THE BRONZE AGE AND THE VOYAGE OF PYTHEAS
[Sidenote: A Copper Age preceded the Bronze Age in certain countries,
but has not been proved to have existed in Britain.]
Those who have learned to realize the extreme slowness with which
material culture was evolved in its earlier stages would be disposed to
doubt whether the first metallic implements were made of bronze, and
to ask whether, at all events in some part of the world, the Neolithic
must not have merged into a Copper Age. It is easy to imagine that the
accidental melting of a piece of copper ore may have suggested the
possibility of fashioning the metal into tools; and that inventive
cutlers took impressions of stone axes in clay, and found that they
could make from them copper axes which were not liable to break:[477]
but one can hardly believe that simultaneously the discovery should
have been made that the softness and bluntness of copper could be
remedied by mixing with it a small proportion of tin. It is indeed
not inconceivable that bronze was the first metal which was ever
manufactured; for near the surface copper ores often contain tin
oxide; and it has been proved that by smelting such ores bronze can
be produced.[478] But of course only experiment could have shown that
tools made of this metal were better than copper. The Egyptians were
acquainted with the use of copper long before they began to manufacture
bronze;[479] and in many parts of the British Isles as well as of the
Continent copper implements have been discovered which belonged to
prehistoric times.[480] But such discoveries do not necessarily prove
the existence of a Copper Age: they may often be accounted for by
the supposition that tin, which is far less widely distributed than
copper, was temporarily wanting. In many cases implements of copper and
of bronze have been met with in intimate association; and sometimes
copper implements of advanced type with primitive bronze.[481] When,
on the other hand, copper implements are repeatedly found in deposits
which are known to be older than the oldest bronze in the districts in
which they occur, the conclusion is irresistible that they were used
there before bronze was manufactured.[482] There was certainly a Copper
Age in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Cyprus; and probably also in Hungary,
Northern Italy, Spain, and Ireland, with which, in ancient times, Spain
was closely connected, and in which copper celts were unmistakably
modelled upon those of stone: but for Britain the evidence is not
sufficient.[483] We must assume then provisionally that in our island
the metal which was first used for cutting-tools was bronze.
[Sidenote: Bronze implements used for many centuries in Europe before
the Iron Age.]
Certain metallurgists, however, maintain that a Bronze Age, properly
so called, may never have existed; and that iron may have been
manufactured during and even before the period to which the bronze
tools that are exhibited in museums belong. Iron was undoubtedly
known to the Egyptians at a very remote date, perhaps as early as
bronze.[484] Primitive methods of extracting iron from its ore, which
are still practised in India and Africa, require far less skill than
the manufacture of bronze: the metallurgists argue that since iron is
rapidly oxidized by air and moisture, the iron tools which they assume
to have been made in the so-called Bronze Age must have perished in the
conditions to which most of the bronze tools that have been discovered
were exposed; and they insist that iron tools have actually been found
in association with objects of the early Bronze and even of the late
Neolithic Age.[485]
The inconsistency of these arguments is self-evident; and if their
authors had known the rudiments of archaeology, they would never have
published them.[486] Hundreds of iron weapons have been recovered from
the Thames: a competent archaeologist has affirmed that there was not
one which could not with certainty be attributed to some period later
than the Bronze Age; and since numerous articles of stone and bronze
have been found in the same bed, he reasonably concludes that if iron
implements had been used in the Bronze Age, some few at least must have
come to light.[487] Nor is there any reason to suppose that if iron
tools had been laid in graves of the Bronze Age, they would necessarily
have perished beyond recognition; for in the famous Tyrolese cemetery
of Hallstatt, and in many other deposits that, like it, belonged to
the transitional period when bronze and iron were simultaneously used,
the iron objects, oxidized though they are, retain their distinctive
forms.[488] Yet in the numerous British barrows of the Bronze Age, and
in the hoards of the same period that have been unearthed in England,
Scotland, and Wales, not a trace of iron has ever been found.[489]
Nothing then can be more certain than that in Britain, as in the rest
of Europe, the Iron Age was preceded by a long period during which the
only metals used were copper and bronze.[490]
[Sidenote: Where did the European bronze culture originate?]
Every antiquary knows that bronze did not reach this country until long
after it was first used in Southern Europe, and that it was common in
Egypt many centuries before; but in what part of the world it was first
manufactured remains an unsettled question.[491] The oldest piece of
bronze that has yet been dated was found at Mêdûm in Egypt, and is
supposed to have been cast about three thousand seven hundred years
before the birth of Christ. But the metal may have been worked even
earlier in other lands; for a bronze statuette and a bronze vase, which
were made twenty-five centuries before our era, have been obtained
from Mesopotamia; and the craft must have passed through many stages
before such objects could have been produced. Yet it would be rash to
infer that either the Babylonians or the Egyptians invented bronze; for
neither in Egypt nor in Babylonia is there any tin. Some archaeologist
who shall explore the virgin fields of the Far East may one day be able
to prove that bronze was worked by the Chinese, in whose country both
copper and tin abound, earlier than by any other people; but even so
it will still remain doubtful whether the art was not independently
discovered elsewhere. There is no evidence that the bronze culture of
Mexico and Peru did not originate in America;[492] and although it was
once believed that all the tribes of Europe ultimately derived their
knowledge of the metal from Asia,[493] there are many who now maintain
that it is impossible to detect in European deposits of the Bronze Age
the slightest trace of Oriental origin.[494]
[Sidenote: Origin and affinities of the bronze culture of Britain.]
But whatever may have been the case in Southern lands, there is no
doubt that the knowledge of bronze came to this country from abroad.
The old theory that it was a result of Phoenician commerce with Britain
has long been abandoned;[495] and British bronze implements are so
different from those of Norway and Sweden, Denmark, and Hungary that
it cannot have been derived from any of those countries.[496] German
influence was felt at a comparatively late period;[497] but from first
to last the British bronze culture was closely connected with that of
Gaul, and through Gaul with that of Italy.[498]
[Sidenote: Period of its commencement.]
The period when bronze first appeared in Britain can only be
approximately fixed. It is certain that in the south-eastern districts
iron tools began to be used not later than the fourth century before
the Christian era.[499] The final period of the British Bronze Age
is marked by the discovery of bronze-founders’ hoards, all of which
contain tools or fragments of tools which are known as socketed celts,
or other socketed instruments which were contemporary with them. These
hoards are so numerous and so widely diffused, and the objects of
which they are composed are so varied in form, that the time during
which they were deposited cannot, in the opinion of experts, have been
less than four or five hundred years. But before the first socketed
celt was cast the bronze culture passed through earlier stages, during
which the flat celts that resembled those of stone were being used,
and then gradually giving way to improved forms, which in their turn
were succeeded by later developments. The veteran archaeologist who has
handled and examined almost every specimen of these numerous varieties
has arrived at the conclusion that the British Bronze Age must have
begun at the latest between 1400 and 1200 B.C.;[500] and while no one
would now contend for a later date, there are some who maintain that
bronze was first used in Britain twenty centuries before the Christian
era.[501]
[Sidenote: Physical characters of the late neolithic and early
bronze-using invaders of Britain.]
After the Bronze Age set in, as before the close of the preceding
period, bands of invaders, wholly different in physical type from the
neolithic aborigines, landed successively through long ages upon our
eastern and southern shores. They came from the Netherlands, from
Denmark and its islands, perhaps also from Scandinavia and from Gaul.
