Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/420

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392
EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN.
[CHAP. X.

ments. Many of these have been derived from more southern regions, and the evidence which they offer as to the overlapping of the Bronze and Iron ages in Europe, north of the Alps, is, as we shall see in the thirteenth chapter, of the very highest importance. The axes figured above are of the same pattern as those represented on the walls of the Etruskan tomb at Cære, and are altogether unlike any axes of the Bronze age either of France or of Britain. They belong to the Iron age of Italy.
Fig. 151.—Gold Cup, Denmark.

In the classification of the Scandinavian antiquaries inhumation is supposed to mark a higher antiquity than cremation. It seems more probable from the associated works of art that the two were practised during the later Bronze age. In the tomb of Jaegersborg,[1] near Copenhagen, a bronze shield was found ornamented with gold leaf, worked in repoussé, and of the same style as the golden articles to be described presently, belonging to the late Celtic or Prehistoric Iron age in Britain, and to the early Etruskan age of Hallstadt.

Sculptures of the Bronze Age in Scandinavia.

The sculptures on the glacier-worn rocks of Sweden, and on some of the tombs described by Montelius,[2]

  1. Engelhardt, Guide Illustré du Mus. des Antiq. du Nord à Copenhague, 2d edit. p. 10.
  2. Congr. Int. Archéol. Préhist., Stockholm vol., p. 453 et seq.