CHRONOLOGY AND ORIGIN OF BRONZE.

Having now passed in review the various forms of instruments, arms, and ornaments belonging to the Bronze Period of Great Britain, it will be well to attempt some chronological arrangement of the different types, and to examine the means at our command for fixing the approximate date and duration of the Period as well as the sources from which the knowledge of bronze in this country was derived.

The sequence and extent of variation in the types of an instrument or weapon destined to serve some given purpose are of course important factors in any theoretical calculation of the length of time such an instrument was in use. For if the type has remained one and the same during the whole period of the use of the instrument, it affords no evidence as to the length of its duration; whereas, if it has varied, and the sequence of its variations can be traced, their nature and extent may afford some means of judging of the length of time probably necessary for the development of the succession of forms. Or where an instrument has been so well adapted for its particular ends that no material modification in its form was likely to take place in it, so long as its use was limited to its original purpose, yet the springing from it of what may be termed collateral types of instruments specialized for other though analogous purposes may also be indicative of the original form having remained in use during a lengthened period of time.

The extremely numerous variations which may be observed in socketed celts afford conclusive evidence of that instrument having been employed in this country during a long series of years; and the collateral varieties, such as socketed chisels and gouges, as well as the more distantly related socketed hammers, give corroborative testimony to the same effect.

Improvements in the method of working metals will often react on the forms of tools and weapons, but here again the chronological element exists, as old processes and old forms are slow to die, especially among a people of no very high material civilisation. The discovery, for instance, of the art of producing hollow sockets in bronze castings by the use of cores of loam or clay, though it materially modified the form of many instruments, did not cause the entire extinction of the older forms without sockets, the use of which in some cases went on side by side with that of the instruments of more novel invention; and this fact tends to prove that bronze must have long been in use for tools with tangs instead of sockets, before the process of coring was known. Indeed, as I have elsewhere[1749] pointed out, the Bronze Period of Britain is susceptible of division into an earlier and later stage, the former mainly characterized by instruments which were let into their hafts or handles, and the latter by those which received their handles in sockets. As will subsequently be seen, it may be divided even into three more or less distinct stages.

A division into two stages has been suggested for the Scandinavian Bronze Age. M. Gabriel de Mortillet has in like manner divided the Bronze Period of France and Switzerland into an earlier and later stage—the one distinguished by flanged celts, which came into use at the close of the Stone Period (his Epoque robenhausienne), and the other by palstaves and socketed celts, which he regards as belonging to the close of the Bronze Period. To these two stages he has applied the terms morgien and larnaudien, derived from the Lake-dwelling of Morges, in the Lake of Geneva, and from the large founder’s hoard discovered at Larnaud (Jura). Curiously enough he regards the flat celts as being even more recent in date than the socketed, forgetful that the form with flanges at the sides can hardly by any possibility have been an original type, as such flanges must either have been produced by hammering the sides of flat celts, or must have been cast in a mould consisting of two halves, which certainly cannot have been so early a form of mould as a simple recess in stone, sand, or clay, adapted for casting a nearly flat plate of metal like a wedge-shaped celt.

Such flat celts, as has already been mentioned, have been found with interments in barrows associated with what were apparently lance-heads of flint, and maces and battle-axes of stone; and their nearest allies, those with but slight flanges—the result of hammering the sides—have also been found under similar circumstances.

The knife-daggers, as described in Chapter X., and the awls or prickers, are the only other bronze instruments which in this country can challenge a similar antiquity; and none of these, as a rule, are found in those deposits of bronze objects to which the name of “hoards” has been given.

As M. Gabriel de Mortillet and others have pointed out, these hoards are of more than one character. In certain cases they seem to have been the treasured property of some individual who would appear to have buried his valued tools or weapons during troublous times, and never to have been able to disinter them. In other cases the hoards were probably the property of a trader, as they consist of objects ready for use and in considerable numbers; and in others, again, they appear to have been the stock-in-trade of some bronze-founder of ancient times, as they comprise worn out and broken tools and weapons, lumps of rough metal, and even the moulds in which the accumulation of bronze was destined to be recast.

Mr. Worsaae has suggested that some of these hoards may be of a votive character and have been deposited in the ground as precious offerings to the gods. I am not, however, aware of any of our British hoards being of such a character that they can safely be regarded as votive.

