John Evans

“ If, for instance, we were to argue from the saw-handles in a carpenter’s shop as to the size of the hands of the carpenters, we should soon find ourselves in difficulties. The handle of an ordinary hand-saw is sufficiently large to admit the hand of any one short of a giant, while the orifice in the handle of a small keyhole-saw will not admit more than a couple of fingers, and the handles of saws of intermediate size range between these two extremes. This fact suffices to inculcate caution in arguing from the hilt-plates of the bronze swords as to the size of the hands of those who used them. ”

“ The Bronze Age of Britain may, therefore, be regarded as an aggregate of three stages: the first, that characterized by the flat or slightly flanged celts, and the knife-daggers frequently found in barrows associated with instruments and weapons formed of stone; the second, that characterized by the more heavy dagger-blades and the flanged celts and tanged spear-heads or daggers, such as those from Arreton Down; and the third, by palstaves and socketed celts and the many forms of tools and weapons, of which fragments are so constantly present in the hoards of the ancient bronze-founders. ”

“ There is indeed every ground for believing that in some parts of the world the use of native copper must have continued for a lengthened period before it was discovered that the addition of a small proportion of tin not only rendered it more readily fusible, but added to its elasticity and hardness, and thus made it more serviceable for tools and weapons. Even after the advantages of the alloy over the purer metal were known, the local scarcity of tin may at times have caused so small a quantity of that metal to be employed, that the resulting mixture can hardly be regarded as bronze ”

“ The existence of a steel for the purpose of sharpening seems to imply not only the knowledge of the preparation of the metal and its subsequent hardening, but also of files or of other tools to produce the peculiar striated surface to which the sharpening property of a steel is due. Had such tools been known, it seems almost impossible that no trace of them should have come down to our times. Moreover, if used for sharpening bronze knives, a steel such as at present used would sooner become clogged and unfit for use than if employed for sharpening steel knives. ”

“ The real question at issue is not whether any bronze weapons co-existed with those of iron and steel in Western Europe, but whether any of them were there in use at a period when iron and steel were unknown. Moreover, it is not a question as to whence the knowledge of bronze was derived, nor whether at the time the Scandinavians or Britons were using bronze for their tools and weapons, the inhabitants of Greece and Italy were already acquainted with iron and steel ”

“ So long ago as 1876 I was able to present to the foreign archæologists assembled at Buda-Pest for the International Congress of Prehistoric Archæology and Anthropology, a short abstract of this work in the shape of my Petit Album de l’âge du Bronze de la Grande Bretagne, which I have reason to believe has been found of some service. At that time my friend the late Sir William Wilde was still alive, and as the bronze antiquities of Ireland appeared to be especially under his charge, I had not regarded them as falling within the scope of my book. ”

“ The process of casting, as practised by the ancient bronze-founders, was, moreover, one requiring a great amount of skill; and though there appear to have been wandering founders, who, like the bell-founders of mediæval times, could practise their art at any spot where their services were required, yet there were probably fixed foundries also, where the process of manufacture could be more economically carried on, and where successive generations passed through some sort of apprenticeship to learn the art and mystery of the trade. ”

“ Wherever the discovery of bronze may have been made, there is ample evidence of its use having spread over the greater part of Europe if not of Asia; and at first the spread of bronze weapons and tools was in all probability by commerce. Even subsequently there were local centres, such as Etruria, from which the manufactured products were exported into neighbouring countries, as well as to those lying to the north of the Alps. Some even of the bronze vases found in Ireland, though themselves not of Etruscan manufacture, bear marks of Etruscan influences in their form and character. ”

“ We have in Britain the flat form of celt in some abundance, though none of the specimens exhibit traces of being direct imitations of hatchets formed of stone, as would probably have been the case in any country where the use of metal for such instruments originated. And yet many of our British flat celts exhibit a certain degree of originality, inasmuch as they are decorated with hammer- or punch-marks in a manner peculiar to this country, and others in a fashion but rarely seen abroad. ”

“ The connection between France and Britain during the Bronze Period cannot be denied, and in many respects there is an identity of character between the bronze antiquities of the North of France and those of the South of England. The North of France cannot, however, at any time since the first discovery of bronze, have been absolutely shut out from all communication with the South and East. The East must always have been affected by the habits of those who occupied what is now Western Germany ”

