Certain iron spear-heads, daggers,[7] sheaths,[8] and swords[9] of bronze from the river Witham are also attributed to this period. The art of enamelling the surface of metal appears in the Prehistoric Iron Age, and its chief centre seems to have been the British Isles.
The shield found in the river Witham is put down to this period in the British Museum Handbook, pages 87 to 92. It is one of the most beautiful specimens of inlaid work yet discovered.
“With the introduction of iron a change in the burial customs took place in Britain. Cremation was carried on, but the dead were frequently interred at full length in a stone chamber, or shallow pit, along with various articles used in daily life.”
Doubtless there are many “finds” of stone and bronze and iron implements from Lincolnshire in private collections that are not described in any book or catalogue extant.
It is only by personal knowledge, and by contributing that knowledge to a common centre, that anything like a correct record can be made for the benefit of students and futurity of the Prehistoric Period in Lincolnshire.
With the coming of the Romans, B.C. 55 and 47 A.D., we enter on the Historic Iron Age, which is outside the scope of this article. As regards the Roman occupation of Lincoln, A.D. 50, we have written elsewhere.[10]
THE ROMANS IN LINCOLNSHIRE
By the Rev. E. H. R. Tatham, M.A.
Roman Lincolnshire has no written history. There is not a line in any extant ancient writer describing the progress of a Roman army within its limits. Yet that wonderful people have left indelible marks of their presence in the county, not merely, as elsewhere, in a few fortifications connected by military roads, but in the systematic reclamation of a whole district. The details remaining to us of their conquest of the island apply principally to the south-east, the north, and the north-west. And yet the marshy plain of the Lincolnshire coast must have been then, as it proved in later times, an ideal refuge for native tribes at last driven to bay. Bounded on the east by the sea and on the south by impassable fens—subject in parts to submersion by the sea—the county was only accessible to a southern invader on its south-west side, through the forest which then covered Kesteven. But the Roman conqueror was seldom daunted by natural obstacles; and some further explanation is needed of the fact that, in the earlier stages of the conquest, his efforts seem constantly deflected to the west. Some have fancied that the Romans recognised their most implacable enemies in the Druids, and that these priestly fanatics retreated westward before them until they were finally exterminated by Paulinus in their stronghold of Mona (Anglesey). A simpler hypothesis is that, like the Regni in Sussex and the Brigantes in Yorkshire, the inhabitants of our county at first propitiated the enemy by alliance and by giving hostages for good conduct.