[693] W. Greenwell, Brit. Barrows, pp. 54-6; Archaeologia, xliii, 1871, pp. 492, 494-5, 507, 530; lii, 1890, pp. 58-9. A glass bead has been found in one Derbyshire barrow (Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd ser., xv, 1893-5, p. 425). Gold has only once been found in a barrow on the Yorkshire Wolds (Archaeologia, lii, 58-9); and of 379 interments only 10, of which 2 were Late Celtic, were found there accompanied by ornaments (Brit. Barrows, pp. 51-2); whereas in Wiltshire 64 were found out of 354 (Archaeologia, xliii, 488).
[694] The absence of gold and amber which distinguishes the group of barrows round the great stone circle at Avebury from those associated with Stonehenge (Crania Britannica, ii, pl. 11, p. 5, n. 11) is remarkable. Perhaps it may be due partly to the greater antiquity of the Avebury barrows.
[695] In regard to the poverty of the people who, probably in the Early Iron Age, used the stronghold of Winkelbury Hill, 13 miles WSW. of Salisbury, see A. Pitt-Rivers, Excavations in Cranborne Chase, ii, 236.
[696] Dr. Joseph Anderson assigns these balls, which have been found only in Scotland, to the Iron Age; but Mr. George Coffey (Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant. Ireland, 5th ser., vi, 1896, p. 42) thinks that ‘the general character of these spirals appears to be distinctly Bronze Age, not Late Celtic’. It has been pointed out (Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd ser., xvi, 1895-7, pp. 408-9) that Mr. Coffey’s theory is ‘strengthened by the fact that stone balls of this class have been found associated with cist burials [of the Bronze Age] ... near Ballater, and ... [in] Elginshire’.
[697] Meath, Louth, Fermanagh, Tyrone, and Donegal.
[698] See Mr. G. Coffey’s articles in Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant. Ireland, 5th ser., iv. 1894, pp. 349-79; v, 1895, pp. 16-29, 195-211; vi, 1896, pp. 34-69, and especially 40-2, 65; Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xxi, 1887, p. 144; xxiii, 1889, p. 133; xxix, 1895, pp. 191-4; xxxiii, 1899, pp. 363-4, 368; L’Anthr., vii, 1896, pp. 688-9; xvii, 1906, p. 332, fig. 6; Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Ant. and Archaeol. Soc., N. S., ii, 1902, pp. 381-2; Romilly Allen, Celtic Art in Pagan and Christian Times, 1904, pp. 50-3; C. H. Read, Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age (Brit. Museum), p. 96; and Vict. Hist. of ... Lancs, i, 240. Mr. Read observes (op. cit., p. 103) that some of the Scandinavian bronzes have been shown by analysis to have been imported from Britain.
[699] M. Salomon Reinach (L’Anthr., iv, 1893, pp. 688-90), if I do not misunderstand him, although he admits that the British Isles in the Bronze Age were connected by trade with Scandinavia, thinks it probable that the spiral reached the former by way of Spain. He observes that among Scandinavian rock-sculptures there are no spirals; that certain designs—for example the boat—are common to sepulchral monuments in Brittany and in Ireland; that there are striking points of resemblance between the bronze culture of Ireland and Spain; and that designs which have been found in the East Riding of Yorkshire represent Aegean types which also appear in the departments of the Marne and the Gard (see p. 200, infra). These arguments seem unavailing against those stated in the text, and especially against the almost complete absence of the spiral from Spain, Gaul, and Southern England. If the figure does not appear on Scandinavian rocks, it abounds on Scandinavian weapons and ornaments; and on rocks boats are frequently represented (O. Montelius, Civilisation of Sweden in Heathen Times, 1888, pp. 46, 73-6). Nor is M. Reinach’s reasoning sound when he goes on to argue that we have no right to trace the Bronze Age spiral of Western Europe to an Egyptian source because the same design has been found engraved on mammoths’ tusks in the Pyrenaean cave of Espélungues at Arudy (L’Anthr., xv, 1904, p. 146, fig. 24; xvi, 1905, p. 5, fig. 4). As Dr. Arthur Evans remarks (Report of ... the Brit. Association, 1896, p. 913), ‘the earliest cultural strata of Europe, from the Neolithic period onwards, betray an entire absence of the recurring spiral motive. When we find it later propagating itself as a definite ornamental system in a regular chronological succession throughout an otherwise inter-related European zone, we have every right to trace it to a common source.
[700] See pp. 499-500 and 511-4, infra.
[701] See Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxx, 1900, p. 94, and the Hon. John Abercromby’s article in the same periodical, xxxv, 1905, pp. 256-64, especially 262. Mr. George Coffey (Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant. Ireland, 5th ser., vi, 1896, p. 40), remarking that Britain and Gaul were on a lower plane of civilization in the Bronze Age than Scandinavia, argues that one cause may have been that ‘the sea-way south of the Elbe was possibly closed to Scandinavian enterprise in the Bronze Age’. But the North Sea was not; and apparently there was nothing to prevent Scandinavian traders from landing on our eastern coasts if they had thought it worth while.
[702] See p. 119, supra. Prof. B. C. A. Windle (Remains of the Prehist. Age, pp. 153-73) gives a fairly complete list. It would be superfluous to print references for barrows belonging to counties not mentioned in my text; for full lists are being given in the Victoria County History.