Bronze Age

“ The Bronze Age, nevertheless, from its close propinquity to the period of written history, is of the highest importance to those who would trace back the course of human progress to its earliest phases; and though in this country many of the minute details of the picture cannot be filled in, yet, taken as a whole, the broad lines of the development of this stage of civilisation may be as well traced in Britain as in any other country. ”

“ Bronze implements of the late Bronze age have been discovered in three other caves in this country,—in the Cat Hole in Cower, in Thor's Cave in Staffordshire, and in Cave Dale, Castleton.
Clothing and Ornaments of the Bronze Folk in Britain.
In attempting to picture to ourselves the men of the Bronze age in Britain, it is necessary to make use of articles sometimes isolated, sometimes accumulated together in hoards, and at others buried with the dead. We will first of all deal with their personal appearance, and then pass on to a consideration of their mode of life. ”

“ The Stone Age is that period in the history of mankind during which stone is habitually used as a material for weapons and tools. Antiquaries find it convenient to make the Stone Age cease whenever metal implements come into common use, and the Bronze Age, or the Iron Age, supervenes. ”

“ Not the least misunderstood of these subjects has been the classification of the antiquities of Western Europe, first practically adopted by the Danish antiquaries, under periods known as the Iron, Bronze, and Stone Ages; the Iron Age, so far as Denmark is concerned, being supposed to go back to about the Christian era, the Bronze Age to embrace a period of one or two thousand years previous to that date, and the Stone Age all previous time of man's occupation of that part of the world. ”

“ The Bronze Age of Europe derives its name from the predominance of relics illustrative of a period which, though old compared with that of definite history, belongs to a comparatively late era, characterised by many traces of artistic skill, and of mastery in the difficult processes of smelting ores and alloying metals. But the dawn of the metallurgic era in the New World is marked by phases which derive their distinctive character from two widely separated regions ”

“ This Neolithic Period itself, again, was immensely long as compared with the Bronze Age which followed, though short by comparison with the Palæolithic epoch which preceded it. Then the Bronze Age saw enormous changes come faster and faster, till the use of iron still further accelerated the rate of progress. For each new improvement becomes, in turn, the parent of yet newer triumphs, so that at last, as in the present day, a single century sees vaster changes in the world of man than whole ages before it have done in far longer intervals. ”

“ And yet, for each of us, as years steal over us, the days of our own vanished youth are ever "the good old days."
The Age of Bronze.—The predominance of bronze, as the material of the articles found in the later pile-dwellings, has given to the fourth prehistoric human epoch its name—the Age of Bronze. While some of these lake-villages continued in use from the Stone age, others—usually those farthest out in the lakes—evidently originated in the Age of Bronze. ”

“ Not a few archaeologists have denied that there ever was a distinct Bronze Age. They have found their chief argument in the fact that weapons of these ages have been found side by side in prehistoric burial-places. But when it is admitted that the ages must have overlapped, it is fairly easy to understand the mixed “finds.” The beginning, the prevalence and duration of the Bronze Age in each country would have been ordered by the accessibility of the metals which form the alloy. ”

“ They generally surpass in this respect the relics of the Bronze Age found in almost all other European countries. The works belonging to the Later Bronze Age are characterized by a very different taste and style of ornamentation, though even they are often the result of great skill. ”

“ It has become customary to speak of the present epoch as the ‘Iron Age,’ in order to distinguish it from those two long periods of human interest known respectively as the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. ”

“ As we find but a small development of the Bronze Age in America, it is reasonable to suppose that there must have been some intermediate station between America and Europe, where, during a long period of time, the Bronze Age was developed out of the Copper Age, and immense quantities of bronze implements were manufactured and carried to Europe. ”

“ With these exceptions, there are no terramara mounds of the Iron Age, and the system is supposed to have flourished in the early Bronze Age and to have fallen completely into desuetude before the commencement of the Iron Age. ”

“ All this, however, is very conjectural, and all that can be concluded from it is, that any indications as to the antiquity of man derived from the bronze age as known to us in Europe, hardly carry us back to dates as remote as those furnished by the monuments of Egypt 267 and Chaldæa. Indeed, there are no facts certainly known to us from remains of the bronze age in Europe that imply a greater antiquity than 1500 or possibly 2000 years b.c., a date at which bronze had undoubtedly been already known in Egypt and the East for many centuries. ”

“ In many parts of Europe, especially in Switzerland and northern Italy, plain traces of some curious habitations of people who lived through the later Stone Age into the Bronze Age, and even after it, have been brought to light. ”

“ The fact that the implements of the Bronze Age came from some common centre, and did not originate independently in different countries, is proved by the striking similarity which exists between the bronze implements of regions as widely separated as Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, and Africa. ”

“ The period when bronze first appeared in Britain can only be approximately fixed. It is certain that in the south-eastern districts iron tools began to be used not later than the fourth century before the Christian era.499 The final period of the British Bronze Age is marked by the discovery of bronze-founders’ hoards, all of which contain tools or fragments of tools which are known as socketed celts, or other socketed instruments which were contemporary with them. ”