They must not, however, be identified either with the invaders who
introduced the Celtic language into Gaul or with any Celtic-speaking
people. There is no evidence, and it is in the last degree improbable,
that any Celtic tribe had appeared in Gaul at the time when the alien
immigrants began to settle in Britain, or that Celtic had then taken
shape as a branch of the Indo-European language. Those immigrants have
often been described as a tall, stalwart, round-headed race; but the
evidence of sepulchral remains shows that they sprang from various
stocks. Those of the type which is commonly regarded as specially
characteristic of the Bronze Age were taller and much more powerfully
built than the aborigines: their skulls were comparatively short and
round; they had massive jaws, strongly marked features, enormously
prominent brow ridges and retreating foreheads; and their countenances
must have been stern, forbidding, and sometimes almost brutal. Similar
skulls, which have much in common with the primitive Neanderthal
type,[502] have been exhumed from neolithic tombs in Denmark and the
Danish island of Falster. But the skeletons which have been found
in some of the oldest Scottish cists belonged to men whose average
height, although they were sturdy and thickset, was barely five feet
three inches, and whose skulls, shorter and rounder than the others,
as well as their milder features, proved that they were an offshoot
of the so-called Alpine race of Central Europe, of which there were
numerous representatives in Gaul. Again there were tall men with
skulls of an intermediate type; while others, who combined harsh
features and projecting brows with narrow heads, and whose stature was
often great, would seem to have been the offspring of intermarriage
between the older and the newer inhabitants. Not a single skeleton of
the characteristic British round-barrow type is known to have been
discovered on French soil: the round-headed inhabitants of Gaul were
as conspicuously short as those of Britain were generally tall; nor,
excluding the Britons of the Alpine stock, was there any physical
resemblance between the two peoples. The British invaders of the Alpine
stock, judging from the pottery which was found with their skeletons,
came for the most part, as we shall afterwards see, not from Gaul but
from the valley of the Rhine. Moreover, the round-headed people of Gaul
settled there first early in the Neolithic Age, before a Celtic word
was spoken; and although their descendants formed the substratum of the
Gallic population who, in Caesar’s time, called themselves Celts, that
name was introduced by conquerors of a wholly different stock. Probably
a Celtic invasion of Britain took place before the British Iron Age
began: but the remains of such invaders are not recognizable in any
British graves.[503]
[Sidenote: Their social organization.]
Each of the invading clans was doubtless ruled by a chief; for many of
the burial mounds which they erected were intended for the great alone,
and could only have been constructed by the organized labour of many
hands.[504] They must have respected family ties; for women and even
babies were interred with scrupulous care; and more than one barrow
was reared for the reception of a single child.[505] Yet infants have
so often been found buried along with women that one can only conclude
that infanticide was as prevalent in ancient as in modern Britain.[506]
Only the children were slain because their mothers could no longer
nurse them, not because they desired to rid themselves of trouble.
[Sidenote: Character and results of the invasions: the invaders poor in
bronze weapons.]
In Wiltshire and other parts of Southern Britain the old population
would seem to have been largely dispossessed or subdued; but the
skeletons found in the barrows of Derbyshire and Staffordshire, of
Yorkshire and the other northern counties, indicate that there the
immigrants mingled more or less peacefully with the people whom
they came among.[507] Fighting no doubt took place everywhere; but
the notion that bronze weapons gave the first invaders victory is
disproved by the fact that in the earlier part of the era bronze was
both costly and rare.[508] If chieftains had bronze, their clansmen
were still armed with old-fashioned weapons; and until the new age was
far advanced, the neolithic tribes, in so far as they were conquered,
must have yielded to superior numbers, superior skill, or superior
strength. Probably in certain districts they were never conquered, and
never permitted the intruders to dwell among them. Among a vast number
of stone implements that have been found lying on the moors west of
Rochdale and Ashton-under-Lyne bronze was searched for in vain;[509]
and one may provisionally infer that these hillmen were protected by
the strength of their territory.
[Sidenote: Evidence of finds as to the settlements of the invaders.]
Bronze implements or other relics of the Bronze Age have been found in
almost every county of England, Wales, and Scotland, and in some of
the adjoining islands;[510] but their distribution appears to imply
that, as might have been inferred from the geographical features,
some districts were far more densely populated than others. The lands
which the new comers selected were mainly those which were already
occupied by the neolithic inhabitants. The relics are most abundant in
those which are now most sparsely peopled, but which were then sought
after because, even when the soil was poor, it was dry, well-watered,
and comparatively open. The moors of Derbyshire, Yorkshire and other
Northumbrian counties, Devonshire and Cornwall; the bracing uplands of
East Anglia; the downs of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Berkshire, Hampshire,
Dorsetshire, and Wiltshire; and the wolds of Lincolnshire,--these were
the tracts which the immigrants occupied in the greatest numbers. The
Midlands, on the other hand, would seem to have attracted comparatively
few: Durham, for some unexplained reason, was generally avoided;[511]
while the northern and north-western tracts of Scotland were almost
entirely neglected.[512] The Yorkshire Wolds afford an interesting
example of the motives which determined the choice of abode. Their
scanty vegetation could not have tempted a people who depended for
their subsistence mainly upon their flocks and herds; yet the numerous
barrows with which they are studded and the flint implements which have
been picked up in thousands from their surface prove that they were as
thickly peopled as any other part of Britain. The reason was that they
were unencumbered by the forests which could only have been cleared by
arduous labour; their climate was healthy; and, above all, they were
so completely isolated by the wooded valley of the Derwent, the swamps
of Holderness, the broad estuary of the Humber, and the morasses which
then covered the plain of York, that their occupants were secure from
all attack.[513]
In certain parts of England the routes by which invaders advanced may
be traced by the sites at which bronze implements have been found. In
Worcestershire, for example, these spots have been mapped along the
line of the Avon from Warwickshire to the Severn, and again in the
valley of the latter river, where it was apparently crossed by ancient
trackways. The implements in these two counties belong to comparatively
late periods.[514]
The settlements must often have been desperately resisted, more and
more as time passed and unoccupied lands became rare. But it would be
a mistake to assume that the struggle was always between aboriginal
communities and round-headed invaders. There must have been much
intermingling between the old population and the new: gradually the
use of bronze weapons must have spread to neolithic clans or to those
who could obtain them by barter or theft; and by the time when the
Bronze Age was far advanced tribes of mingled stock must often have
presented a united front to enemies from over sea. Even when the
invaders had slowly made their way from the Channel to the far north,
and from the German Ocean to the Irish Sea, hunger or the lust of
booty would often lead to intertribal raids. Gradually weapons were
improved; and we shall presently endeavour to trace their evolution.
Even to the very end of the period, however, not only the rank and file
but the wealthiest chief, who had a complete set of bronze implements
and weapons, and who could afford to decorate the handle of his blade
with ivory, amber, or gold, to wear gold buttons on his clothing,
sometimes even to adorn his charger with a gold peytrel, shot arrows
tipped with flint. Flint arrow-heads, leaf-shaped and barbed, have been
found by thousands in deposits of the Bronze Age, but in this island
never one of bronze. Even when daggers had given place to swords and
bronze spears were common, battle-axes were made not of bronze but of
stone.[515]
[Sidenote: Stone implements used long after the introduction of bronze.]
Stone implements indeed, such as were in use in the Neolithic Age,
have been found so often in the graves of chieftains associated with
those of bronze that we may be sure that, at least in the earlier part
of the Bronze Age, even the wealthier classes could not afford to
discard the older material; while among the needy population of the
Yorkshire Wolds many barrows contained no implements except those of
flint or bone.[516] Bronze saws have very rarely been found in this
country, although they were common enough in Southern Europe;[517] and
since all our bronze gouges are comparatively late,[518] it may be
inferred that during the earlier Bronze Age these tools were everywhere
still made of flint. In the west of Scotland, at all events, metal
tools were apparently unknown until long after the first round-headed
people landed, and probably until long after bronze had begun to be
used in Southern Britain.[519] We may indeed be sure that the Stone
Age continued for centuries later in remote parts of the country; and
perhaps in certain islands bronze may have remained unknown.
[Sidenote: Hill-forts.]
