532 



NATURE 



{Aprils, 1888 



question, however, of comparatively secondary import- 

 ance. The main fact with which we have to deal is that 

 it is only in the transitional age that takes its name from 

 the great Salzkammergut Cemetery, and when iron was 

 already coming into use, that we have the evidence of 

 intimate and extended relations between the Amber Coast 

 of the Baltic and the lands to the south and south-east. 

 The importance of this fact in its bearing on the early 

 course of the amber trade does not seem to me to be 

 clearly brought out by Dr. Lissauer. Montelius, however, 

 has conclusively shown that throughout the earlier and 

 purer Bronze Age in Central and North-Western Europe 

 the source of the amber supply was not the East Baltic, 

 but the coast of Jutland and the mouths of the Elbe and 

 Weser, where, as Miillenhofif has demonstrated on purely 

 literary grounds, lay the Amber Islands of Pytheas. The 

 main course of this early commerce, as indicated by the 

 connection of the Bronze Age forms discovered, was up 

 the course of the Elbe ; and the first appearance of an 

 intrusive southern culture at the Vistula" mouth in Hall- 

 statt times shows that it was not till this comparatively 

 recent period that the Baltic amber route was opened up. 

 But, when once this, then probably as now, far more 

 prolific field was known, southern commerce showed 

 more and more a tendency to follow this route, to the 

 final desertion of the older line to the north-west. Among 

 the most characteristic evidences of the trade relations 

 thus estabhshed between the Old Prussian Amber Coast 

 and the Mediterranean may be cited the discovery 

 of a "cordoned" bronze bucket of the class common 

 to Northern and Southern Italy, and of which large 

 finds have come to light in Southern Hungary, — a class 

 of objects which there seems no longer any warrant for 

 qualifying, as Dr. Lissauer does, as " Etruscan," but which, 

 as Helbig has shown, may very well represent an old 

 Chalcidian fabric. A whole succession of finds of Greek 

 coins further mark in somewhat later times the continued 

 intercourse with the south. Dr. Lissauer apparently 

 accepts the much-disputed Schubin find of Archaic coins 

 of Athens and Erchomenos, and though the inclusion in 

 this sixth century hoard of two later pieces of Athens 

 and Miletus, and a modern Siamese coin, render the cir- 

 cumstances of the find open to grave suspicion, the 

 later series of discoveries of coins of Thasos, Macedon, 

 &c., extending from Hungary to Gothland, throws a retro- 

 spective light on the probable direction followed by one 

 branch of this Baltic commerce. It appears equally clear, 

 however, both from archaeological and historic sources, 

 that another line crossed the Julian Alps to the head of 

 the Adriatic, finding in all probability its southern con- 

 tinuation by the East Adriatic coasting route. This, it 

 will be remembered, was the route followed by those who, 

 in Herodotus's account, conveyed the mysterious gifts of 

 the Hyperboreans to the Delian shrine of the Sun-god — a 

 mission which seems to have an inseparable connection 

 with the " Sun-stone" Islands of Eridanos's mouth and the 

 Phaethontid maidens. 



Among the most interesting and characteristic features 

 of the Hallstatt period in West Prussia are the "face- 

 urns," or cinerary vases with human features rudely 

 modelled on their neck ; and Dr. Lissauer is probably on 

 the right track when he compares them with the early 

 vases of the same kind discovered by Fraulein von Torma 



in the Valley of the Maros in Transylvania. That they 

 have any relation with the "face-urns " of Etruria seems 

 out of the question, especially since the appearance of 

 the monograph of Prof. Milani, tracing the evolution of 

 the developed Tuscan type from an earlier class of 

 cinerary vases with funeral masks attached to them. 

 But the parallels from the Maros Valley may be more 

 plausibly regarded as supplying an intermediate link in 

 space and time between the face-urns of the Baltic coast 

 and those of prehistoric Troy. In other respects the 

 ceramic forms that occur in West Prussia and its border- 

 lands during this period, such as the " twin " and painted 

 vases, show strong southern and south-eastern affinities ; 

 while the occurrence amongst the ornaments of Cypraa 

 moneta and Cyprcea annulus from the Red Sea and 

 Indian Ocean point to still more extensive eastern 

 relations. Cowry ornaments, it may be worth observ- 

 ing, are of frequent occurrence in the prehistoric 

 cemeteries of the Caucasian region, and there is here 

 perhaps an indication of old Pontic communications by 

 the Dniester or Dnieper Valleys — lines of intercourse 

 which Dr. Lissauer does not seem to have kept sufficiently 

 in view. 



• The Hallstatt culture on the Old Prussian shore is in 

 its turn cut short by that to which we in England give the 

 name of " Late Celtic," but which on the Continent passes 

 by the name of La T^ne from the Swiss station of that 

 name. The Roman taste for amber ornaments sub- 

 sequently gave a great impulse to the commercial inter- 

 course between south and north via the Pannonian 

 frontier station of Carnuntum, and we have abundant 

 evidence of the progress of Roman provincial arts on the 

 Lower Vistula. The finds of Roman coins become more 

 and more frequent, and culminate in the reign of Severus, 

 after which time they as suddenly fall ofi". There can be 

 little doubt, as Dr. Lissauer has suggested, that this sudden 

 break in the commercial relations wiih the south is due to 

 the great migration of the Gothic tribes, who had before 

 this time established themselves in this part of the Baltic 

 coast, to their new seats on the shores of the Black Sea 

 and Trajan's Dacia. Into the depopulated lands west of 

 the Vistula the new tide of Slavonic settlement now 

 poured, while the older branch of the Litu-Slavic race, 

 the ^stii or " Old Prussians," still held their own on the 

 Amber Coast to the east of the river-mouth, as we know 

 from the offerings made by them to King Theodoric. 

 The last section of Dr. Lissauer's work is directed to this 

 Wendish period of East Baltic history, to the " Burgwall " 

 and the " Bergwall," the pile-dwellings, the characteristic 

 pottery and ornaments of the primitive Slavonic race, 

 and to the monuments of their rising commerce- with 

 Byzantium and the Arabian East. To a somewhat later 

 date, perhaps, may be assigned the curious stone figures 

 included by Dr. Lissauer in an appendix to his Neohthic 

 section, and as to the date and origin of which he refrains 

 from conjecture. There can, however, as the author him- 

 self admits, be no reasonable doubt that they belong to 

 the same category of monuments as the well-known 

 Kamieftne baby or " stone wives " of the Russian steppes. 

 They extend, in fact, in an unbroken zone through Poland 

 and Lithuania to the steppes of the Dnieper and the 

 Sea of Azoff, and find their analogies in Central 

 Asia and in the rude stone figures on the Siberian 



