AGE OF THE BAMIOWS. 131 



metal used for making cutting- instruments (and this estimate 

 is probably under rather than above the truth), the date of the 

 introduction of bronze may be estimated as being somewhere 

 about the year B.C. 1000. It has been previously shown that, 

 as regards the erection of the round barrows, the evidence 

 appears to favour the view that the period must have been one 

 when bronze was scarce, and had only lately become known. It is 

 not impossible, indeed, that some of them belong to an age before 

 bronze was discovered, and that they may date from a time several 

 centuries earlier than that which has been fixed upon as the era of 

 its introduction. This naturally leads to the question as to whether 

 there was ever in Britain a neolithic age, when metal was unknown, 

 or whether all the ground stone axes are contemporaneous with 

 the use of bronze. The subject however is beyond the limits of 

 this Introduction, nor do we at present, I think, possess the infor- 

 mation necessary to enable us to arrive at any certain conclusion 

 upon this very difficult matter of enquiry. I have myself no 

 doubt that there was a neolithic age in Britain, when no metal 

 was in use, and to that time I would attribute, though not with 

 any degree of positiveness, the burial-mounds to which the name 

 of Long Barrow has been given. 



With respect to the age of the round barrows, there is a greater 

 probability, I believe, of post-dating than of ante-dating them ; 

 and we need not fear that we are attributing too high an antiquity 

 to them, if we say that they belong to a period which centres more 

 or less in B.C. 500. The absence of silver and coins (the latter of 

 which have not occurred except in a few and doubtful instances), 

 though it is only negative evidence, is still strongly in favour of an 

 early date. Silver appears to have become generally known about 

 the same time that iron was first smelted and used for weapons and 

 implements, and the introduction of coins as a medium of exchange 

 seems to have taken place much about the same time, which in 

 Britain may be considered as not earlier than B.C. 250. It appears 

 scarcely possible, if the barrows belong to a time posterior to the 

 knowledge and use of iron, silver and coins, that these several 

 articles should not have been found in some of the many barrows 

 which have been examined in Britain. It may be said that there was 

 no native British coinage in the more northern parts of the island 

 until after the Roman invasion, and therefore it could not be 

 expected that coins should be discovered in those parts ; but they 

 have not been met with in the numerous barrows which have 



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