A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE
burnt upon the site, then covered over by a pool or mere of earth, upon which 'two or three hundred cartloads of earth' had been piled. The vases, with their punctured and incised chevron patterns, may have belonged to the Bronze Age; but some features of the burial are apparently very early.
4. Classification of Localities
Bleasdale, Broughton Hall, Broughton (Manchester), Clifton, Cliviger, Darwen, Haulgh, Kenyon, Lancaster, Littleborough, Manchester (Red Bank), Revidge (Blackburn), Stonyhurst, Walmsley, Warton, Wavertree, Weeton, Winwick, Yealand.
Over Sands: Aldingham, Allithwaite, Aynwine Lake, Rawcliffe, Birkrigg, Cartmel, Ireleth Mill, Knapperthaw, Roose, Scales, Stainton, Torver.
IV. IRON IMPLEMENTS AND REMAINS OF THE LATE CELTIC PERIOD
It is hardly possible to see evidence in surviving remains of an Iron Age proper in Lancashire, intervening between the Bronze Age and the Roman occupation. Our record of iron implements of Celtic fabric is small indeed; but to these must be added other implements or their attachments, recognized by their art as belonging to the Later Celtic phase of culture. There is nothing apparently which special criticism would date earlier than the first century B.C.; but in the paucity of evidence the origins of this new phase of civilization remain obscure. The subject, however, is of special interest, and a reasonable inference may be made from the condition of the county as revealed when the first light of history dimly penetrates the darkness that hitherto has enfolded early man in all respects, except the general characters of his art in making weapons. If the account of Ptolemy is to be regarded as evidence, it seems clear that there was at least one settled and organized community in Lancashire at the time the observations were being made from which his notes were derived. Its name, Rigodunum, which is also essentially Celtic,[1] suggests the headquarters of a considerable community. There is reason to believe it possible that the situation of this place was at or near to Lancaster;[2] and it was precisely in that vicinity that such evidence of Late Celtic art as exists is mostly to be found. It must not be forgotten, also, that the best bronze implements, already described, come from the same region; and that while they suggest at least an earlier Celtic settlement, there is no reason to suppose they are the tokens of a purely bronze-using population. Looking again at the map, and considering also the general principle involved in the slow movement of culture waves and of people, it must be conceded as probable that in our northern county, open as it is to the south, while shut off to the north and west by its hills and the sea, the successive ages merged completely, culturally and ethnologically. That, in a word, the development of a full Iron Age, as technically defined, by no means eradicated the blood and art even of the Neolithic Age, much less of the first Celtic people of the Bronze Age, which was nearer and more akin.
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