When a clan had succeeded in establishing itself, it had to provide for
its protection against cattle-lifters and slave-hunters; and gradually
and by immense labour great strongholds were constructed on suitable
sites. Comparatively rare in the south-east, they are conspicuous on
nearly all the hilly districts of England, Wales, and Scotland;[520]
but it is in the western and south-western counties that they most
abound. Devonshire and the adjacent parts of Somersetshire contain
not less than eighty; and almost every spur on Salisbury Plain is
fortified.[521] The multiplicity of these camps bears witness not
only to density of population and constant warfare, but also to the
utter disunion which existed at the time when they were constructed.
Supposing that the majority of the forts in Dorsetshire, for instance,
were built in the Late Celtic Period, we should have to conclude that
the Durotriges, who then inhabited that district, were merely a loose
aggregate of scores of clans, ever ready to prey upon one another; for
if the forts had been destined only to repel the attacks of some other
tribe, they would hardly have been so numerous and so widely scattered.
It is true that the Gallic Morini in Caesar’s time had not become
welded into one state, and that the Kentish clans were under four
petty kings; but in the period when the older earthworks were thrown
up it would seem that far less progress had been made towards union.
But even supposing that most of the prehistoric forts were later than
the Bronze Age, their purpose accorded with the methods of primitive
warfare. A chain of modern fortresses impedes an invader because,
while they remain uncaptured, he cannot pass between them without
exposing his line of communication. But in ancient times, when one
tribe attacked another, it had no communications to guard: the invaders
carried their food with them, and when it was spent trusted for support
to the enemy’s country.[522] If a tribe had desired merely to protect
its frontier, it would not have erected hill-forts but a continuous
entrenchment.
Amongst those which were occupied in the Bronze Age or before
may be mentioned Badbury Rings in Dorsetshire;[523] the stone
fort on Whit-Tor in Dartmoor[524] and another in the Rhonddha
valley in Glamorganshire;[525] Small Down camp near Evercreech in
Somersetshire;[526] the fort of Carn Brea in Cornwall;[527] the series
of entrenchments which mark the spurs of the hills that command
the valley of the Esk from Guisborough to Whitby;[528] those which
line the western border of Worcestershire;[529] Oldbury, some three
miles east of Sevenoaks;[530] Hollingbury on the Sussex Downs;[531]
Lutcombe Castle on the Berkshire Downs, overlooking the Vale of
White Horse;[532] and the greatest of all--the Maiden Castle, whose
stupendous ramparts are the pride of Dorchester.[533] But it is
probable that the greater number may ultimately be referred to the Age
of Bronze.[534]
The form, construction, and materials of British forts are naturally
diverse. In Cornwall, Devonshire, Wales, and other places they were
of course built largely or wholly of stone, the masonry being always
uncemented: elsewhere they were true earthworks. Leaving out of sight
the question of their date, they may be grouped in three classes.[535]
The first comprises those that were erected on promontories or other
heights which on one or more sides were fortified by precipice,
river, or sea. Such was the fort of Carl’s Wark in Derbyshire, which,
on three sides, rises almost sheer above the swamps of Hathersage
Moor. On the west, where the ground slopes towards the plain, a huge
earthen rampart, faced with dry masonry, afforded secure protection;
and the slopes below the eastern and southern sides are strewn with
great stones which must have fallen from the walls above.[536] The
‘cliff-castles’ on the coasts of Kirkcudbright and of Wales and on
the headlands between the Land’s End and Cape Cornwall belong to the
same group.[537] In the second class the entrenchments, traced upon
commanding sites, which, however, were nowhere so steep as to dispense
with artificial aid, followed the tactical line of defence which the
nature of the hill indicated. Most of the heights on which they stand
are covered with soil so thin that they never could have been thickly
wooded, and if trees had encumbered their sides they would have been
cut down; for the object of the engineers was to leave no ‘dead ground’
on which an assailant could conceal himself. If he felt strong enough
to lead his clansmen to the assault, he knew that they could not avoid
being exposed from the moment when they penetrated within the range of
a bow or a sling. General Pitt-Rivers, who did so much to illuminate
the study of prehistoric fortifications, was never weary of calling
attention to the skill with which they had been designed. Once only,
when he was exploring the camp at Seaford, he thought that he could
detect evidence of neglect. As he stood upon the rampart he noticed
that an advancing force would be able to conceal itself for a while.
Presently, however, it flashed across his mind that time had done its
work upon rampart and ditch; and soon excavation proved that the latter
had lost by silting seven feet of its original depth. The general saw
with delight that the designer had been as vigilant as any of his
contemporaries. The rampart in ancient times must have been at least
five feet higher; and then the garrison who manned it would have been
able instantly to detect the first enemy who ventured within range.
‘How carefully,’ he wrote, ‘the defenders economized their interior
space, drawing their rampart just far enough down the hill to obtain a
command of view, but not one yard further.’[538]
In certain cases, however, the hill was so extensive that if the
tactical line of defence had been slavishly followed, the defenders
would have been too few. Then the chief engineer modified the accepted
principle. Selecting a spot at which he might safely abandon the
natural line, he made his sappers build a cross rampart at right angles
to it straight across the hill-top until it joined the works on the
further side. An example of this device may be seen in the camp of
Puttenham in Surrey.[539]
Among the more famous strongholds of the second class are Cissbury on
the South Downs, which, as we have seen, was almost certainly erected
in the Neolithic Age,[540] Badbury Rings, and the Maiden Castle. This
noble fortress must surely have deserved its modern name. No British
force could ever have taken it: no other country can show its match.
Three lines of ramparts defend the northern and four the southern side:
gaining the summit of the road from Weymouth, you see them outlined
against the sky; and as you mount the hill-side, they rise, one behind
another, like veritable cliffs. Worn by the rains of five-and-twenty
centuries or more, they still stand sixty feet[541] above their
fosses; and their entrances, on the east and the west, are guarded
by overlapping works so intricate that if a column had succeeded
in forcing its way across the abatis, it would have found itself
helplessly winding in and out as through a labyrinth, pounded on either
flank and enfiladed by stones and arrows discharged at point-blank
range.
The strongholds of the third class were erected on lower hills
or on high ground little elevated above the surrounding country,
and therefore depended less for their protection upon natural
features.[542] Those that have been explored belong to the Late Celtic
Period.[543] It may be doubted, however, whether such forts were
generally later than those whose sites were more commanding; for the
inhabitants of every district could only choose the best positions
which they could find.[544] Cherbury camp indeed, about four miles
south-east of Fyfield in Berkshire, was built on a lowland plain.
Some of the Gallic forts which Caesar saw, and of our own, were in his
time inhabited by large industrial communities; but although many of
the British strongholds which belonged to the Bronze Age contain the
foundations of huts and broken pottery,[545] it is doubtful whether
they had more than a few occupants except in time of war.[546]
Every explorer who has tried to imagine the conditions of life in
ancient British forts has noticed that many of them have no apparent
source from which water can be obtained. It has indeed been suggested
that where there was neither a spring nor running water within reach
the garrison had recourse to dew-ponds, which are still used for
watering cattle on the Hampshire downs.[547] But even these reservoirs
were generally lacking. Pitt-Rivers, however, argued that in the chalk
districts many sites which are now remote from water may have possessed
springs. At the village of Woodcuts in Cranborne Chase, after cleaning
out a Roman well, one hundred and eighty-eight feet deep, he found no
water, but the iron-work of a bucket.[548] But even where there was no
spring it is easy to understand how the garrison supplied themselves.
None of these camps was ever subjected to a prolonged siege. No army
can undertake such an operation unless it can ensure a continuous
supply of food; and to do this requires forethought and organization
of which barbarous clans are incapable. Again and again the Gauls
with whom Caesar contended, whose civilization was far more advanced
than that of the Britons of the Bronze Age, were obliged to abandon
movements that might otherwise have succeeded, simply because their
commissariat had been neglected.[549] When ancient Britons were obliged
to take refuge in their stronghold, they knew that the danger would
pass if they could hold out for a little while. Women and children
who failed to reach the entrenchment in time were doubtless slain or
enslaved. But otherwise the worst that was to be dreaded was the loss
of crops or stock and the destruction of dwellings. We may suppose that
while the cattle were being driven into the fort the women carried up
in vessels of skin or earthenware as much water as would suffice for a
few days. Such was the practice of the Maoris at a recent time.[550]
[Sidenote: Primitive metallurgy.]
