occupied, moreover, as it probably was, by several tribes of different descent, manners, and customs—must have required a long course of years to become general; and even in any particular district the change cannot have been sudden.

There must of necessity have been a time when in each district the new phase of civilisation was being introduced, and the old conditions had not been entirely changed. So that, as I have elsewhere pointed out, the three stages of progress represented by the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Periods, like the three principal colours of the rainbow, overlap, intermingle, and shade off the one into the other, though their succession, so far as Britain and Western Europe are concerned, appears to be equally well defined with that of the prismatic colours.

In thus speaking of a bronze-using period I by no means wish to exclude the possible use of copper unalloyed with tin. There is indeed every ground for believing that in some parts of the world the use of native copper must have continued for a lengthened period before it was discovered that the addition of a small proportion of tin not only rendered it more readily fusible, but added to its elasticity and hardness, and thus made it more serviceable for tools and weapons. Even after the advantages of the alloy over the purer metal were known, the local scarcity of tin may at times have caused so small a quantity of that metal to be employed, that the resulting mixture can hardly be regarded as bronze; or at times this dearth may have necessitated the use of copper alone, either native or as smelted from the ore.

Of this Copper Age, however, there are in Europe but extremely feeble traces, if indeed any can be said to exist. It appears not unlikely that the views which are held by many archæologists as to the Asiatic origin of bronze may prove to be well founded, and that when the use of copper was introduced into Europe, the discovery had already long been made that it was more serviceable when alloyed with tin than when pure. In connection with this it may be observed that the most important discovery of instruments of copper as yet recorded in the Old World is that which was made at Gungeria in Central India.[1] They consisted of flat celts of what has been regarded as the most primitive type; but with them were found some ornaments of silver, a circumstance which seems to militate against their extreme antiquity, as the production of silver involves a considerable amount of metallurgical skill, and probably an acquaintance with lead and other metals. However this may be, there are reasons for supposing that if a Copper Age existed in the Old World its home was in Asia or the most eastern part of Europe, and not in any western country.

The most instructive instance of a Copper Age, as distinct from one of Bronze, is that afforded by certain districts of North America, in which we find good evidence of a period when, in addition to stone as a material from which tools and weapons were made, copper also was employed, and used in its pure native condition without the addition of any alloy.

The State of Wisconsin[2] alone has furnished upwards of a hundred axes, spear-heads, and knives formed of copper; and, to judge from some extracts from the writings of the early travellers given by the Rev. E. F. Slafter,[3] that part of America would seem to have entered on its Copper Age long before it was first brought into contact with European civilisation, towards the middle of the sixteenth century. It has been thought by several American antiquaries that some at least of these tools and weapons were produced by the process of casting, though the preponderance of opinion seems to be in favour of all of them being shaped by the hammer and not cast. Among others I may mention my friend the Hon. Colonel C. C. Jones, who has examined this question for me, and has been unable to discover any instance of one of these copper tools or weapons having been indisputably cast.

That they were originally wrought, and not cast, is à priori in the highest degree probable. On some parts of the shores of Lake Superior native copper occurs in great abundance, and would no doubt attract the attention of the early occupants of the country. Accustomed to the use of stone, they would at first regard the metal as merely a stone of peculiarly heavy nature, and on attempting to chip it or work it into shape would at once discover that it yielded to a blow instead of breaking, and that in fact it was a malleable stone. Of this ductile property the North American savage availed himself largely, and was able to produce spear-heads with sockets adapted for the reception of their shafts by merely hammering out the base of the spear-head and turning it over to form the socket, in the same manner as is so often employed in the making of iron tools. But though the great majority of the instruments hitherto found, if not all, have been hammered and not cast, it would appear that the process of melting copper was not entirely unknown. Squier and Davis have observed,[4] “that the metal appears to have been worked in all cases in a cold state. This is somewhat remarkable, as the fires upon the altars were sufficiently strong in some instances to melt down the copper implements and ornaments deposited upon them, and the fact that the metal is fusible could hardly have escaped notice.” That it did not altogether escape observation is shown by the evidence of De Champlain,[5] the founder of the city of Quebec. In 1610 he was joining a party of Algonquins, one of whom met him on his barque, and after conversation “tira d’un sac une pièce de cuivre de la longueur d’un pied qu’il me donna, le quel estoit fort beau et bien franc, me donnant à entendre qu’il en avoit en quantité là ou il l’avoit pris, qui estoit sur le bort d’une rivière proche d’un grand lac et qu’ils le prenoient par morceaux, et le faisant fondre le mettoient en lames, et avec des pierres le rendoient uny.”

We have here, then, evidence of a Copper Age,[6] in comparatively modern times, during most of which period the process of fusing the metal was unknown. In course of time, however, this art was discovered, and had not European influences been brought to bear upon the country this discovery might, as in other parts of the world, have led to the knowledge of other fusible metals, and eventually to the art of manufacturing bronze—an alloy already known in Mexico and Peru.[7]