Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period/Chapter 12

by William Boyd Dawkins

 

CHAPTER XII.

THE PREHISTORIC IRON AGE NORTH OF THE ALPS.

Definition of the Iron Age.—The Introduction of Iron into Europe.—The Prehistoric Iron Age in Britain.—Arms and Equipage.—Personal Ornaments.—Burial Customs.—The Late Celtic Art.—The Etruskan Influence on the Art.—The Influence of Ancient Greece.—Coins and Commerce.—The Prehistoric Iron Age on the Continent north of the Alps.—The Prehistoric Iron Age in Scandinavia.—Survival of the Late Celtic Art into the Historic Period in Britain.

 

Definition of the Iron Age.

We have now arrived at the stage of the inquiry into the condition of early man in Britain, which is marked by the introduction of iron, the appearance of new arts, and of a coinage. The use of iron characterises the latest phase of the Prehistoric, as well as the whole of the Historic period. The Prehistoric Iron age in Britain is the equivalent of the Neo-Celtic, or the late Celtic of Mr. Franks, of the first Iron age in France and Germany, and of the late Bronze age in Scandinavia.

 

The Introduction of Iron into Europe.

The application of iron to the purposes of daily life marks an important era in the civilisation of Europe. Iron appears in the Heroic age of Greece as a rare material, which was slowly replacing bronze for cutting implements; and in the Homeric legends the heroes are described as fighting with weapons of bronze and of iron. A lump of iron was among the prizes in the games at the celebration of the funeral of Patroklus.^[1] In the time of Hesiod, who flourished 400 years before Herodotus, or B.C. 850, it had already superseded bronze among the Greeks, and to him we owe the knowledge that the age of Bronze was as well recognised by his contemporaries as by modern archæologists.^[2] Hesiod and Lucretius distinctly point out that, according to the voice of tradition, the use of bronze disappeared before the spread of the more useful metal; it long survived for making helmets, shields, and armour, and has been used for purposes of ornament down to the present day.

There is no reason to suppose that iron was first discovered in Europe. It is more probable that, like bronze, it was discovered in Asia, and that it was derived from the south.^[3] It would spread very rapidly from the old centres of Egypt, Assyria, and Phœnicia, over the Mediterranean area; and from Greece and Italy it would penetrate to the north and west by the ordinary channels of commerce. When the natives had once learned the art of reducing it from its ores, they would no longer be dependent upon distant sources of supply for the materials for making implements and weapons, as they were in the Bronze age. Iron ores occur in very nearly every country in Europe, and have been worked in very remote times. The supply of iron in Britain, in the days of Cæsar,^[4] was sufficient for the needs of the inhabitants, as it was in Gaul, and his statement that the Britons of his day used iron rings, or bars of a certain weight, in place of money, while their bronze articles were imported from abroad, expresses the relation of the two metals to one another in Britain in the Prehistoric Iron age with the greatest accuracy. It was sufficiently abundant, not merely for the manufacture of weapons, but for making tires for the wheels and other fittings for the chariots

The historic evidence that iron gradually supplanted bronze is confirmed by numerous discoveries in various parts of Europe. A bronze socketed celt, with a thin edge of iron let into it, has been met with in an ancient Etruskan tomb at Villanova, near Bologna;^[5] and bronze axes have been discovered in Scandinavia with their edges formed in the same way. Bronze swords have been discovered in Switzerland in the lake-dwellings, at Moeringen, and elsewhere, with the hilts inlaid with iron, and in association with iron swords of the leaf-shaped type so characteristic of the Bronze age. In Britain also, iron and bronze swords^[6] have been found together of the same leaf-shaped pattern; and a spear-head found in Scotland consists of an iron core^[7] covered with the harder and more brittle bronze. It may therefore be concluded that iron was introduced into these countries first of all in small quantities, that it was highly esteemed, and that it gradually supplanted bronze.

 

The Iron Age in Britain.

The Prehistoric Iron age in Britain was probably of short duration in comparison with that of Bronze. It is represented principally by the contents of an insignificant number of tombs, and by numerous isolated articles, of which the age can only be fixed by the identity of the ornamentation with that of well-known artistic styles.

 

Arms and Equipage.