In spite of war industrial arts were making progress, which
was stimulated by war itself. Copper was abundant in Cornwall,
Cardiganshire and Anglesey, and near Llandudno: tin was to be had near
the surface in Cornwall,[551] and perhaps first attracted attention
where it was associated with gold; native smiths began to copy the
tools which were brought from abroad; and insular forms were gradually
evolved. Among the immigrants there must have been some who were
acquainted with metallurgy; and just as the modern coach-builder finds
himself obliged to manufacture motor-cars, so, we may be sure, the more
enterprising cutlers who had hitherto made stone implements gradually
learned to produce tools of copper or bronze. The metals were of course
not at first procured by mining. Copper would be obtained from boulders
or from lumps of ore on hill-sides, and tin from the gravel beds of
streams. The methods, which have been recorded by modern observers,
of primitive communities are probably much the same as those of the
Britons of the Bronze Age. The original furnaces differed hardly at
all from the fires at which food was cooked. The fire was kindled
within a fire-place of large stones, underneath which was a pit. The
wind, rushing through the crevices of the stones, created a draught,
which may have been forced by some rude bellows. After the embers and
the slag had been raked away the molten metal in the pit was watched
until it was on the point of becoming solid, when the copper cakes were
snatched out and broken into the lumps of which specimens have been
found in bronze-founders’ hoards. For the smelting of tin a method may
have been adopted which was still practised in Germany in the Middle
Ages. A trench was filled with brushwood, above which logs were piled;
and as soon as the fuel was aglow the ore was pitched on to the fire
until a sufficient amount had accumulated. Then the embers were raked
away, and the molten tin ladled out.[552] It is worthy of remark that
all the Scottish bronze implements which had been analysed up to the
year 1880 contained lead;[553] and one may perhaps infer that the tin
which was exported from Cornwall to Scotland was not pure.
[Sidenote: Bronze implements:--celts.]
Many bronze implements were reproductions, more or less modified, of
neolithic models. Stone celts, knives, daggers, spear-heads, awls,
chisels, gouges, sickles, and saws have their successors in bronze.
Gradually, however, new forms were developed or invented. Bronze was
of course at first reserved for weapons; and knives or knife-daggers
probably preceded all others, because the metal was originally too
scarce and expensive to be used for those which required a large
expenditure of material.[554] Flat axes, resembling more or less
closely the polished neolithic celts, were, however, manufactured
early in the Bronze Age. After some time the sides of the narrow part
of the celt, above the cutting edge, were hammered upwards,--probably
in order to steady the blade against a lateral strain; and thus by
insensible gradations the flat was transformed into the flanged celt;
while a projection, commonly called a stop-ridge, was cast on the
narrow part of the blade with the object of preventing it from being
forced too far into its wooden haft. As the flanges became more marked,
they were first confined to the upper part of the tool, and afterwards
developed into wings which were hammered inwards so as to form a kind
of rudimentary socket.[555] Celts of this form are called palstaves,--a
word of Icelandic origin, which denotes a spade. In palstaves of
another kind the part between the wings and above the stop-ridge was
cast thinner than the rest, so that a groove appeared into which the
haft could be securely fitted; and a loop was often added at one side
to enable the attachment to be secured by bands of twine.[556] The
final improvement was to cast the blade with a socket for the reception
of the handle: but palstaves remained in use down to the very end of
the Bronze Age;[557] while in some socketed celts the wings survive as
mere ornaments upon the sides.[558] Like palstaves nearly all socketed
celts are looped on one side, and a few on both.[559] Naturally the
socket was not limited to celts, but applied also to knives,[560]
chisels,[561] gouges,[562] and other tools. Socketed knives, however,
are very rare in Scotland; and on the Continent, except in Northern
France, they are almost unknown.[563] On the other hand the patterns
of our socketed chisels and gouges appear to have been derived from
some foreign source.[564]
[Illustration: FIG. 18. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 19. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 20. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 21. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 22. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 23. ½]
The earliest British celts were copied not from stone models but
from foreign ones of bronze;[565] and our winged celts and palstaves
resemble certain French specimens so closely that they too were
probably modelled in the first instance upon the latter.[566] The
socket also was invented by some ingenious foreign cutler;[567] for
palstaves with the wings bent over are rare in this country, whereas
socketed celts with ornamental wings are common.[568] Socketed
celts were apparently never widely diffused in Northern Britain;
and of course even in the south they did not altogether displace
palstaves.[569] Even after they began to be manufactured here the
output was supplemented by importation from Gaul: a certain type, the
blades of which, instead of expanding, are long and narrow, and the
sockets almost square, occurs frequently in North-Western France and
our southern counties, but very seldom in the north.[570]
Bronze celts in general, like those of stone, were doubtless used for
various purposes--as hoes, hatchets, and possibly battle-axes--and
some, which are very narrow or very small, as chisels.[571] Palstaves
were sometimes used, as their name would suggest, in the construction
of earthworks.[572]
[Sidenote: Sickles.]
Sickles probably originated in Southern Europe. The few early specimens
that have been found here have their closest analogies in France and
Denmark; but, for some unknown reason, socketed sickles are almost
peculiar to the British Isles.[573]
[Illustration: FIG. 24. ½]
[Sidenote: The Arreton Down hoard.]
A hoard was found early in the eighteenth century on Arreton Down, near
Newport in the Isle of Wight, which helped to illustrate the evolution
of bronze weapons. Daggers, which differed from knives principally
in size, though they began to be manufactured later, were originally
hafted with rivets; but afterwards they were cast with tangs or shanks,
which were let into the handle, and fastened by a single rivet.[574]
The Arreton Down hoard contained nine tanged blades, which closely
resemble daggers but may have been spear-heads. Many similar blades
have been found since, but hardly any outside the British Isles.[575]
[Sidenote: Halberds.]
From daggers were derived a class of weapons very rare in this
country, called halberds, which in Scandinavia and Northern Germany
have been found mounted as battle-axes. Heavier and broader than their
prototypes, they were often made of nearly pure copper, which rendered
them less brittle and more suitable for dealing heavy blows.[576]
[Sidenote: Shields, swords, spears.]
Swords, shields, and, with certain exceptions, spears and javelins were
not manufactured until the latest period of the Bronze Age. Swords and
spear-heads required great skill in casting: shields were so thin that
they could not be cast at all, but were wrought by the hammer.[577]
Even at the close of the Bronze Age they were probably unobtainable
except by the rich, while the rank and file doubtless still made
shift with bucklers of wicker-work, wood or leather. The shields of
the Bronze Age were invariably circular. Nearly all were ornamented
over their whole surface with concentric rings, of which one example
has as many as thirty, separated by circles of small studs; and this
ornamentation is peculiarly British. One curious shield, found in the
Fen country, is adorned with serpentine lines, which may have been
intended to represent snakes.[578]
[Illustration: FIG. 25. ⅙]
British bronze swords, like those of the Continent, from which they
were copied, are commonly of a type which is called leaf-shaped, the
blade tapering gently inwards from the hilt, then gradually expanding
until, at about one-third of the distance, measured from the point,
it attains its greatest width. They, as well as certain rapier-shaped
swords, were intended for stabbing, not striking. Their length was
generally about two feet, but varied between sixteen and thirty inches.
