[751] Wilts Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Mag., xxiii, 1887, pp. 245-52. At the foot of Garrow by Hill, on the Yorkshire Wolds, there is another gigantic mound, 50 feet high and 250 feet in diameter, which has not been opened (J. R. Mortimer, Forty Years’ Researches, p. xx).
[752] J. Evans, Anc. Bronze Implements, pp. 134, 273-4, 277, 342; W. Greenwell, Brit. Barrows, pp. 44, 48-9; Archaeologia, xliii, 1871, pp. 442-6. See also Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association, x, 1855, p. 8. Dr. Thurnam (Archaeologia, xliii, 447 and note b) quotes one instance of the discovery in a round barrow of a socketed celt, which, notwithstanding the doubts expressed by Sir John Evans (Anc. Bronze Implements, p. 134), appears to have been contemporaneous with the interment; and another is mentioned in Anc. Bronze Implements, p. 114. On the other hand, Pitt-Rivers, referring to the spear-head mentioned in Archaeologia, xliii, 447, says, ‘I am informed by Mr. William Cunnington ... that ... it was found by his grandfather ... immediately under the turf near Stonehenge, and not in a barrow’. The reference given by Pitt-Rivers (Excavations in Cranborne Chase, iv, 20) to Archaeologia is incorrect.
[753] See J. Anderson, Scotland in Pagan Times,—the Bronze and Stone Ages, pp. 169-70. Canon Greenwell (Brit. Barrows, pp. 48-50) asserts that knife-daggers and flat axes—the only bronze implements found in Yorkshire barrows—never accompany swords and spear-heads in hoards, and argues that this proves the early date of round barrows in general. If the assertion were true, the fact would prove the early date of those Yorkshire barrows in which daggers and flat axes were found; but the question is whether many other barrows do not belong to later periods of the Bronze Age. Moreover, flat axes have been found twice in hoards,—one with palstaves (J. Evans, Anc. Bronze Implements, p. 464), another with swords (ib., p. 466).
[754] Archaeologia, xliii, 1871, p. 463.
[755] The Hon. John Abercromby (Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxxv, 1905, p. 262) affirms that ‘the few bronze swords, spear-heads, etc., of the Bronze Age and Hallstatt Period, that first filtered in driblets into this country, and were then reproduced with variations by native smiths, were too precious to be laid by for ever in a grave, even at the end of the Bronze Age in Britain’. Is not this begging the question? If small bronze weapons were ‘laid by for ever’ in graves in the earlier period, when bronze was scarce, why should not large ones have been laid by when it was common? And if gold ornaments were not too costly to be sacrificed, why should bronze swords have been deemed so precious?
[756] Anc. Bronze Implements, pp. 473-4.
[757] See p. 288, infra, and Addenda.
[758] See p. 181, n. 2, supra; Archaeologia, xliii, 1871, pp. 447-8; and Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age (Brit. Museum), p. 93. Sir John Evans (Anc. Bronze Implements, p. 310), referring to the tanged weapons of Arreton Down type and to certain blades found in the Wiltshire barrows, which (see pp. 145, 147, supra) he thinks ‘may have been the heads of spears rather than the blades of daggers’, remarks that ‘at the period to which they belong the art of making cores must have been known, as the ferrule found at Arreton Down will testify’. This is significant; but on p. 473 he refers the ‘tanged spear-heads or daggers’ to the second period of the Bronze Age,—earlier than that of palstaves and socketed celts.
Mr. C. H. Read (Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age, p. 24) observes that cinerary urns ‘possibly represent the period during which swords and spear-heads of bronze were manufactured ... by our population’. It is true that certain urns of overhanging rim type were contemporary with socketed weapons (Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxxv, 1905, pp. 262-4); but the oldest urns were much earlier. Cf. Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd ser., xviii, 1899-1901, pp. 251-3.
[759] Archaeol. Rev., ii, 1889, p. 323. Cf. Folk-Lore, vi, 1895, pp. 15-7. Dr. Evans remarks in this article that ‘the characteristic form presented by a spiral ring of bronze found in one urn leads one indeed to believe that these flat disk-barrows of Standlake [in Oxfordshire] belong to a time when iron was coming into use’.