May 28, 1896] 



MA TURE 



79 



hand. He, accompanied by Mrs. Munro, travelled under 

 j;reat advantay;es. He went in 1S94, at the invitation of 

 the .Vustro-Hungarian Government, to attend an aixh;co- 

 logical congress, and he has made the most of his 

 opportunities. 



It is not, however, the traveller's side of the book 

 which more immediately concerns us. It is rather with 

 it as a contribution to arch;eological literature, in which 

 the author brings to bear, on the discoveries made in 

 those lands by others, the scientific method which he had 

 already used so well in carrying out his investigations 

 into Lake-dwellings in Britain and on the continent. We 

 shall review in their chronological order the more im- 

 portant of the discoveries, now laid before English 

 readers, in a quarter of Europe shut off by lofty mountain 

 ranges from the pathways of the nations. 



The group of Neolithic remains at Butmir gave rise 

 to much difference of opinion at the congress. Accord- 

 ing to Mr. Radimsky, they were deposits of refuse round 

 ancient huts on the land, and the irregular amceba-like 

 hollows in the clay were taken to be the bases of huts. 

 In Dr. Munro's opinion these hollows were made by the 

 extraction of the clay for the covering of the wattles of 

 the huts, as well as for the large amount of pottery and 

 terra-cotta found on the site. He points out that they 

 have been filled up by the deposit of silt under water, as 

 well as by human debris, and concludes that the whole 

 accumulation was formed in and round pile-duellings like 

 those of Switzerland, the piles of which, as well as all the 

 other woodwork, ha\e wholly rotted away. We agree 

 with this view; and would advance a further argument in 

 its favour, that a settlement on a clay soil liable to floods 

 is unknown in the history of Neolithic dwellings. On 

 that spot pile-dwellings would be the only habitations 

 possible. The inhabitants were skilful potters, and their 

 vessels made by hand were in some cases ornamented by 

 spirals. They also manufactured stone implements, 

 polished axes, spears, arrows, and the like. They were 

 also spinners and weavers ; they had herds of pigs, 

 domestic oxen, among which we may note the short- 

 horned ox {lies longifrons), and flocks of sheep and goats. 

 In their fields they grew wheat and barley, and carried 

 on a trade by barter with other communities. The rude 

 terra-cotta idols imply that they had some kind of 

 religion. Their burial-places have not yet been dis- 

 covered. Among the purely Neolithic remains are 

 twenty-seven perforated axe-hammers of a type found in 

 the Bronze age elsewhere, and made of a stone which 

 does not exist in the district. With the exception of 

 three, all the rest of the implements amounting to 51 18, 

 are of native stone. It is probable that in this out-of- 

 the-way place the Neolithic civilisation lingered long 

 after the Bronze age had begun in the more accessible 

 surrounding districts. We may accept Dr. Munro's 

 conclusion, that the settlement of Butmir " is one of the 

 side eddies of the early stream of immigrants who found 

 their way into Europe by the Danubian valley from the 

 regions to the south and east of the Black Sea," in the 

 Neolithic age, and who lived on into the Bronze age — 

 an age which in Bosnia is not so well defined and 

 conspicuous as it is in Germany, Scandinavia, and 

 Western Europe generally. 



While bronze implements and weapons were gradually 

 finding their way into Bosnia-HerzcLjovina, a new civilis- 

 ation appeared at the head of the .\driatic, and extended 

 over the southern watershed of the Danube, Northern 

 Italy, the Tyrol and the adjacent regions, known, from the 

 principal site of the discoveries, as that of Hallstadt. 

 From this centre the characteristic products were scattered 

 far and wide over Europe by means of commerce, 

 marking the close of the Bronze and the beginning of 

 the Iron age. The tumuli on the plateau of Glasinac, 

 more than 20,000 in number, mark this age in Bosnia. 

 Of these about one thousand have been explored, proving 



NO. 1387, VOL. 54] 



that both inhumation and cremation were practised. 