Their sheaths were as a rule made of wood or leather, which, however,
were often tipped with bronze; and many of these tips or chapes have
been found in the Thames and elsewhere without the scabbards, which had
perished.[579]
[Illustration: FIG. 26. ¼]
The spears of the earlier Bronze Age were identical with neolithic
flint weapons. Probably the earliest bronze spear-heads were some of
the larger blades that have been found in Wiltshire barrows, which are
commonly described as knives or daggers.[580] Others were derived from
the tanged blades of the Arreton Down type, if, indeed, the latter were
not themselves spear-heads. A curious and unique specimen, which was
found in the Thames at Taplow, and is now in the British Museum, is
ornamented with gold studs on the bottom of the blade, which are merely
survivals of the rivets that attached to its haft the dagger from
which it had been evolved.[581] Spear-heads of this kind, which are
invariably provided either with a pair of holes in the blade or a pair
of loops below it, intended to secure its attachment to the shaft,[582]
are extremely rare on the Continent, and appear to have been invented
in Ireland, whence they spread in the course of trade to Britain.[583]
Another form of spear-head, which originated in the British Isles and
has never been found elsewhere, was barbed, and seems to have been used
for hunting rather than in war.[584] The commonest, however, is the
continental leaf-shaped type, some specimens of which have analogies
in Gaul and the Swiss lake-dwellings.[585] The smaller weapons of the
spear-head class were doubtless javelins.[586]
[Illustration: FIG. 27. ½]
[Sidenote: Moulds.]
Many of the moulds in which weapons and implements were cast have been
preserved. Open moulds sufficed for flat axes; but the more difficult
operations of casting palstaves and socketed celts required that
the moulds should be made in halves. All the open ones that remain
were of stone; many others, however, were doubtless formed of more
perishable materials, such as clay or compact sand. Bronze moulds
were also used; but the only specimens which have been found were for
palstaves, socketed celts, and gouges. There is a bronze mould in
the British Museum that was itself cast in a mould of clay, formed
round a model palstave, and attached to it by string, which was of
course reproduced in the metal. Leaden celts have once or twice been
met with, which of course would have been useless as cutting tools;
and it is probable that they were intended simply for making moulds
of clay or sand. Bronze moulds were costly, and would soon wear out.
It has been suggested therefore that, just as a printer uses in his
press not his original wood-block but an electrotype copy, so the
bronze-founder generally reserved his bronze moulds for making leaden
models from which any number of clay moulds could be formed.[587]
Sockets were produced by means of clay cores, which were inserted in
the moulds. Socketed celts have so often been found in hoards with the
cores remaining in them that we may reasonably conclude that they were
bartered by the bronze-founders in this state, and that, as in the
Neolithic Age, the purchasers finished them with their own hands.[588]
The hammers and anvils which were used in the final stage of
manufacture were commonly stone, though a few light bronze hammers have
been unearthed; and the decoration was applied by means of punches.[589]
[Sidenote: Decoration of weapons.]
The patterns with which weapons were decorated are worth noticing even
by those to whom archaeology for its own sake makes no appeal. Daggers
and flat or slightly flanged celts were incised with rectilinear
figures and chevrons only:[590] winged celts, palstaves, socketed
celts, and spear-heads have similar designs in a few instances,[591]
but for the most part they are ornamented with concentric circles. The
significance of these facts will become apparent when we come to deal
with certain chronological questions relating to the Bronze Age.[592]
[Sidenote: Hoards.]
What we know of the metal-work of this period has been learned mainly
from buried hoards which were never recovered by their owners, and of
which more than a hundred have been unearthed in Great Britain from
Cornwall to Sutherland.[593] These hoards were of three kinds.[594]
Some, consisting entirely of newly-made articles, belong to traders.
Others, which comprise damaged or broken goods, and include moulds and
often cakes of copper, represent the stock-in-trade of bronze-founders,
who tramped over the country-side, and were ready to cast implements
or ornaments of the latest fashion and to melt and recast old ones for
anybody who could give them what they wanted in exchange. The tools
in these collections were for the most part broken intentionally to
make them more portable and ready for the crucible.[595] Other hoards
again, which frequently comprise ornaments, alone or associated with
implements, were the property of persons who were not in the trade.
Hoards were of course buried when robbers were about or when some
marauding clan appeared. By far the greater number belong to the latest
period of the Bronze Age,[596] which shows that in earlier times the
craft had not been specialized, or that people who could afford to buy
bronze implements were so few that no travelling dealer could make a
fair profit. Those who then possessed bronze tools must have made them
for themselves unless there happened to be a skilled craftsman near who
could earn a living by working for his neighbours.
The great improvement of tools and weapons would lead us to look for
traces of corresponding progress in every department of material
culture.
[Sidenote: Pasturage.]
Pasturage of course continued to be the mainstay of the mass of the
population; and although there were probably few households which
did not subsist partly upon the chase, the remains of funeral feasts
in barrows and the refuse heaps of dwellings show that game was eaten
much less than the flesh of domestic animals. It has been said that
sheep were not introduced into Britain before the Roman conquest;
but excavation has proved that they were bred by the bronze-using
inhabitants of Dorsetshire.[597] Besides the small cattle that were
common in the Neolithic Age large oxen were reared, at all events on
Cranborne Chase and the Yorkshire Wolds; and, as in the Neolithic Age
and doubtless for the same reason, animals were commonly slaughtered
before they had reached maturity.[598] Although bronze fish-hooks,
almost identical in form with our own hooks of steel, abounded in the
Swiss lake-dwellings, and were present in more than one of the hoards
that have been unearthed in France, only a single specimen has yet
come to light in the British Isles: but it need not be inferred that
the Britons had no taste for fish; for they probably caught trout and
salmon with nets or spears.[599]
The growth of population was indeed making it difficult for men to
provide for their families; and they were constrained to toil harder in
order to avoid starvation. Under [Sidenote: Agriculture.] this pressure
agriculture began to flourish; and wheat was grown at least as far
north as Yorkshire.[600] Armed with bronze axes, the husbandmen were
better able to clear forests and to bring new land under cultivation;
and at harvest time, when they reaped their reward, then, we may be
sure, the clansmen gathered, and sacrificed to their god, and held high
festival.[601] Their labours are attested not only by numerous stone
mullers and by the sickles that have been already mentioned, one of
which was found even in Aberdeenshire, but also, as we have already
seen, by the teeth of the skeletons in the barrows.[602] Oxen were
probably used in ploughing.[603] Horses, which were very small, were
domesticated, and in certain parts of the country eaten,[604] but they
were not common; and, although the rock-carvings of Scandinavia and
the bridle-bits and wooden wheels that have been found on the sites of
Swiss lake-dwellings show that in the Bronze Age men had learned to
ride and drive,[605] similar evidence is wanting in Britain. Looped
bronze plates, however, have been found in a hoard at Abergele, which
are supposed to have been a jingling ornament, attached to harness;
and some small bells, found at Dowris in Ireland, resemble those which
occasionally form a part of modern horse-trappings.[606] Oxen indeed,
if not horses, must have been required for hauling timber even in
neolithic times when clearings had to be made; and the wagons which
conveyed tin to the coast when Pytheas visited Cornwall[607] had
probably been in use long before his time.
[Sidenote: Signs of amelioration in the conditions of life.]
Certain facts seem to indicate that the conditions of life in the
Bronze Age were becoming more favourable to longevity, and in
particular that women were better off than before. Famines indeed must
still have occurred; for of course there were bad harvests from time to
time, and cattle then, as now, were liable to disease, and doubtless
often perished in hard winters. But the disparity in stature between
men and women was far less than it had been in the Neolithic Age;[608]
and Thurnam estimated the average age of the people of the round
barrows whose skeletons he had examined at fifty-five, eight years more
than that of the aboriginals.[609] It has been affirmed that even the
primitive Aryans often put old people to death;[610] but skeletons have
been exhumed in Britain which showed signs of extreme age.[611]
[Sidenote: Dwellings.]
