36 EARLY MAN IN DORSET. 



THE BRONZE AGE. 



The Bronze Age begins about 2,000 B.C. and lasts till 

 about 600 B.C. The introduction of metals for tools is an 

 epoch-making event, and it soon led to enoimous further 

 improvements. The earliest tools were made of almost 

 pure copper, but tha art of alloying with tin led to the 

 production of an extremely hard bronze, capable of receiving 

 a very fine cutting edge, and the arts ot casting and forging 

 were developed to a high pitch of perfection. These arts 

 were practised by a new race of men. Their skulls show 

 that they were round headed. They were a taller, stronger, 

 more warlike race. Probably we can identify them at first 

 with the Iberians or Basques or Picts, and certainly we can 

 identify them later with the Celtic tribes of the Aryan Family. 

 They swept away the Neolithic Mongoloids with a 

 ruthlessness even greater than that which they themselves 

 experienced at the hands of later invaders. For more than 

 2,000 years they inhabit the land, and are the people we 

 know as Ancient Britons. The tribes inhabiting Dorset 

 \voiv called the Durotriges, a word meaning " The Dwellers 

 by the Water." They buried their dead in Round Barrows, 

 of which there are many hundreds in the county, more 

 particularly in the Ridgeway district, and it is convenient to 

 remember that long heads generally go with long barrows 

 and round heads with round barrows. Moreover, they 

 often, though not always, burned their dead before burial. 

 Clearly, they believed in some kind of immortality of the 

 soul rather than in a continued underground existence of 

 the body, as suggested by the cells in the Long Barrows. 

 They buried a man's best property with him, and so our 

 finds in Round Barrows are extremely rich. Our local 

 museums, especially at Dorchester and Farnham, contain 

 magnificent collections of such objects. Pottery is abundant 

 and better made than the Neolithic. But it is burnt in an 

 open fire, not in a kiln, is not properly glazed, and is made 

 without the aid of the potter's wheel. By far the most 