 The articles buried with the dead consist of iron knives 

 swords, spear-heads and axes, some double-edged, others 

 in the shape of socketed celts. Bronze vessels, pendants, 

 bracelets, finger-rings, and brooches, were discovered in 

 great variety. The brooches are of great interest as 

 indices to the age of the tumuli. This is mai'ked by the 

 stage presented in the evolution of the brooch from a 

 straight pin. The first stage is presented by the bending 

 of the pin; the second, by its being twisted round so that 

 the point is brought to rest on a development of the 

 head specially made to receive it ; the third, by the 

 development of one or more twists, so as to form an 

 elastic spring or springs — the safety-pin type. From 

 those of one spring, the Greek and Roman fibuke are 

 descended. At Glasinac about 44 per cent, were those 

 with two springs, or of the Hallstadt type. Those 

 with one are more closely allied to the Greek, while 

 others are purely Roman. A helmet from a tumulus 

 at Arareva is of pure Greek type and similar to one found 

 at Olympia, bearing an inscription that it was dedicated 

 by the Argives to Zeus out of the spoils of Corinth. It is 

 also identical with the helmet on a warrior carved on the 

 Harpy Tomb, Xanthos, Lycia, in the British Museum. 

 Both these belong to about the middle of the sixth 

 century before Christ. These things were found along 

 with an infinite variety of ornaments and implements of 

 bronze, iron and silver, of glass and amber and bone, 

 together with fragments of pottery. It is obvious that 

 these tumuli were used from the remote Hallstadt time 

 down to the days of the Roman dominion. It is not a 

 little remarkable that there is no mention of coins in 

 the three elaborate volumes recording these discoveries, 

 published by the scientific staff of the Public Museum in 

 Sarajevo. Coins had not then found their way into the 

 country, or if they had, were not buried with the dead. 



In iSgo a cemetery was discovered at Jezerine, belong- 

 ing to the same period as the tumuli of Glasinac, and 

 containing the same types, but with fewer weapons. It is 

 remarkable for the beautiful rings and beads made of 

 blue, yellow, white and green glass. A gravestone with 

 a figure of a w-arrior found here is assigned by Dr. 

 Hoernes to the late Hallstadt period. The helmet with 

 the lofty crest reaching far down the back is identical 

 with that carved on the Harpy Tomb at Xanthos, and 

 those on the heads of warriors, on painted early Greek 

 vases. It may very well be of late Hallstadt age, as well 

 as early Greek. 



Besides burial-places such as the above, there are 

 numerous forts belonging to this people, similar in con- 

 stniction to the hill-forts of Scotland, and built of rubble 

 masonry without mortar. 



Nor are we without evidence as to the physique of the 

 people themselves. Of thirty-two human skulls from 

 Glasinac, examined by Dr. Gliick, 76 per cent, are either 

 long or mesocephalic, while 24 per cent, are short ; a 

 fact of considerable interest when contrasted with the 

 present roundness of head of the Bosnians. Out of 1500 

 natives examined by Dr. Weissbach, 7 per cent, only 

 were long and 93 per cent, short. 



The prehistoric inhabitants of Bosnia, like those ot 

 Hallstadt, were mainly long-headed, while the presence 

 of the short-headed minority shows the existence of t\vo 

 races in both regions. The reversal of this in Bosnia in 

 later times is due to the immigration of short-headed 

 people, mostly Slavs, from the time of the tumuli down 

 to the present day. It may be inferred that in 

 Herzegovina and Bosnia, as in Western Europe, the 

 aboriginal and Neolithic peoples were long-headed, and 

 that they were invaded by a new race of round-headed 

 conquerors. Whether this took place in the Bronze age 

 must be left for future inquiry, and whether it took place 

 from the line of the valley of the Danube, or, as Dr. Munro 

 suggests, by the head of the Adriatic, must also be left an 



