46 INTRODUCTION. 



belong to the same period as that which was so prolific in the 

 various articles of bronze mentioned above, it is difficult to under- 

 stand how so small a number of them should have been met with 

 in the mounds. It must not, however, be supposed, because in 

 some barrows no other implements than those of stone have been 

 found, that such barrows belong to a time be- 

 fore the introduction of bronze, for its absence 

 by no means proves that it was unknown. In 

 many cases there may have been small articles, 

 such as awls or prickers, buried with the dead 

 which have entirely gone to decay; indeed in 

 a barrow at Rudstone, but for the stain upon 

 the cheek bone of a woman, there w^ould not 

 have been the slightest evidence that anything 

 of bror.ze had been buried with her, and that 

 evidence would have been wanting* unless the 

 v metal had been in actual contact with the bone. 

 Many barrows also merely contain such articles of stone or of 

 pottery as in others are found in connection with implements of 

 bronze, and in these cases there can be little doubt that those 

 barrows where the metal is absent, nevertheless, belong to a time 

 when it was in use, though for one reason or another it was not 

 placed in the sepulchral mound. The absence of bronze how- 

 ever might be used, and with good reason, as an argument in 

 favour of the barrows belonging to a time, if not antecedent 

 to its introduction, at all events to one previous to its highest 

 developement. 



In further illustration of this it may be stated, that amongst the 

 weapons and implements forming the constituent parts of the 

 ordinary hoards of bronze articles, there has nothing been discovered 

 which is at all like the knife-daggers or knives of the barrows ; nor, 

 indeed, does the true dagger, also met with in the barrows, appear to 

 have been in use at that time l . The sword appears to have served 



1 The Arreton Down find, which might at first sight appear to be inconsistent 

 with this statement, is really in favour of it. The principal part of the articles found 

 there consisted of what have been called spear-heads, but which are, properly 

 speaking, daggers ; the remaining implements being two ordinary dagger-blades, 

 and four axes, of the plain and early type. The find seems to belong not to the later 

 time, when the sword, spear, &c. were the ordinary weapons, but to the earlier one of 

 the age of bronze, or possibly to a period between the two. The find is described, 

 and many of the articles are figured, in Archseol. vol. xxxvi. p. 326. 



A hoard of bronze articles, corresponding in many respects with those found on 