No difference is noticeable in the habitations and forts in Britain in the Iron age, as compared with those of Bronze. The crannoges of Ireland were still inhabited, as well as the camps which had been made in the Neolithic and used in the succeeding age. It is, however, clear from the observations of Cæsar, that the small isolated communities which we have observed in the Neolithic age were welded together, and formed larger bodies obedient to one rule. The civilisation was much higher, partly from the accumulation of wealth, and partly from contact, direct and indirect, with the culture of the south.

The warriors in the Iron age of Prehistoric Britain were armed with short, leaf-shaped iron swords for stabbing, modelled on those of bronze, and afterwards, and especially in the north,^[8] with long iron swords without a point,^[9] probably used for cutting and not thrusting. For the latter purpose bronze is far better, and with the introduction of iron a change in the fashion of the sword became necessary. The hilt grew larger, and the hand was protected by a guard, which was wholly wanting in the short stabbing swords of the Bronze age. The spears, javelins, daggers, and arrows were tipped with iron. Metal helmets were not then worn, but the body was protected sometimes by ring-mail, at others by bronze gorgets, in one example, to be described presently, covered with a thin plate of gold worked in repoussé (Figs. 159, 160). Their shields were round or oblong, made of bronze (Fig. 156) or of wood, with bosses and studs of iron. Some of those of bronze were ornamented with figures of animals, and with studs of red coral, or of enamel, such as Cæsar describes among the Gauls. They possessed also wooden chariots with iron fittings, and their horses wore bronze and iron trappings, ornamented with various designs, sometimes with patterns in blue, red, yellow, and green enamel.^[10]

Fig. 156.—Bronze Shield, Giffin Castle, Ayrshire.

 

Personal Ornaments.

Fig. 157.—Golden Cap, Devil's Bit, Tipperary. The personal ornaments show considerable artistic finish, and were in part modelled on designs obtained from the south. Two singular gold articles, ornamented in repoussé, found in Ireland (Fig. 157),^[11] may have been intended for caps like the Etruskan "tutuli," or those worn by the Assyrian kings. Similar objects have been discovered in France and in Germany. Round the neck they wore torques of gold, bronze, or iron; round the arms bracelets, and round the waist belts of the same materials. Brooches were used made of bronze, and of the safety-pin^[12] type as well as of other forms, sometimes ornamented with enamel. They had finger-rings of gold, as well as of bronze and iron; and necklaces of amber, jet, and of glass. The torques and bracelets are generally solid, and belong to the "beaded" type of Dr. Birch.^[13]

They also wore circlets on their heads made of bronze or gold, sometimes ornamented with beautiful designs in volutes and flamboyants, like those of the bronze head-ring found in the village of Stitchel^[14] (Fig. 158) in Roxburghshire. Silver was used not merely for personal ornament but for inlaying the hilts of the swords. The precious metals were probably stored up among the Britons as among the Gauls, in the shape of ornaments easily hidden and carried about, and this practice may perhaps account for the statement of Herodotus^[15] as to the large quantity of gold in the northern parts of Europe. It was probably the hoarded wealth of ages.

Fig. 158.—Bronze Head-ring, Stitchel.

 

Burial Customs.

With the introduction of iron a change took place in the burial customs 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. We may take as an example of interments belonging to this age the group of circular barrows at Arras,^[16] near Market Weighton, explored by the Rev. E. W. Stillingfleet. In a shallow pit at the base of one of these, named the Barrow of the Charioteer, a skeleton of a warrior was discovered resting on his shield, which was made of wood, with a bronze boss in the centre and an iron rim. On each side was an iron horse-bit, with the metallic portions of harness, and the wheels of a chariot. These were of oak, two feet eight inches in diameter, with iron tires, and each had sixteen spokes. Two boars' tusks were close by the skeleton, one of which was carved and fitted into a sin ovular little bronze case. A second, termed the King's Barrow, yielded similar remains. A skeleton of an old man lay in an excavation in the chalk about one and a half feet deep, resting on his back, with arms crossed on the breast, and legs crossed. The skulls of two wild boars were close to the head, and on either side a chariot wheel, and the skeletons of two small horses with all their iron and bronze accoutrements.

