era, in which the inhabitants of the British Isles first acquired the art of working metal.
There is reason to believe that the transition from the use of stone to that of bronze was not due to the peaceful advance of civilization, but rather to the irruption of an Aryan race from the south-east of Europe into the countries to the west and north. Of these people the Celts are to Bronze Age.some extent the representatives at a somewhat more recent period. Here, however, we are dealing with terms the precise meaning of which is not yet generally admitted, and which, moreover, have too intimate a relation to the problems of philology to be fully discussed here (see Indo-European). The term Aryan (q.v.) itself is not free from objections. It was held by Max Müller to relate to a language and a civilization that took its rise in Central Asia, while others now contend that, although it is the mother language of the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Teutonic and Celtic languages, it might equally well have originated in Europe. However this may be, and even this brief statement shows how wide a field the arguments would cover, there can be little doubt that the Bronze Age Celts were of this stock, and that in course of time they gradually spread their language and culture over a large part of Europe. Whether or no the knowledge of bronze started from one or more centres, it gradually spread from the south-east of Europe until it reached Scandinavia; the dates being roughly in Crete, 3000 B.C.; in Sicily, 2500 B.C.; in central France, 2000 B.C.; in Britain and in Scandinavia 1800 B.C. The appearance of the Celts in Britain is indicated by the presence of the round barrows. They were a fairly tall, short-headed race, using cremation and also inhumation in their burials, skilful in the manufacture of pottery and of the simpler forms of bronze implements, and freely using bone, jet, and at times amber, while gold was well known and evidently greatly esteemed. In the early centuries of the Bronze Age, swords, spears and shields were apparently quite unknown, the principal metallic products being flat axes, simple knives or daggers, and small tools or ornaments. In the burial places the bodies, if unburnt, are nearly always found in a crouching position, as if in the attitude of sleep; if cremated, the burnt bones are generally enshrined in an urn under the tumulus, the burial being sometimes in a cist formed of large stones. The pottery vessels are remarkable in more ways than one. In the first place they would seem to have been specially made for the burial rites, for whenever domestic pottery has been found, it is of quite a different character, unornamented and simple in outline. It must be confessed, however, that this latter is by no means common. The sepulchral vessels are at times highly decorated, and sometimes of great size. They are invariably hand made, and though they are by no means well fired they are never sun-dried, as is often said to be the case. A common kind of decoration is produced by impressing twisted cords in the damp clay, and this is believed with some reason to have had its origin in the practice of winding cords round the unbaked vessel to prevent distortion before or during the process of firing. That operation would of course burn away the cord and leave only its impression on the urn. Other forms of ornament are also used, incised lines in rudely geometrical designs, impressions of the end of a stick, and at times rows of hollows produced by the finger or thumb. The method of the burial, beyond giving an insight into the art of the period, also helps us to realize to some extent the ideas of primitive man. The underlying reason for careful and ceremonial burial is not always readily understood, apart from a knowledge of the ritual, such as existed in ancient Egypt. But in the Bronze Age in Britain it was the custom to bury with the dead not only carefully made vessels which doubtless contained food for the journey to the lower world, but also the ornaments and weapons of the deceased. Often the bonea of a pig have been found in the grave, doubtless representing part of the provender which could not conveniently be placed in the so-called food-vessel. Such practices indicate with a fair amount of certainty a belief in a future life in another world, where probably the conditions were thought to be much the same as in this. The burial of the weapons and other property of a dead man is, however, not always due to the belief that he may need them in some future state. The reason may well be that it would be thought unlucky for a survivor to use them.
Just as the neolithic age was immeasurably shorter than the palaeolithic, but was notable for great improvements in the arts of life, so the Bronze Age in its turn was shorter than the neolithic age, and again witnessed even more marked advance in culture. It is in fact an illustration of the truism that each step in knowledge renders all that follow less laborious; but it is not easy to understand how the transition from stone to metal came about, nor why bronze came to be the chosen metal rather than iron. Bronze, in the first place, is a composite metal, a mixture of copper and tin, while iron can be at once reduced from its ores; indeed, in the form of meteoric iron, it is already metallic, and needs but a hammer to produce whatever form may be wanted. From the archaeological point of view, there is, however, good reason for believing that bronze preceded iron. The forms of axes that are without doubt the earliest, are in outline much the same as the stone prototype, being only thinner in proportion. Then again, iron implements are never found on the earlier sites, and if they had been in existence some of them certainly would remain: further, at the end of the Bronze Age it is found that the forms of weapons in that metal are exactly copied in iron, as, for instance, at Hallstatt (q.v.) in the Salzkammergut, the famous cemetery which best illustrates the passage from the use of bronze to that of iron. It has been claimed that bronze was preceded by copper, a sequence which seems inherently probable; and whether or no it was general enough or enduring enough to constitute a period, there can be no reasonable doubt that in the Mediterranean area, and in central Europe, as well as in Ireland, great numbers of implements were made of copper alone without any appreciable admixture of tin. The casting of pure copper presents certain difficulties, in that the metal is not adapted for anything but a mould open to the air, and this would limit its utility, until the discovery that tin in a certain proportion (roughly 1 : 9) not only made the resulting metal much harder and better fitted for cutting-tools and weapons, but at the same time rendered possible the use of closed moulds.
There are thus two problems in connexion with the history of the Bronze Age. How was the metal discovered? And by whom or where? As to the first, it must be remembered that in some parts of the world, e.g. in China and in Cornwall, copper and tin are found together, and it may well be that tin was first accidentally included as an impurity, which, had it been noticed, would have been eliminated. Once it was found to produce a more useful metal, the blend would be deliberately made, and repeated trials would eventually demonstrate the most suitable proportion of one metal to the other. The question of where it was first discovered is one that is not likely to be answered with certainty, but the one essential is the presence of the two metals in one and the same locality. Tin does not exist in either Egypt or Mesopotamia, although bronze articles from the fourth and third millennium respectively B.C. have been found in these countries. The tin to produce the mere metal must have come from some foreign country; and the choice seems to be very small. Spain at the other end of the Mediterranean is unlikely, and Britain still more so; central Asia, Asia Minor, or China again seem too remote; for the spread of metallurgy from these centres would imply a trade connexion nearly 4000 B.C. In later times, later perhaps by 3000 years, Spain and Britain were undoubtedly among the chief sources of the tin supply of Europe and of the Mediterranean generally; but it will long remain a problem where bronze was first produced. There is indeed, no real necessity for confining its origin to a single locality; it is easily conceivable that the invention occurred independently in more places than one.
The history of early metallurgy has been carefully studied by W. Gowland, who communicated the results of his researches to the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1899. In his opinion the ores from which copper was first obtained by smelting were