One might be inclined to suppose that this amelioration was partly
due to improved housing; but such evidence as exists tends to show
that the habitations of the Bronze Age, although, owing to improved
tools, they may have been better built, were designed on much the same
lines as those of the preceding epoch. Pit-dwellings, like those which
have been already described,[612] were still constructed in districts
where stone was not obtainable. Very few, as we have seen, can be even
approximately dated; but some which have been excavated at Hitcham in
Buckinghamshire and in the fort of Eggardun on the Dorsetshire downs
contained pottery which made it safe to assign them to the Bronze
Age.[613] It may be that some of the Scottish subterranean dwellings
which are known as weems belong to the same period, for a bronze sword
was found in one at Monzie in Perthshire;[614] and perhaps a few of the
so-called Picts’ houses and of the beehive huts in Cornwall and North
Britain, which will be described hereafter, were built before iron was
there used.
[Sidenote: Lake-dwellings.]
It is, as we have seen,[615] very doubtful whether any of the
lake-dwellings of Britain were older than the Bronze Age; and it
cannot be positively affirmed that any were as old. One at Barton
Mere in Suffolk, if it really was a lake-dwelling,[616] probably
belonged to that time, although the only implement found in it was
a spear-head;[617] but the evidence for the date assigned to the
well-known settlement at Holderness is considerably stronger. It has
been argued that since both stone and bronze implements were found
there, the site must have been occupied before the Iron Age, because,
although in a time of transition the old material may persist by the
side of the new, implements of two earlier periods would hardly survive
into a third.[618]
[Sidenote: Hut-circles.]
There is, however, one class of dwellings numerous examples of which
have been proved to have existed in the Bronze Age, if not before.
The best-known groups of hut-circles are those of Anglesey, Dartmoor,
Cornwall, and Northumberland. Sportsmen who have shot snipe in Anglesey
must have noticed low mounds dotting the rough wastes which are common
in the island. Buried beneath these hillocks lie the foundations of
huts which were built in prehistoric times. Most of them are clustered
in tiny hamlets of five or six; but at Ty Mawr on the southern
slopes of the Holyhead Mountain, sheltered from the cold winds by
a precipitous cliff and fortified against attack from below, was a
considerable village, comprising more than fifty huts. On a clear day
the villagers could discern the Wicklow Mountains; and the triple head
of Snowdon, haunted, as they surely believed, by some divinity, closed
their southward view. The lower walls of the huts, which alone remain,
are about three feet thick, and enclose spaces of from fifteen to
twenty feet in diameter, partitioned in one instance by upright stones.
The entrance, defined by two pillars, invariably faces the south-west.
Stones, blackened by fire and doubtless used for cooking, were found
within, and also mullers for grinding corn, and the broken shells
of the limpets and periwinkles on which the occupants partly lived.
Some of the huts, however, appear to have been simply workshops. They
were littered with broken quartz from a neighbouring copper lode: the
fire-places, of which each contained two, one having a chimney in the
thickness of the wall, were strewn with slag; and mortars and mullers
abounded, which had been used not for grinding corn but for breaking
stone.[619] Possibly the huts may have been roofed with converging
stones, laid one above another in the beehive fashion; but some in
Northumberland and Devonshire contain central cavities, like those of
neolithic pit-dwellings, in which poles for supporting a roof of boughs
thatched with turf were apparently fixed.[620] Hut-circles everywhere
present the same general features; but of course there are numerous
varieties of size and construction. Nearly all the huts were round; but
a few in East Cornwall are oval;[621] and while most of the hamlets
were enclosed by walls, some apparently did not need protection,[622]
or were situated near a fort in which the villagers could take
refuge. Grimspound on Dartmoor, the typical example of a fortified
village, was apparently the stronghold of the people whose huts were
scattered on the slopes hard by; and the dwellings which it enclosed
may have been occupied in time of peace only by caretakers.[623] Some
hamlets were encircled by non-defensive walls, which appear to be
the remains of cattle-pens; while in others each pen was connected
with its own hut, the walls forming a complex whole.[624] Many huts
contain cooking-holes, lined with stones, in some of which traces of
charcoal are found:[625] others had cooking-stones but no holes:[626]
occasionally the kitchen was in the open air outside the dwelling;[627]
and in a circle on Whit-Tor, where no provision for cooking was
discernible, there seemed to be evidence that the hut had been simply
the workshop of a flint implement maker.[628] Many of the dwellings
on Dartmoor apparently consisted of only one room; while others, like
the single specimen on Ty Mawr, contained partitions.[629] Some huts
were paved, while others had no visible means of excluding damp.[630]
The large size of many of the Dartmoor circles has led antiquaries to
believe that they could not have carried roofs sufficiently strong
to withstand the snows and storms of winter, and were only occupied
in the summer by herdsmen;[631] but in most parts of England huts
must have been inhabited throughout the winter, whose roofs were
constructed of nothing more substantial than woodwork overlaid with
sods or bracken. It is remarkable that not a single bronze implement,
weapon, or ornament has ever been found in a hut-circle on Dartmoor,
although sufficient pottery of the Bronze Age type remained to attest
their age.[632] Probably, like the people who dwelt on the Yorkshire
Wolds, the inhabitants were poor and backward; for the extreme scarcity
of spindle-whorls and the abundance of the flint scrapers used for
leather-dressing that lay scattered in their abodes seem to show that
they were commonly clad in skins.[633]
[Sidenote: Inhabited camps.]
On the borders of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, and doubtless also in
other parts of Britain, small communities erected earthworks for
permanent occupation, which differed in size, situation, and mode
of construction from the great hill-forts, but were nevertheless
adapted to some extent for defence. A considerable number of small
entrenchments, approximately square in outline, are scattered over
the downs in these two counties; and three of them--Martin Down
Camp, South Lodge Camp, and Handley Hill Camp--have been thoroughly
excavated. The results left it doubtful whether the last-named had
not been constructed in Roman times;[634] but the other two belonged
unmistakably to the Bronze Age. Martin Down Camp covered about two
acres; and South Lodge Camp only three-quarters of an acre. The
ramparts, which were very low, were probably strengthened by stockades.
Both camps were situated not on the summits of hills but in sheltered
nooks, and were probably used as enclosures for cattle; but an
abundance of broken pottery, animal bones, and burnt cooking flints
proved that they had also been inhabited by man.[635]
But the evidence for describing the domestic life of our Bronze Age is
insignificant in comparison with that which is afforded by the Swiss
lake-dwellings. The most remarkable British habitation of that time,
indeed almost the only one which can rival those of Switzerland in the
richness of its remains, is not a hut, not even an artificial shelter
of the poorest kind. In 1859 some quarrymen were removing limestone
from a ravine formed by the Stanhope Burn, a tributary of the Wear,
when they discovered the now [Sidenote: The Heathery Burn Cave.]
far-famed Heathery Burn Cave. Antiquaries hurried to the spot; and when
a layer of stalagmite had been removed relics began to be found. During
thirteen years exploration went on; and finally, besides the bones of
the family who had occupied the cave, those of the animals on which
they had fed, and the shells of mussels, cockles, and limpets, a vast
number of tools, weapons, utensils, and ornaments were collected, which
belonged to the closing period of the Bronze Age. A pair of bronze
tongs, unique in Britain, and one-half of a mould for casting socketed
celts showed that they had been independent of bronze founders; and
their outfit comprised two swords, seven spear-heads, nineteen socketed
axes, two chisels, three gouges, two socketed knives, a tanged knife,
a razor, two implements of deer’s horn, three bone knives, a stone
spindle-whorl and some flint flakes, fifteen bronze and four bone
pins, a bronze cauldron, a gold bracelet, numerous penannular bronze
bracelets, including one which was so small that it must have been worn
by a little girl, eight large bronze bangles evidently intended to be
worn on the upper arm, six bronze disks, whetstones, buttons, and other
articles too numerous to mention. Indeed the only bronze objects of any
importance which are not represented in the collection are daggers,
hammers, sickles, and shields.[636] The cauldron, which is shaped like
a truncated cone with the broad end uppermost, belongs to a class of
vessels which were not made before the close of the Bronze Age, and are
exceedingly rare in England, but not uncommon in Scotland and Ireland.