A third tumulus, about three feet high, termed the Queen's Barrow, gives us an idea of the interment of a woman of rank. A female skeleton lay in a grave cut in the chalk about a foot deep, with head to the north, and with feet gathered up. The neck had been surrounded by a necklace of about a hundred glass beads, most of which were deep-blue with circlets of white, some of clear green colour, traversed by a wavy opaque white line, probably intended to represent the figure of a snake. A ring of red amber lay near the breast, as well as a radiated fibula of Roman type, and a pendant to match set with ivory, two bronze bracelets ornamented with enamel, a bronze ring, tweezers, two pins with rings at the head, and a gold finger-ring. A small socketed celt, about an inch long, with a small light-blue glass bead attached to it by a pin, was discovered in another barrow in this group. It had been used as an ornament, and may be looked upon as a survival from the Bronze age.

These barrows are considered by Dr. Thurnam to be those of Gallic tribes, and to range in antiquity from a century before, to a century after Christ. They give a vivid picture of the burial customs of the time; the warrior and the hunter were sent off on their last long journey in their chariots and with their horses, and in some other cases, such as that at Aspatria in Cumberland, with their swords, as well as with trophies of the chase; while the women were buried with ornaments which would render them conspicuous in the world of spirits.

These discoveries, made in the years 1816-17, have recently been followed up by the exploration of another barrow in the neighbourhood, by the Rev. W. Greenwell,^[17] in which he found a skeleton in a contracted position, with the remains of horse-trappings and two wheels of a chariot, but no traces of the body of the chariot. The skeleton is considered by Dr. Rolleston to be that of a woman, and a small, round, iron mirror was found along with it ornamented with a plating of bronze. A bronze brooch of the safety-pin type has been discovered in another barrow in the East Riding of Yorkshire, along with solid bronze bracelets and other articles belonging to the Prehistoric Iron age.^[18]

One of the most remarkable discoveries of works of art of foreign derivation in a burial mound was that made, by Mr. John Langford in 1832,^[19] in a cairn near Mold in North Wales. On removing upwards of three hundred cart-loads of stones a skeleton was discovered laid at full length, wearing a corselet of beautifully-wrought gold, Figs. 159, 160, which had been placed on a lining of bronze.

Figs. 159, 160.—Golden Corselet, Mold, North Wales.

Close by were upwards of three hundred amber beads as well as traces of corroded iron. The corselet is formed of a thin plate of gold, three feet seven inches long, eight inches wide in the centre, and weighing seventeen ounces, and is ornamented in repoussé with nail-head and dotted-line pattern. It is a work of Etruskan art, as we shall see in the next chapter, and not of local manufacture, like the breastplates of great value stated by Polybius to have been made and worn by the natives of Gaul^[20] An urn full of ashes, about three yards off, may have belonged to an interment of the same age. The name of the cairn is Bryn-yr-Ellyllon, goblin or fairy hill. The place was supposed to be haunted, and before the discovery was made a spectre was said to have been seen to enter the cairn clad in golden armour. This superstition is merely a survival of the idea so universal among the cairn-builders, in all ages and all countries, that the tomb was the home of the spirit, whence it issued into the upper world.

The practice of burying the dead at full length was first known in Britain in the Prehistoric Iron age, but it did not supersede cremation. The ashes of the dead were interred in megalithic tombs, sometimes of considerable magnitude, sometimes enclosed in a pyramidal mound or cairn. A magnificent group of these is to be seen on the banks of the Boyne near Drogheda, consisting of seventeen large mounds, of which the most important is that of New Grange.^[21] It consists of a cruciform sepulchral building, 89 feet long, with transepts 21 feet from end to end, made of large blocks of stone, encased in a truncated cairn 70 feet high, 310 feet in diameter, and surrounded by a circle of large upright stones. The platform at the top is 120 feet across. At the point of the intersection of the transepts with the long passage, the roof rises into a conical dome 20 feet high. In each of the three chambers, forming the head and arms of the cross, was a shallow stone basin from 3 to 31/2 feet long, and from 6 to 9 inches deep. These stone basins have been proved, by Mr. Eugene Conwell's discoveries at Lough Crew,^[22] to have contained the ashes of the dead. The surface of the stones in the chambers at New Grange and at Lough Crew is ornamented with various carvings in spirals, concentric circles, flamboyants, and zig-zags, forming part of the Prehistoric series defined by Mr. Franks as the late Celtic, and which are to be seen on many of the early Christian crosses and inscribed stones in Scotland, and in many of the illuminated Irish missals. These, however, are more rude and archaic than any of the above, and seem to me more likely to belong to a pre-Christian era rather than to the first four centuries after Christ, to which they are referred by Mr. Fergusson. They belong to a time before history began in Ireland, and before the introduction of Christianity, when the dead were burned and their ashes placed in the above-mentioned stone basins.