As to the other three kinds of hoards, the small group from Wallingford[1750] (No. 60 in the following table), consisting of a socketed celt, gouge, and knife, and a tanged chisel and razor, may be taken as a good instance of a private deposit. That of Stibbard[1751] (No. 8), consisting of seventy palstaves and ten spear-heads, some of them rough from the mould, would appear to have belonged to a merchant; and the Harty hoard (No. 105), described in the last chapter, affords a typical example of the stock-in-trade of a bronze-founder.

In some other cases, deposits, especially when consisting exclusively of ornaments, may possibly be of a sepulchral character.

The value of the evidence afforded by hoards, especially by those of the first and second kinds lately mentioned, is great and unquestionable in determining the synchronism of various forms of instruments—as, for instance, of plain and looped palstaves with socketed celts. In the case of the bronze-founders’ hoards of old metal, it is of course possible that the fragments contained may belong to various periods. Nevertheless the objects, as a rule, appear to be such as were in use at the time, and which, being worn out or broken, were collected by the bronze-founder for the purpose of re-melting. In order to make them at once more portable and more ready for placing in the crucible, he generally broke the larger and longer articles into fragments, broken spear-heads, swords, &c., being frequently present in the hoards, as well as the jets or waste pieces of metal broken off from castings. In some instances fragments of various instruments have been inserted in the sockets of others, so as to diminish the space occupied by the whole.

As will subsequently be seen, by far the greater number of the undoubted bronze-founders’ hoards belong to a time when socketed celts were already in use, and therefore to the close rather than the beginning of our Bronze Period.

M. Ernest Chantre has divided the principal hoards of the Bronze Age discovered in France into three principal categories, to which he has applied the terms “TrÉsors,” “Fonderies,” and “Stations.” The first, as a rule, comprise articles which have never been in use, and are, in fact, of the same character as the hoards which I have classed under the head of “Personal” or “Merchants.” The principal trÉsors, those of RÉallon, Ribiers, BeauriÈres, Manson, Frouard, are characterized by the presence of socketed instruments; and in two instances—those of La FertÉ-Hauterive, and Vaudrevanges, Rhenish Prussia—either an ingot or a mould of metal was present. I should, therefore, have classed these two among the “fonderies.”

M. Chantre has, however, in the main, restricted this term to hoards consisting principally of broken objects, and of these fonderies he has examined some fifty in France. In the southern part of that country these hoards are by no means so constantly characterized by the presence of socketed celts and other socketed instruments as in Britain. In the north of France, however, the socketed forms are more frequent in the hoards.

The stations are considered to represent habitations of the Bronze Age of the same character as the Lake-dwellings, but fixed on terra firma instead of on piles or artificial islands. Some of the hoards placed under this head appear from the presence of moulds and lumps of metal to be those of founders.

Hoards of broken objects of bronze have been found in other parts of Europe, but it seems needless to do more than mention the fact. I may, however, refer to the hoards of Camenz and Grossenhain, in Saxony,[1752] of which I gave an account to the Society of Antiquaries some fifteen years ago.

In the following lists I have divided the principal hoards discovered in the United Kingdom into two main categories, the one, in which socketed celts, gouges, or other tools were absent; the other, in which they were present in greater or less abundance. This is perhaps the simplest method of arriving at what may be regarded as a fairly trustworthy chronological division. Some of the results of an examination of the lists will subsequently be discussed. In the first list I have given the precedence to those hoards in which flat or flanged celts were present. Second, I have placed those in which there were palstaves. Third, those in which ornaments were found; and last, those mainly characterized by swords and spear-heads, or spear-heads and ferrules, but in which both palstaves and socketed celts were absent.

In the second list I have placed at the head the hoards in which socketed celts, sometimes accompanied by palstaves, were found associated with swords or spears, while mere tools, such as gouges and hammers, were absent. Next come a few cases in which socketed celts occurred either in company with ornaments or alone. Then follow the hoards in which chisels, gouges, or hammers were found, but no lumps of metal were present. After these are placed the bronze-founders’ hoards, in which lumps of metal and the jets or waste pieces from castings were found, including one or two Scotch and Irish hoards; and, finally, those in which moulds were present.

In each case I have attempted to distinguish whether a hoard was personal or belonged to a merchant or founder, by adding the letters P, M, or F. Where two of these letters occur, the hoard seems to come under either category. It is possible that some of those characterized by a P may be sepulchral.

Appended to the tabulated lists is a more detailed account, mentioning some of the principal features in each case, and giving references to the works in which the discoveries are recorded. Of course this is to a great extent a repetition of what has been recorded in previous pages. It must be observed that the numbers given in the lists do not always refer to entire objects but frequently to fragments only. Where the numbers are unknown the presence of the objects is shown by an x.