It closely resembles one which was dredged up from the bed of the
Thames near Battersea, and which may be seen in the British Museum; and
perhaps it may have come in the course of trade from Etruria, where the
type originated.[637] It had been used for cooking, and was associated
with numerous fragments of earthenware. The domestic pottery of the
Bronze Age, like the sepulchral vessels, was made by hand,[638] and,
unlike them, was fitted to endure rough usage; but while the collection
obtained from the cave and nearly all the other examples that have
been found are unornamented, the table ware of Dartmoor hardly differs
from that which came from the barrows of the same district and is as
elaborately decorated.[639] It is also remarkable that many kinds of
household utensils--bowls and jars, pans and pannikins, cooking pots,
pots for boiling water or meal, pipkins, cups, and strainers--have
been discovered in barrows. Some, which were entire, had apparently
been deposited instead of regular sepulchral vessels; but many were in
fragments, and may have been used in funeral feasts.[640]
The exploration of the Heathery Burn Cave not only illustrates the life
of the Bronze Age; it also shows that even in districts far remote from
the Continent the use of bronze was not confined to a conquering people
but spread to the descendants of the older population. The skeletons
in the cave were wholly different from the types which are associated
with the round barrows, and closely resembled those which have been
recovered from the beds of rivers in England and Ireland.[641]
But what is most remarkable is the contrast between the wealth of these
cave-dwellers and the discomfort in which they lived. Here was a family
well armed, equipped with the best tools of the time, owning flocks
and herds, possessing land which they cultivated, and rich enough
to load their women with ornaments, yet content to live in a dark
damp cavern traversed by a stream, which one night rose in flood and
drowned them in their sleep. It has been suggested that they had huts
in the neighbourhood, and only resorted to the cave on extraordinary
occasions.[642] What could have induced them to live in it even for
a day is difficult to conceive; but that they inhabited it, if not
permanently, at least for long periods, is proved by the abundance of
pottery as well as by the heaps of refuse which represented the remains
of a long succession of meals.[643]
[Illustration: FIG. 28.]
[Sidenote: Dress.]
The spindle-whorls of stone, bone, and baked clay which have been
found in this cave, in barrows,[644] hut-circles, and elsewhere, and
hardly differ from those which, a few years ago, were commonly used
in Scottish villages and in many parts of the Continent,[645] are
not the only relics that bear witness to the development of dress
during the Bronze Age. The deer-horn implements which belonged to the
cave-dwellers and exactly resemble others that were obtained from the
sites of Swiss lake-dwellings, were probably used in weaving.[646] Bone
tweezers from barrows in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire and bronze tweezers
from Anglesey were perhaps designed for drawing thread through holes in
leather: but they may also have been used for extracting superfluous
hairs;[647] and the numerous razors[648] that have come to light, some
of which have no parallel in any foreign country, show that Britons,
even in the furthest north, shaved their beards many centuries before
Caesar noticed the custom.[649] Leathern garments, as we have seen,
were largely worn:[650] indeed the remains of a stitched leathern
dress have been recovered from a barrow in Northumberland;[651] but
more interesting are pieces of the woollen and linen clothes in which
the dead were sometimes buried.[652] Nor was the apparel of the Bronze
Age devoid of ornament, or fastened merely with thorns, like that of
the Germans of a far later period [Sidenote: Pins and buttons.] whom
Tacitus[653] described. Pins of bone or bronze, some certainly worn
with dresses, others perhaps in the hair, were not uncommon; and we
have seen how large a store was possessed by a single family.[654]
Even the indigent people of the Yorkshire Wolds wore buttons not only
of stone, bone, and wood, but of jet, some of which were beautifully
ornamented with the pattern of a Maltese cross.[655] During the
earlier part of the Bronze Age buttons were pierced on the under side
with V-shaped holes, which enabled them to be sewn on to the dress--a
device which, on the Continent, was inherited from the Stone Age;
and, as far as can be judged from the skeletons with which they are
associated, they were used only by men. At a later time the perforation
was apparently superseded by a raised loop, which is found on buttons
of bronze.[656] In Wiltshire and Norfolk chiefs actually adorned their
tunics with buttons of gold.[657] Ivory buttons and ivory pins have
been unearthed in Wiltshire; and amber buttons were among the ornaments
not only of that rich district but of Norfolk and even of Yorkshire
and Dorsetshire.[658] Nor were these costly materials used only for
personal adornment. A [Sidenote: Weapons mounted with gold or amber.]
bronze dagger with an ivory handle has been obtained from a barrow
near Bere Regis in Dorsetshire:[659] an archer’s wrist-guard or bracer
of bone, found at Kellythorpe in the East Riding, was decorated with
bronze studs, plated with gold:[660] a barrow on Hammeldon Down in
Devonshire has yielded a dagger hilt of red amber inlaid with pins
of gold;[661] and from a barrow near Normanton in South Wiltshire
Hoare obtained a dagger with a wooden handle exquisitely inlaid in a
chevron pattern with thousands of golden rivets, each smaller than the
smallest pin. ‘It could not,’ he wrote, ‘be surpassed (if, indeed,
equalled) by the most able workman of modern times.’[662] With such
a weapon hanging at his side and his dress glittering with gold or
amber studs, a British chieftain must have made a splendid show. But
some were not content with such display. Early in the last century a
cairn was opened at Mold in Flintshire, which was said by the peasants
of the country-side to be haunted by a ghost in golden armour. Three
hundred loads of stones were carted away; and then appeared a skeleton,
accompanied by three hundred amber beads that had once formed a
necklace, and a golden peytrel, mounted on a copper plate, with which
the owner had decorated his horse’s breast.[663] This interment indeed
belonged to the very latest period of the Bronze Age; but much earlier
was the barrow of Upton Lovel in South Wiltshire, which contained
along with personal ornaments [Sidenote: Ornaments.] of gold an amber
necklace of a thousand beads that had been worn not by a woman but by a
man.[664]
[Illustration: FIG. 29. ½]
[Illustration: FIG. 30. ⅓]
But although necklets and bracelets and other ornaments were commonly
worn by knights and Druids in Gaul, their use in this country seems
to have been generally restricted to women; and, whatever the reason
may have been, the women of Britain, then as now, wore less jewellery
than those of foreign countries.[665] Still, many specimens, most of
which belonged to late periods, are to be seen in the museums which
illustrate the culture of the Bronze Age; but for the most part they
were either imported or fashioned after foreign designs.[666] Bronze
ornaments are comparatively rare[667] although, as we have seen, the
family who lived in the Heathery Burn Cave possessed many, and their
armlets are absolutely unique.[668] In Scotland as well as in the
wealthier parts of England women displayed gold torques of various
patterns, some plain, others penannular, which resembled large bangles,
others again funicular, of twisted ribbon-like form, or wrought with
a pattern like the thread of a screw;[669] while gold bracelets in
equal variety clasped their wrists; and an ivory armlet has been
found in a Wiltshire barrow.[670] In 1863 a ploughman, guiding his
team at Mountfield in Sussex, turned up a hoard of gold ornaments
weighing eleven pounds.[671] A hoard buried in Elginshire contained
no less than three dozen gold armlets, belonging to the latest period
of the Scottish Bronze Age; and an armlet of twisted wires, made
to encircle the arm in four coils, which was considered the finest
specimen of the goldsmith’s art of this period ever found in Scotland,
was cut up and melted down by an Edinburgh jeweller.[672] The most
interesting, however, of all the Scottish gold ornaments are the
crescent-shaped lunettes, worn round the neck, which were of Irish
origin, and of which only four English specimens are known.[673] They
would seem to be of early date; for two were found in association
with a flat celt.[674] Rings were extremely rare;[675] and ear-rings
have only been met with in Derbyshire, the East Riding of Yorkshire,
and the north of Scotland.[676] A pair which was found in a grave in
Morayshire can only be described as hideous. They were made of gold,
in shape like an open shell or pod, five inches and a half long,
and suspended at right angles to the hook.[677] Perhaps the most
beautiful and characteristic ornaments of the Bronze Age were the jet
necklaces, which were very common in Scotland and comparatively rare in
Southern Britain, though they were worn in Northumberland, Derbyshire,
Staffordshire, and on the Yorkshire Wolds. They generally consisted
of flat plates, adorned with chevron or lozenge patterns, and strung
together by bugle-shaped beads.[678] A similar necklace of quadrangular
amber tablets, connected by beads of the same material, formed part of
the treasures of a chieftain’s wife in Wiltshire, and was deposited
in one of the barrows at Lake, near Stonehenge.[679] Amber was indeed
the most fashionable of all ornaments in this region, where it was
worn sometimes alone, sometimes in combination with jet and with blue
or green glass beads. In full dress, with one of these necklaces
hanging over her bosom, gold bracelets on her arms, a pair of gold
disks, bearing devices like a Greek cross, on her dress, and pins of
bronze, which shone like gold, in her hair, a Wiltshire dame must have
surpassed even her husband in splendour.[680]
[Illustration: FIG. 31. ½]
Those who could not afford such costly ornaments were not always
obliged to content themselves with perforated boars’ teeth or bone
beads; for, incredible as it may appear, sham jewellery was in vogue
even in the Bronze Age. Not many years ago three penannular rings,
picked up by a ploughman near Forfar, were found to consist of bronze
coated with gold leaf.[681]
[Sidenote: Distribution of wealth: sources of gold, ivory, and amber.]