 

The Art.

The peculiar art of the Prehistoric Iron age^[23] in Britain, termed late or Neo-Celtic, is represented in its simplest form in Fig. 161, taken from the bronze sheath of an iron dagger found in the river Witham, and is met with in various personal ornaments, horse-trappings, and other articles, in Britain and Ireland. It is present on the sculptured stones of Scotland (Figs. 162, 163), frequently in combination with the mystic Z emblem, and the double-mirror pattern (see Fig. 162), and sometimes along with the broken sceptre and the crescent, the snake, and a curious animal formed of flowing lines in which the natural shape is only to be recognised because it forms one of a series (Fig. 163). In its more ornate form of the "trumpet pattern," or flamboyant, it is seen in various ornaments of the type of Fig. 158. In this shape it is frequently associated in Ireland and in Scotland with the Germanic knotted-cord pattern (Fig. 167). Its distinctness, however, from this is proved by its wide distribution over France and Switzerland long before the Germanic invasion of those countries. In the lake-dwelling of Marin,^[24] for example (Fig. 164), it occurs on many of the scabbards and ornaments belonging to the ancient Helvetians of that district; and in Scandinavia it is to be seen on one of the sculptured slabs in the famous tomb of Kivik, belonging to the Bronze age.

Fig. 161.—Late Celtic Pattern, Dagger Sheath, Witham.
Fig. 162.—Z and Double Mirror, Dunnichen Stone.
Fig. 163.—Strange Animal form, Dunnichen Stone.
Fig. 164.—Design on Bronze Sheath, Marin.

The art of enamelling the surface of metal appears for the first time in north-western Europe in the Prehistoric Iron age, and its chief centre seems to have been the British Isles and the adjacent parts of Gaul.^[25]

 

The Etrushan Influence.

The designs of the metal work of the Prehistoric Iron age in Britain are not to be looked upon as being the spontaneous development of those of the Bronze age, but to have been derived from abroad. The flowing lines, the flamboyants, and the various combinations of the spiral, unknown in Britain before, were introduced from France and Germany, through which countries they may be traced as far as Greece and Italy. In Mr. Franks' opinion they have been derived from the south,^[26] and are to be looked upon as marking the influence of the Etruskans and Greeks upon the regions north of the Alps. Two distinct influences were at work in Britain in the Prehistoric Iron age, of which the one is far older than the other. Certain articles, such as the gold cap found in the bog at Devil's Bit, County Tipperary (Fig. 157), are ornamented with designs which may be traced through France and Germany to Hallstadt, and ultimately into ancient Etruria. The same may be said of the gold armour discovered at Mold (Figs. 159, 160). These two may be taken as the types of a large class of articles, which testify to the far-extending influence of the Etruskans, which we shall define in the next chapter. In all probability the overland trade with Etruria was the first which brought the art of the Mediterranean to the shores of Britain and Ireland (see Map, Fig. 168).

 

The Influence of Ancient Greece.

Ancient Greece also exercised an influence on Prehistoric Britain, but only after the decline of the Etruskan power. The colony of Massilia was a centre from which the Greek culture passed through Gaul, and ultimately made itself felt even in the remote parts of Britain, attracted by the tin mines, and possibly also the gold, silver, and iron mentioned by Strabo and Cæsar.^[27] The existence of a Greek commerce is proved by the designs on the first coins which appear in Britain, modelled upon Greek originals, and shown by the researches of Mr. Evans^[28] to be, for the most part, imitations of those of Philip of Macedon. In his masterly work on ancient British coins he has traced them through Gaul into Britain. They were not imported directly, but were copied over and over again by the tribes who used them, becoming more illegible the farther they were re- moved from the Greek influence. This process went on until the inscription and the figures are represented by imitations so barbarous, that they would not have been recognised had it not been for the whole series showing the intermediate changes.