“ We give a cut of both. They are from burial mounds of this age in England. We remember the ornamentations on implements in the Paleolithic Age was by engraving animal forms. In the Neolithic Age they seem to have cared very little for ornamenting. During the Bronze Age the ornamentation was of a simple but pleasing and uniform style. It consisted of simple geometrical patterns, combination of circles, dots, and straight lines. In this next figure we have given the principal designs found in France.
In the arts of living an increase in culture is noticeable. ”

“ Bronze implements used for many centuries in Europe before the Iron Age.
Certain metallurgists, however, maintain that a Bronze Age, properly so called, may never have existed; and that iron may have been manufactured during and even before the period to which the bronze tools that are exhibited in museums belong. ”

“ So greatly superior were bronze to stone implements that their introduction caused the use of stone for tools and weapons to be discontinued, and consequently the Age of Bronze constitutes a well-defined and important epoch in the liistory of culture. ”

“ Many stone implements are found either isolated, or perhaps with no other relics that serve to fix their period. The material alone is often considered sufficient evidence of their being before the age of metals; but it is at any rate quite certain that a large number of stone axes, more particularly those with a socket for the handle, belong really to the Bronze Age. ”

“ Altogether, if history is to count for anything, there can be no doubt that in Greece and Italy, the earliest civilized countries of Europe, the use of bronze preceded that of iron, and therefore that there was in each case a Bronze Age of greater or less duration preceding the Iron Age. ”

“ This conclusion, which at first was a deduction drawn from the animal descent of man, has now the independent support of an enormous amount of evidence. The existence of a Stone Age, palæolithic and neolithic, of a Bronze Age and an Iron Age, and the succession of those ages in the order named, are established facts of science. ”

“ The people who inhabited Britain before the coming of the Romans are said to have belonged to the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, or the Iron Age, according to the material which they used for their tools and weapons ”

“ To the Stone Age succeeded the Age of Bronze, at which time cutting instruments, such as swords and knives and axes, began to be made of copper, and an alloy of that metal and tin. When in the course of time iron replaced bronze for cutting-instruments, the Bronze Age came to an end and the Iron Age supervened. ”

“ Bronze spread to Europe from south to north along the established trade routes; and the theory, once held, that a Bronze Age developed independently among the rude races of Northern Europe is no longer accepted. The discovery of well-wrought weapons in early graves shows206 that the inhabitants of the British Isles first knew bronze, in its best form, as a foreign introduction, before they manufactured the metal for themselves. ”

“ Similarly stone tools continued to be used throughout the Bronze Age and the Late Celtic Period; and in certain remoter parts of the British Isles they are being used to-day.251 When they are found associated with primary interments in long barrows or chambered cairns, or when they are met with in large numbers in other deposits which there is no reason to assign to a later period, they may as a rule be safely referred to the Neolithic Age ”

“ Even let us suppose that large clearances could have been made by burning, at once the thickets would again spring up, and under their protection the forest trees. Nor can the possession of bronze have sufficed to subdue the natural tendency towards forest. Bronze, in the Bronze Age, was not the industrial material of the many ”

“ The existence of a Bronze age was first formulated, as distinct from a Stone age, about seventy years ago; and the existence of a Copper age has been much disputed in the last thirty years, but has only been proved clearly ten years ago, in Egypt. ”

“ The graves generally contain remains of unburned bodies. The antiquities of the Earlier Bronze Age, almost without an exception, appear to be of native workmanship. They are distinguished by artistic forms and point to a highly developed taste in the working of bronze. ”

“ Putting away the dead in mound-graves, besides being a universal custom, was one which endured through a long series of centuries, since their contents illustrate for us the Age of Bronze through all its gradations and a goodly portion of the Age of Iron—i.e., the beginnings of the age in which we live ourselves. ”

“ That instructive class of specimens which antiquaries sometimes discover, bronze celts modelled on the heavy type of the stone hatchet, are scarcely explicable except as first steps in the transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, to be followed soon by the next stage of progress, in which it is discovered that the new material is suited to a handier and less wasteful pattern. ”

“ The exploration of the Heathery Burn Cave not only illustrates the life of the Bronze Age; it also shows that even in districts far remote from the Continent the use of bronze was not confined to a conquering people but spread to the descendants of the older population. ”

“ With the better material which was thus obtained the neolithic craftsmen fashioned implements of which some can hardly be distinguished, even by experts, from those of the older period, though the greater number are recognizable even by a tiro. It must, however, be remembered that in many cases one cannot tell whether a find of stone implements belongs to the Neolithic or to the Bronze Age ”

“ The Neolithic men, though they used implements of stone, polished them exquisitely by grinding and smoothing, and were in all respects, save in the use of metals and a few similar particulars, as advanced as their successors of the Bronze age. ”

“ I am at present concerned with the Stone Age, and if, as all agree, there was a time when the use of iron or of bronze, or of both together, first became known to the barbarous nations of the West of Europe, then it is evident that before that time they were unacquainted with the use of those metals, and were therefore in that stage of civilization which has been characterized as the Stone Age. ”