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De Willmo Hendy pro ten in Frerenstrete perquisito de Willmo

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De Fratribus Minoribus Sarum pro ten nuper Petri Wivelford
De eisdem pro ten quondam Willi Cosyn

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NOTES ON IMPLEMENTS OF THE BRONZE AGE FOUND IN WILTSHIRE, WITH A LIST OF ALL KNOWN

EXAMPLES FOUND IN THE COUNTY.

By the REV. E. H. GODDARD.

DR. Oscar Montelius, in his important paper on "The Chronology of the British Bronze Age," printed in Archeologia, lxi., 97-162 (1908), has attempted to do for Great Britain what he had already done for the Continent, viz., to fix approximately the actual as well as the relative age of the various types of weapons and implements found in these islands which can be classed as belonging, broadly speaking, to the age of Bronze. Whether his conclusions will all be accepted by future archæologists remains to be seen, but it is certain that they will be widely quoted. Following the general tendency of recent writers he pushes back the dates of the introduction of both iron and bronze some hundreds of years beyond those suggested by Sir John Evans. Thus he places the beginning of the Iron Age in Great Britain and Ireland at about 800 B.C., and the beginning of the Bronze Age at about 2500 B.C., dividing the intervening 1700 years into five periods:— Period I., from cir. 2500 to 2000 B.C.

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Period I. may, he says, more correctly be called the "Copper Age," for most of the metal objects in use during this period were of copper "without any intentional alloy of tin," or it may equally well be regarded as the last stage of the Stone Age, for it is

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1 Meaning that such tin as is to be found in them is not in greater proportion than the small amount often present naturally in copper ores.

characterized by the presence of Flint Celts, Arrowheads, Scrapers, and Daggers, perforated Stone Axe-Hammers, conical Buttons of shale, bone, or jet, sometimes covered with thin gold, Beads of amber and jet, Bracers or Wrist-Guards of stone and bone, and Drinking Cups, and Food Vessels of pottery. The flat copper Celts of Ireland are assigned to this period, and also the tanged flatbladed Daggers, of which the most remarkable examples are those from the Roundway and Mere Down Barrows, at Devizes, and from the Winterslow Barrows, at the Ashmolean Museum. Dr. Montelius, states definitely that these are of copper; on what authority does not appear, inasmuch as, so far as is known, neither of these Wiltshire examples had at the time of the publication of his paper been analysed.

PERIOD II.

To Period II. he assigns some perforated Stone Axe-Hammers, though implements of stone are very rare; flat Bronze Celts, flanged Celts without stop ridges; Bronze rivetted Daggers or Dagger-Knives, with flat blades or with central rib, and Halberds ; conical Buttons of Shale, &c.; Cinerary Urns of Pottery; and, in Ireland, the Golden "Lunettes" for the neck.

PERIOD III.

In Period III. there were no stone implements. Flanged Bronze Celts, Palstaves, rivetted Daggers, ferruled Daggers, funicular Torques of Bronze or Gold, Armlets, narrow Chisels, and unsocketed Sickles, occur.

PERIOD IV.

To Period IV. belong Bronze Palstaves, Celts with square sockets, Rapiers, and Rapier-shaped Daggers, Leaf-shaped Swords, and Scabbard tips, Razors, ring-headed Pins, tanged broad Chisels, Gold funicular Armlets, and socketed and looped Spearheads.

1 Spearheads, according to Canon Greenwell,

PERIOD V.

To Period V. belong the later Palstaves, and the bulk of the socketed implements, Celts, Hammers, Chisels, Gouges, Daggers, Spearheads, often with crescent openings in the blade, Knives, and Sickles. Also broad-bladed tanged Chisels and Gouges, Leaf-shaped Swords and Scabbard tips, one-edged Knives, Razors, Shields, Trumpets, Bridle Bits, Pins, Gold Bracelets, and Ring Money, Bronze Bowls, and tanged Knives.

Dr. Montelius regards the burials of Periods I.-III. as being either by cremation or inhumation and as being for the most part in barrows. The burials of Period IV. are by cremation in barrows and cairns, or in cemeteries without barrows. Those of Period V. are by cremation in barrows, or in cemeteries, with or without urns. But it is to be remarked that for this last period he can only produce in all three examples of burials from Scotland, and none at all from England. Again, so far as Wiltshire is concerned, it may safely be said that not one out of the hundreds of barrows in the county, of the opening of which we have records, can be with any certainty assigned to any period later than the first three; that is to say, that so far as the evidence of the "finds" goes, we have nothing to show that in Wiltshire we have any burials of the period between 1400 and 800 B.C. It was during these six hundred years that the later types of Bronze implements, especially the socketed types, Celts, Gouges, Spearheads, and the Rapiers and Leaf-shaped Swords and Daggers were in use. There is no sign of the presence of any of these implements in the barrows of Wiltshire, or any evidence that there are in the county any 1 It is true that a small socketed and looped Spearhead (No. 175) which was

Socketed looped Spearhead found

under turf in a Barrow.

very unfortunately wrongly identified by Dr. Thurnam (Arch., xliii., 447) as having been found in a barrow at Wilsford with a cremated interment, has often been quoted, and will probably continue to

be quoted, as proof that this barrow at least was of the later period of the Bronze Age, in spite of the fact that Mr. W. Cunnington (W.A.M., xxi., 262) has shown conclusively that this Spearhead was really found only just under

barrows or cemeteries without barrows of a date later than Period III., of Montelius; though if we assume that for some reason the people of the later Bronze Age gave up the previous custom of burying their implements with the dead, many of the barrows which contain a single interment of cremated bones without any other relics by which their age might be determined, may possibly be referable to this later period. But it is not merely in the interments, which indeed are but doubtfully known elsewhere, but in the implements themselves, that Wiltshire is largely lacking.

It is, indeed, singular that a county, which is richer than any other part of England in relics, both in bronze and gold, of the earlier period of the Bronze Age, represented by the barrow interments, should be able to show so few examples, comparatively speaking, of the later period of that age, when the bronze Swords and Daggers, socketed Celts, Spearheads, and other implements often found in considerable numbers in other parts of England, were in use.

We can hardly suppose that a district which evidently possessed such a large population in the earlier period of the Bronze Age ceased to be inhabited when men no longer buried their bronze weapons with their dead, especially when we know that later, again, the Romano-British population was as dense on the Wiltshire Downs as in any part of Britain.

A more probable explanation

of the absence of these implements would seem to be that Wiltshire possesses neither large rivers like the Thames, nor turbaries and bogs, such as exist in Somerset and Devon and the northern

the turf in a barrow near Stonehenge in 1802, and in all probability was of much later date than the barrow itself. The object actually found with the cremated interment at

Wilsford, partly melted by the heat of the funeral pile, though called by Hoare a "Lance Head," is really a small Knife Dagger with two rivets, and still exists as No. 214 of the Stourhead Collection at Devizes. (No. 66.)

Small Knife Dagger half melted with heat of funeral pile. From barrow at Wilsford.

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