The gold staters of Philip of Macedon (B.C. 360) were highly esteemed by the neighbouring peoples, and passed into circulation far away from the limits of Greece, and were looked upon among the outer barbarians of Gaul, Germany, and Britain as a medium of exchange like the Maria Theresa dollars among the Abyssinians. As these coins passed northwards, they departed more and more from the original types. In Gaul the head of Apollo on the Philippus came to be represented by fragments, among which the laurel crown is most prominent, while on the reverse a rudely-stamped horse and wheel stood for Victory in her chariot. In one Gaulish imitation Victory has a torque, or armlet, in her hand instead of a crown; a fact which shows that those ornaments were marks of distinction like crowns among the Greeks. The meaning of the coins was to a great extent lost by the time they arrived in Britain, and the crown of Apollo became transformed into an ear of barley. Mr. Franks^[29] considers that the designs of the Prehistoric Iron age have been derived from classic originals, which have been treated in the same way as the coins.

 

Coins and Commerce.

The date of the earliest British coins is fixed by Mr. Evans between B.C. 200 and 150.

The evidence of the coins proves that trade was carried on with the neighbouring tribes of Gaul, and that commodities from Britain were passed from tribe to tribe until they arrived at Massilia. In later times a more direct intercourse was carried on, and caravans passed from the shores of the Mediterranean to the shores of the English Channel. Coins of silver and brass appear, some struck in the same dies as the later series of gold. Counterfeit coins also have been discovered, composed of copper or bronze covered with gold or silver. British coins were first struck in the south-eastern parts nearest to Gaul, and they are found as far west as Cornwall, and north as Yorkshire. According to Solinus,^[30] money was not current among the Silures of South Wales in the first century after Christ. Among other traces of the trade with the Mediterranean we may mention the red coral ornamenting the oblong shield found in the river Witham near Lincoln.^[31]

Britain also was connected with the trade-route passing down the valleys of the Rhine, and from the intimate association of the British with the adjacent Gallic tribes, they must have been acquainted with the arts of navigation. The Veneti possessed a marine capable of contending with the Roman galleys almost on equal terms, and the Britons first came in contact with the Roman arms as their allies. It may be concluded also that they were acquainted with the nearest coasts of Denmark and Germany, from their possession of ships, and from the fact that Pytheas sailed from the North Foreland to explore Thule and the amber coast.^[32]

 

Prehistoric Iron Age on the Continent North of the Alps.

The civilisation of the Iron age in France, Switzerland, and Germany, presents no important points of difference as compared with that of Britain. It was, however, more directly influenced, as would naturally be expected, by the Etruskans and the Greeks. M. Chantre^[33] has called attention to the numerous articles of metal work of Etruskan design, which have found their way through the passes of the Alps into France; and Lindenschmidt,^[34] Hildebrand,^[35] Virchow,^[36] and others, to those finding their way in the Iron age as far as the shores of the Baltic. The Greek influence is proved also in the same regions by the distribution of Greek coins and their imitations, and some of the painted vases found in Germany may have been imported from Greece. The Iron age in those countries began several centuries before the Christian era. It appears, however, from the evidence brought together by Worsaae,^[37] Engelhardt, and others, that iron was not used in Scandinavia until about the beginning of the Christian era.

This overlap of the Bronze age in Scandinavia with the Prehistoric Iron age in Germany will go far to explain the beauty and fine workmanship of the Scandinavian implements, weapons, and ornaments of Bronze. The higher designs were probably derived from the Etruskans and the Greeks, and are some of them identical with those characteristic of the Iron age in Germany, France, and Britain. Other articles, such as the repoussé shields, sword-belts, and golden cups,^[38] were probably imported from Etruria. Thus we see that the Iron age in Scandinavia is very nearly the equivalent of the beginning of the Historic age in Britain, and we have proof of the overlap of History and Prehistoric Archæology.

 

The Prehistoric Iron Age in Scandinavia.

