EARLY MAN the passing away of the neolithic age, and indeed have been fashioned and used to the present day by uncivilized races. 1 THE BRONZE PERIOD It is tolerably certain that the introduction of the use of metals here was accomplished by the advent of an alien race. They practised a different mode of sepulture, generally burning the body instead of burying it, as was usually the neolithic habit. They reared round instead of long barrows over the dead, and their osseous remains indicate a broader-headed people than is shown by the skulls of neolithic men. Though the two races continued to a large extent co-existent, the strangers (who are generally recognized as the first of ' Celtic ' race to touch our shores) drove neolithic men from the more temperate and fruitful parts of the land. Sir John Evans thinks that the bronze period may have com- menced here c. 1200 to 1400 years B.C. and endured for not less than eight or ten centuries, which would bring it down to about 500 B.C. ; but weapons to some extent, and ornaments more largely, were made of bronze long after the introduction of iron.* Swords and beautiful orna- ments of this material are found in many collections of Romano-British relics, and it has been said that even at the battle of Hastings (1066 A.D.) some use was made of bronze weapons. This however is open to grave doubt, the notion being based upon an expression in Wace's poem, writ- ten in the twelfth century. It is to the bronze age we must assign the dawn of decorative art. It gave vast variety of weapons, implements, ornaments and pottery, while some of the hill fortresses of our land owe their creation to that period. The antiquities are too numerous to admit of more than the brief- est reference ; they include pottery, celts or hatchets and adzes, spear- heads, gouges, sickles, knives and other implements of bronze, and personal ornaments and domestic articles of metal, stone, bone and horn. Pottery was made and decorated with an art in advance of neolithic efforts. We give illustrations of four vessels probably of the earliest part of the bronze period (figs. 13, 14, 15, 16). Among the various vessels of this age in the Colchester Museum is the large example which we illustrate. It was found in the town in 1889, is ^^ inches high and 15 inches wide at the top, and is of a pale red colour roughly decorated in the manner shown. The chevron pattern on the upper band is formed of three rows of distinct impres- sions ; below this is a raised cordon ornamented, while the body is covered with simple indentations (fig. 17). Workers in bronze (a mixture of copper and tin) seem to have 1 In Borneo timber is still felled with adzes of stone, though the natives possess beautifully finished and decorated steel weapons (Ironwork, by J. Starlde Gardner, 1893). 1 Some scholars are inclined to an earlier date and estimate it at about 2000 B.C. Dr. Schrader considers that it is to Babylonia we owe the discovery of the art of making bronze (Athenaeum, June 8, 1 90 1 ). i 265 34