“ With regard to the various forms of which I intend to treat in the present chapter, there can hardly exist a doubt that they should be regarded as tools, and not as weapons. Already in the Neolithic Period we find many of these forms of tools, such as chisels and gouges, developed; and so far as hammers are concerned, it seems probable that for many purposes a stone held in the hand may have served during the Bronze Period as a hammer or mallet, just as it often does now in the age of steel and steam. ”

“ Among all uncivilised, if not indeed among all civilised nations, arms of offence take a far higher rank than mere tools and implements; and on the first introduction of the use of metal into any country, there is great antecedent probability that the primary service to which it was applied was for the manufacture of weapons. So far as there are means of judging, a small knife or knife-dagger appears to have been among the earliest objects to which bronze was applied in Britain. ”

“ Bronze, as already stated, is an alloy of copper and tin, and therefore distinct from brass, which is an alloy of copper and zinc. Many varieties of bronze—or, as it is now more commonly called, gun-metal—are in use at the present day; and one remarkable feature in bronze is that the admixture with copper of the much softer metal tin, in varying proportions, produces an alloy in most if not all cases harder than the original copper ”

“ When, however, in various countries we find interments and even cemeteries in which bronze and iron weapons and instruments are intermingled, and the forms of those in bronze are what we have learnt from other sources to regard as the latest, while the forms in iron are not those for which that metal is best adapted, but are almost servile copies of the bronze instruments found with them, the proof of the one having succeeded the other is almost absolutely conclusive. ”

“ A weapon used as a battle-axe would not be less deadly from having a somewhat duller cutting edge than if formed of bronze, and should it get bent in an encounter, the straightening of it might quickly be effected, while the loss of a blade by its breaking would be irreparable. I have elsewhere contended that the Hungarian perforated double-ended axes (like pick-axes) of copper, with but little or no tin in them, were made of this material, not because tin was unknown, but because the ductile and malleable copper was found better adapted for certain purposes than the more fragile bronze. ”

“ Though loops are such a common adjunct to the socketed celts of other countries, yet looped palstaves are comparatively rare abroad. At the same time, as will have been seen, hardly any examples of looped spear-heads from foreign countries can be cited, while in Britain, and more especially in Ireland, they are very abundant. This fact, in whatever way it is to be accounted for, affords a most conclusive argument against assigning a Roman origin for our bronze weapons; a looped spear-head, so far as I am aware, never having been discovered in Italy, and but very rarely even in Gaul. ”

“ The existence of numerous tribes of men who are, or were until lately, in the same stage of culture as the occupants of Europe during the Neolithic Age, affords various points of comparison between ancient and modern savages which are of the highest interest, while there exists at the present day not a single community in which the phases of the Bronze culture can be observed. ”

“ The common axe-like type has also been discovered among Assyrian antiquities. Another and distinct form which has been found in Egypt mounted as an axe or hatchet, with a wooden handle, is a flat blade not unlike the ordinary flat celt, except that instead of tapering at the butt-end it expands so as to have two more or less projecting horns, by which it was bound against the haft in a shallow socket provided for it. Egyptian axes mounted in this manner may be seen in many museums, and have been frequently figured in works on Egyptian antiquities. ”

“ The most instructive instance of a Copper Age, as distinct from one of Bronze, is that afforded by certain districts of North America, in which we find good evidence of a period when, in addition to stone as a material from which tools and weapons were made, copper also was employed, and used in its pure native condition without the addition of any alloy. ”

“ In my own collection is what appears to have been a larger anvil of bronze, which was found, with other instruments of the same metal, at Macarsca, Dalmatia. In form it is not unlike an ordinary hammer-head about 5 inches long; but the eye through it appears to be too small for it ever to have served to receive a haft of the ordinary kind, though it probably held a handle by which to steady the tool when in use. One end is nearly square and but slightly convex; the other is oblong and rounded the narrow way. Both ends are much worn. On one face and one side are rounded notches or swages. ”

“ In the first place, a flat blade not only approaches most nearly in form to the stone hatchets or celts which it was destined to supersede, but it also requires much less skill in casting than the blade provided with a socket. For casting the flat celts there was, indeed, no need of a mould formed of two pieces; a simple recess of the proper form cut in a stone, or formed in loam, being sufficient to give the shape to a flat blade of metal, which could be afterwards wrought into the finished form by hammering. ”