Iron was introduced into Scandinavia by the Germanic tribes who conquered the previous inhabitants, about the beginning of the Christian era, and the civilisation which they introduced has been maintained without a break in those regions down to the present day. The Iron age is divided by the Scandinavian^[39] archæologists into three divisions; the first of which extends as far down, according to Worsaae, as A.D. 450, and is characterised by the abundant proof of the influence of the Roman Empire of the West engrafted upon the low German culture; the second is marked by the palpable traces of the influence of the Roman Empire of the East, radiating from Constantinople; and the third, ranging from A.D. 700 to 1000, is known as the period of the Vikings. The history of Scandinavia may be said to date from the second of these, although from time to time a ray of light is thrown upon its previous condition in the records of other countries. In the middle of the first of these periods the corsairs issuing from the Baltic and the ports to the west of the Cimbric Chersonese harried the coast of Britain and Gaul to such an extent in the third century, that they could scarcely be kept in check by the organisation of a Roman fleet, and thus prepared the way for the conquest by which the Roman Britannia^[40] became England. The long ships which composed their fleets were merely modifications of those which are figured in p. 394, from the rocks in Sweden engraved in the Bronze age. We have also representations of boats of the Iron age. In Fig. 165 I have reproduced a sketch incised on a rock at Häggeby in Uplande,^[41] representing a boat with twelve pairs of oars, in which the prow and the stern are formed in the same way. A boat of this kind has been discovered in a peat bog at Nydam in Schleswig, by M. Engelhardt^[42] in 1862, along with iron arms and implements, and in association with Roman coins ranging in date from A.D. 67 to A.D. 217. It therefore may be assigned to the third century. It was made of oaken boards, and was seventy feet long by eight or nine wide. The same kind of boat is also mentioned by Tacitus^[43] as being used by the Suiones, with stem and stern alike, fitted for being drawn up on the beach and without sails. It is, however, clear from his description that this was not the form usually employed in the navigation of the North Sea, and he had in his mind ships with a prow and stern wholly unlike one another.

Fig. 165.—Boat engraved on rock, Häggeby, Uplande.

 

Survival of the Late Celtic Art into the Historic Period in Britain.

Fig. 166.—Bronze Brooch, Victoria Cave, Yorkshire, 1/1 The designs introduced into Britain in the Prehistoric Iron age still survive. The volutes and flamboyants on the metal-work of the Prehistoric inhabitants of Britain and Ireland are found on ornaments proved by the associated coins to belong to the fifth or sixth centuries after Christ. The example here figured (Fig. 166) is that of a bronze brooch, ornamented in repoussé, found in the Victoria Cave.^[44] The same designs are conspicuous in the illuminated Irish manuscripts,^[45] such as the Gospel of St. Patrick, the book of Kells, and others, on early Irish Christian chalices,^[46] and on caskets discovered in France and Scandinavia. They also occur in the ornamentation of many engraved stones and crosses found^[47] in Scotland, and ranging at least as late as, and probably later than, the twelfth century.

The silver ornaments discovered in the Norries Law^[48] tumulus, in Largo Bay on the Firth of Forth, are also to be classified with the late Celtic art, which survived into the Historic period. The flamboyant design of Fig. 166 is to be seen in a silver plate in combination with the Z, or the broken sceptre symbol, and a strange animal composed of volutes, so frequently repeated on the ancient sculptured stones and crosses of Scotland (Figs. 162, 163). In a silver pin it is also to be seen below a Greek cross, while on the other side of the head are mystic symbols of unknown meaning.

Fig. 167.—Knotted-rope Pattern, Fordoun Church, Kincardineshire. These elegant and graceful designs are combined with the interlaced cable or rope pattern (Fig. 167), of Germanic origin, which was unknown in Britain before the English Conquest. The original^[49] of this figure is part of the ornamentation of a tombstone in Fordoun Church, Kincardineshire, where St. Palladius (A.D. 450) is said to have been buried. It is accompanied by the double-mirror and Z (Fig. 162), the snake, the spiral patterns (Fig. 158), and the figures of three men on horseback, one bearing a spear. This combination may be taken as an outward sign of the fusion of the two peoples in Scotland and Ireland. The graceful fancy of the Celt was joined to the heavy and massive design of the German, and is to be seen equally in the results of the patient labour of the scribe in his cell, and of the sculptor and metal-worker, who have left more palpable, though probably not more enduring, proofs of their wonderful art. The two designs are at the present time used in the jewelry of both Ireland and Scotland.

The same combination is visible in the enamel work. The massive square form of the Germanic pattern is seen in Saxon, Frankish, and Merovingian brooches, as well as in the silver chalice of Ardagh, set off by the brilliant colour of the Celtic enamels. In both these cases the art reflects the history of the times immediately succeeding the Germanic invasion.