While these things help us to realize the circumstances of the people
who wore them, they also throw light upon the distribution of wealth,
and supplement the information which we have already obtained from
implements and weapons about internal trade and foreign commerce.
Possibly some difference of burial customs may account for the
comparative abundance of gold ornaments in Scotland and the almost
entire absence of trinkets of any kind in Cornwall; but the evidence
is generally accepted which seems to point to the conclusion that the
inhabitants of Wiltshire--especially of Salisbury Plain--were richer
than those of any other part of Southern Britain. The most expensive
ornaments--amber, gold, ivory, and glass--have been found there in
considerable numbers; and all of them must have been imported, directly
or indirectly, in some cases from abroad. The glass beads, which,
strictly speaking, were made of vitreous paste, perhaps came from the
Mediterranean; and a blue one of real glass with yellow spirals, taken
from a Ross-shire barrow, had its counterparts in the cemetery of
Hallstatt.[682] Where the ivory was procured is doubtful: objects of
this material, apparently made from the fossilized tusks of a mammoth,
lay among the relics in the Paviland Cave in Glamorganshire;[683]
but most of the mammoth tusks in this country are too decomposed to
be susceptible of manufacture.[684] Gold has been obtained from most
of the alluvial gravels in the West of England that have been worked
for tin;[685] but many of the English and perhaps all the Scottish
gold ornaments were made of gold that had been won in Ireland, which
has been justly called the El Dorado of the ancient world. Many gold
ornaments in Denmark are of Irish origin; and the leading archaeologist
of Scandinavia affirms that the metal-workers of his own country and of
France imported Irish gold.[686] Amber has been washed ashore at Deal
and on other parts of the east coast; and the necklaces of Wiltshire
may perhaps have been generally of British material as well as of
British workmanship:[687] but those of Ireland were probably made from
amber that had come from Scandinavia,[688] and may have been taken in
exchange for gold. In the time of Augustus amber was one of the British
imports;[689] and, although at least one necklace found its way even
to Orkney,[690] its rarity in Scotland and in the northern counties
of England suggests that it was imported even in the Bronze Age.[691]
Indeed, since amber was so much commoner in Wiltshire than elsewhere,
it would seem probable that it came generally from abroad.[692]
[Sidenote: Why was Wiltshire exceptionally rich in ornaments?]
But why was it so abundant in Wiltshire? Why are gold, amber, and
ivory rare even in the other southern counties, and wholly absent in
Derbyshire, where round barrows are so numerous?[693] Why was the
wealth of Wiltshire, so far as it can be estimated from the evidence of
the graves, almost entirely concentrated in the south, and especially
in the district round Stonehenge?[694] The modern population of South
Wiltshire is very scanty: Salisbury Plain is barren; and the only soil
at all fertile is in the valleys of the Wiley and the Avon.[695] One
would have expected to find that the wealthiest part of Britain was
the south-east; and that in the prehistoric period, as in the time of
Caesar, the richest of all was Kent. Yet Kent has yielded very few
glass beads or gold ornaments of the Bronze Age, and not one of amber
or ivory. Doubtless there were once many barrows in the south-eastern
counties which have been rifled or ploughed down; but jewellery was
not deposited only in barrows; and so many bronze tools and weapons
have been found in this region that the scarcity of barrows will not
account for the rarity of ornaments. No explanation, so far as I know,
has ever been offered; and I offer one with diffidence. First, it is
not certain, and indeed improbable, that more than a small proportion
of the riches that have been unearthed from the sepulchres of South
Wiltshire belonged to families who had lived in the neighbourhood.
The prodigious abundance of barrows around Stonehenge can only be
explained by supposing that the bodies of chieftains, of their wives
and children, were brought from distant parts to be buried there, as
to a hallowed spot. Secondly, it is conceivable that the clans which,
early in the Bronze Age, settled in South Wiltshire were numerically
stronger, better organized, or better armed than their neighbours, and
that much of their wealth may have been obtained by plunder.
[Sidenote: British trade and the spiral.]
Another indication of ancient British trade appears in the geographical
distribution of the spiral. This form of decoration, which was common
in Egyptian and Aegean art, travelled along the route of the amber
trade by the Danube valley and Hungary to Scandinavia, and ultimately
reached the British Isles, where, however, it occurs only on stone
balls,[696] the stones of cists, and megalithic monuments, of which
the most conspicuous example is New Grange in the county Meath. The
spiral is not found on objects of the Bronze Age in Spain, nor in
France except on the dolmen of Gavr’ Inis in Brittany and in a grave
in the department of the Aube: in the British Isles it is confined to
Scotland, Cumberland, Lancashire, and Northumberland, the north of
Ireland,[697] and Merionethshire (which may have owed its solitary
specimen to Irish influence); and, moreover, in the British Isles and
Scandinavia spirals are connected by the same device.[698] Scandinavia
therefore was undoubtedly the source from which the spiral reached
Britain.[699]
[Sidenote: Comparative backwardness of culture in Britain.]
Yet while the reader who has been accustomed to suppose that the
Britons even of Caesar’s time were mere savages may be astonished to
learn that already in the Bronze Age there was commercial intercourse
between Britain and the Continent, he must beware of assuming that
his forefathers were on a level with the inhabitants of Central and
Southern Europe. Our country has long been the geographical centre
of the civilized world: in ancient times it was outside the pale.
Regular trade did not exist except with Northern Gaul and, probably
towards the end of the age, with Massilia and Phoenician Spain:[700]
such articles of commerce as found their way to Britain from Central
Europe were flotsam and jetsam. Long after swords had come into use
abroad the Briton’s chief weapon was still a stout dagger: bronze was
used here for centuries after iron had been adopted in more fortunate
lands; and the glass beads of which the women of Wiltshire were so
proud would have been scorned by foreign ladies who compared them
with their own.[701] Moreover, even in bronze our workmanship never
reached the pitch of excellence which the artificers of the north, in
their prolonged Bronze Age, were able to attain. Just as the neolithic
cutlers of Britain were inferior to those of Denmark, so there is
nothing in our museums which can vie with the astonishing splendour of
the decorated palstaves and shields, the trumpets and vessels of the
Scandinavian region.
[Sidenote: The information obtainable from graves.]
But we shall be better able to understand the relations that existed
between our country and the Continent in the Bronze Age when we have
studied the graves, the objects other than weapons, implements,
and ornaments that have been found within them, and the rude stone
monuments with which they were often associated.
[Sidenote: Round barrows, cairns, and sepulchral circles.]