“ Curiously enough he regards the flat celts as being even more recent in date than the socketed, forgetful that the form with flanges at the sides can hardly by any possibility have been an original type, as such flanges must either have been produced by hammering the sides of flat celts, or must have been cast in a mould consisting of two halves, which certainly cannot have been so early a form of mould as a simple recess in stone, sand, or clay, adapted for casting a nearly flat plate of metal like a wedge-shaped celt. ”

“ The first view, of an intruding and conquering race having introduced the use of bronze into their country, has been held by most of the Scandinavian antiquaries, and Professor Boyd Dawkins seems to regard a Celtic invasion and conquest of the Iberic peoples in Britain as having been the means by which the knowledge of bronze was extended from Gaul to these islands. The osteological evidence in favour of the bronze-using Britons having as a rule been of a different race from the stone-using people of our Neolithic times is strongly corroborative of such a view ”

“ I have, however, in all cases pointed out such analogies in form and character as seemed to me of importance as possibly helping to throw light on the source whence our British bronze civilisation was derived.
It may by some be thought that a vast amount of useless trouble has been bestowed in figuring and describing so many varieties of what were after all in most cases the ordinary tools of the artificer, or the common arms of the warrior or huntsman, which differed from each other only in apparently unimportant particulars. ”

“ It is, as will be seen, in fact, a socketed celt, but with the socket at right angles to the axis of the blade. The reason why it should have been cast in this manner is probably to be found in the fact that boughs of trees with a smaller branch at right angles to them are not easily met with, though such boughs are best adapted for conversion into the helves of this kind of hatchet. Some ingenious bronze-founder of old times conceived the idea of producing a hatchet which did not require a crooked helve, but for hafting which any ordinary straight stick would serve ”

“ Altogether the subject of pins belonging to the Bronze Age in the British Islands is one of [373] which, in the present state of our knowledge, it is difficult to treat satisfactorily, so few of the more highly developed types having been found in actual association with other bronze relics. In England especially the rarity of bronze pins, as compared, for instance, with their abundance in the Lake-dwellings of Southern Europe, is very striking. As will subsequently be seen, there is nearly as great a scarcity of bracelets and of some other ornaments. ”

“ It is hard to account for this absence of perforated axes of bronze in Britain, but various causes seem to have conduced to render their introduction difficult. When first bronze came into use it must have been extremely scarce and valuable; and to cast an axe-head in bronze, like one of the perforated axe-hammers of stone, would have required not only a considerably greater amount of the then precious metal than was required for a flat hatchet-head, but would also have involved a far higher skill in the art of casting. ”

“ Such a complete insight into the material civilisation of the period as that afforded by the Lake-dwellings of Switzerland, Savoy, and Northern Italy is nowhere vouchsafed to us in Britain. The Irish crannoges, which, in many respects, present close analogies with the pile-buildings, have remained in use until mediæval times, and in no instance has the destruction of a settlement by fire contributed to preserve for the instruction of future ages the household goods of the population. ”

“ When barrow after barrow is opened, and weapons of bronze and stone only are found accompanying the interments, and not a trace of iron or steel; when hoards of rough metal and broken bronze, together with the moulds of the bronze-founder and some of his stock-in-trade, are disinterred, and there is no trace of an iron tool among them—the presumption is strong that at the time when these men and these hoards were buried iron was not in use. ”

“ The perforated axe-hammers and axes of bronze are here entirely wanting; the tanged swords and the majority of those with decorated hilts are also unknown. There is hardly a type of dagger common to this country and Scandinavia. The saws, knives, and razors are of quite another character, but there is a resemblance in the sickles to a rare British type. The flat and flanged celts of the two regions are of nearly the same kind, and in one rare instance there is a similar decoration on a reputedly Danish and on an Irish celt. ”

“ When, moreover, by a careful examination of the forms of bronze instruments we can trace a certain amount of development which is in keeping with the peculiar properties of bronze and not with those of iron, and we can thus to some extent fix a kind of chronological succession in these forms, the inference is that this evolution of form, which must have required a considerable amount of time, took place without its course being affected by any introduction of a fresh and qualifying influence in the shape of iron tools and weapons. ”