1. Iliad, xxiii. p. 826.
2. For a criticism on the derivation and use of iron among the Greeks, see Evans, Ancient Stone Implements, pp. 3, 4, 5.
3. Worsaae, La Colonisation de la Russie et du Nord Scandinave, Copenhague, 1875, p. 77 et seq.
4. v.c. 10.
5. Gozzadini, Intorno Agli Scavi Archeologia fatti dal Sig. Arnoaldi Veli, presso Bologna, 4to, 1877. Congr. Int. Archéol. Préhist., Bologna vol., 1871, 242. Burton, Etruscan Bologna, 1876, p. 65.
6. Wilson, Prehistoric Annals of Scotland. Second edition, ii. p. 129.
7. Wilson, op. cit. ii. pp. 12, 13.
8. Tacitus, Agricola, c. 56. For the history of the long swords, see Kemble and Franks, Horæ Ferales.
9. The entrenchments at Stanwick have furnished a considerable quantity of antiquities of the Prehistoric Iron age, including enamels, and remains of chariots, of chain-mail, and a long iron sword.—Journ. Archæol, Institute, York vol.
10. The principal authorities followed in this account are Kemble and Franks, Horæ Ferales.
11. Wilde, Cat. R. I. Academy, ii. Gold Articles.
12. Wilde, op. cit. i., Figs. 474, 475, 476.
13. Archæol. Journ., ii. 368; iii. 27.
14. Wilson, Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, ii, p. 146.
15. iii. c. 116.
16. Thurnam and Davis, Crania Britannica, Pt. xii.
17. Ancient British Barrows, p. 450.
18. Greenwell, op. cit. 209.
19. Gage, Archæologia, xxvi. 422. Williams Ap Ithel, Archæol. Cambrensis, iii. 98. Archæol. Journ., vi. 259; xiv. 291.
20. ii. c. 11.
21. Fergusson, Rude Stone Monuments, p. 200 et seq. Wilde, The Boyne and the Blackwater, 1849, p. 188.
22. Proceed. R. I. Acad. SS. I., No. 6, p. 72.
23. For examples of this art, see Kemble and Franks, Horæ Ferales; Wilde, Catalogue of Antiq. in R. I. Academy, I.; Stuart, Sculptured Stones of Scotland; Wilson, Prehistoric Annals of Scotland.
24. Keller, Lake-Dwellings, transl. by J. E. Lee, 2d. edit.
25. Kemble and Franks, Horæ Ferales, p. 64. Dawkins, Cave-hunting, p. 99.
26. Congr. Int. Archéol. Préhist., Brussels vol., 1872, p. 516.
27. Strabo, iv. 278; Cæsar, v. c. 10, Clarke's edition, c. 12, Doberentz edition.
28. Ancient British Coins, c. ii.
29. Congr. Int. Archéol. Préhist, Brussels vol., 1872, p. 516.
30. Monumenta Historica Britannica, p. x.
31. Horæ Ferales, pl. xiv.
32. See Chapter XIII.
33. Congr. Int. Archéol. Préhist., Stockholm vol., 1874, 411. Matériaux, 1878, p. 1. See also Delort, Mat., 1878, p. 57; and Flouest, Mat., 1877, p. 273.
34. Lindenschmidt, Die Alterthümer unserer heidnischen Vorzeit.
35. Congr. Int., Stockholm, 1874, 592.
36. Congr. Int., Buda-Pesth vol., 1876, pp. 262 and 449.
37. La Colonisation de la Biissie et du Nord Scandinave; and Congr. Int., Buda-Pesth, p. 253.
38. See Montelius, Congr. Int., Stockholm vol., 1874, p. 505.
39. Worsaae, La Colonisation de la Russie et du Nord Scandinave, trad. par E. Beauvois. 1875.
40. A.D. 286. Under Carausius, Mon. Hist. Brit., lxxii. lxxx.
41. Montelius, Congr. Int., Stockholm vol., p. 459.
42. Guide Illustré du Musée des Antiquités du Nord à Copenhague, 2^me ed., p. 25. See also Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, p. 8.
43. Germania, c. 43.
44. The relation of these designs to Irish art is treated in my work on Cave-hunting, p. 94 et seq.
45. Westwood, Palæographia.
46. Dunraven, The Earl of, Ancient Chalice and Brooches lately found at Ardagh, Limerick, Trans. R. I. Acad. xxiv. Antiquities.
47. Stuart, Sculptured Stones of Scotland, Spalding Club, 2 vols. 4to.
48. Wilson, Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, ii. pp. 220, 250, Figs. 144, 153.
49. Stuart, Sculptured Stones of Scotland, i. pl. 67.