These two divisions are represented also in Ireland, and to the latter of them we may refer many of the simpler forms of gold, ornaments which have been found from time to time in that country, as well as hoards of the kind discovered in Dowris bog (see p. 363).
The early and late divisions of the Bronze age shade off into one another, and may have been the result of the gradual development of commerce. The absence of the higher forms from the burial-grounds may have been caused by the practice of burying the simpler forms with the dead, although both may have been in use at the same time. On the one hand it may be argued that the lower must have preceded the higher in point of time, and, on the other, that this only applies to the evolution of form in general, and that it does not afford ground for the view, that in any given country the two may not have been introduced from some other region at approximately the same time. The knowledge of bronze was undoubtedly introduced into Britain from without, and in the natural course of events the simpler forms would be the first to arrive. On taking into consideration the light thrown on this point by the discoveries on the Continent, it is very probable that the wedge-shaped axe and the dagger, and personal ornaments, were the first articles of bronze known among the Neolithic peoples of the north, and it is very likely that the habit of burying them continued down to the later age of Bronze. The people in those days must have buried their dead, and if the above hypothesis be not held, it is impossible to explain the exceeding rarity of the higher forms in their tumuli. Two socketed spear-heads,[1] one
- ↑ Crawford, Lanark, Journ. Brit. Archæol. Assoc. x. 7, xvii. 110; Wilsford, Wilts, Archæologia, xliii. 163.
