912 REPORT— 1896. 
A Chaldean influence cannot certainly be excluded from this early Augean 
art. It reveals itself, for instance, in indigenous imitations of Babylonian cylinders. 
My own conclusion that the small marble figures of the Augean deposits, though 
of indigenous European lineage, were in their more deyeloped types influenced by 
Istar models from the East, has since been independently arrived at by the Danish 
archeologist, Dr. Blinkenburg, in his study on pree-Mycenzan art. - 
More especially the returning-spiral decoration, which in the ‘ Amorgan Period’ 
appears upon seals, rings, bowls, and caskets of steatite, leads us to a very interest- 
ing field of comparison. This motive, destined to play such an important part in 
the history of European ornament, is absent from the earlier products of the great 
Anatolo-Danubian province. As a European design it is first found on these 
insular fabrics, and it is important to observe that it first shows itself in the form 
of reliefs on stone. The generally accepted idea, put forward by Dr. Milchhéfer, 
that it originated here from applied spirals on metal work is thus seen to be bereft 
of historical justification. At a somewhat later date we find this spiraliform 
motive communicating itself to the ceramic products of the Danubian region, 
though from the bold relief in which it sometimes appears, a reminiscence of the 
earlier steatite reliefs seems still traceable. In the late Neolithic pile-station of 
Butmir, in Bosnia, this spiral decoration appears in great perfection on the pottery, 
and is here associated with clay images of very advanced fabric. At Lengyel, in 
Hungary, and elsewhere, we see it applied to primitive painted pottery. Finally, 
in the later Hungarian Bronze Age it is transferred to metal work. 
But this connexion—every link of which can be made out—of the lower 
Danubian Bronze Age decoration with the Egean spiral system—itself much 
earlier in origin—has a very important bearing on the history of ornament in the 
North and West. The close relation of the Bronze Age culture of Scandinavia and 
North-western Germany with that of [Hungary is clearly established, and of 
the many valuable contributions made by Dr. Montelius to prehistoric archeology, 
none is more brilliant than his demonstration that this parallelism of culture 
between the North-west and South-east owes its origin to the most ancient 
course of the amber trade from the North Sea shores of Jutland by the valley 
of the Elbe and Moldau to the Danubian Basin. As Dr. Montelius has also 
shown, there was, besides, a western extension of this trade to our own islands. 
If Scandinavia and its borderlands were the source of amber, Ireland was the land 
of gold. The wealth of the precious metal there is illustrated by the fact 
that, even as late as 1796, the gold washings of County Wicklow amounted to 
10,0007. A variety of evidence shows a direct connexion between Great Britain 
and Scandinavia from the end of the Stone Age onwards. Gold diadems of 
unquestionably British—probably Irish—fabric have been found in Seeland and 
Fiinen, and from the analysis of early gold ornaments it clearly results that it was 
from Ireland rather than the Ural that Northern and Central Europe was supplied. 
Mr. Coffey, who has made an exhaustive study of the early Irish monuments, 
has recently illustrated this early connexion by other comparisons, notably the 
appearance of a design which he identifies with the early carvings of boats on the 
rocks of Scandinavia. 
This prolongation of the Bronze Age trade route—already traced from the 
Middle Danube—from Scandinavia to Ireland, ought it to be regarded as the 
historic clue to the contemporary appearance of the spiral motive in the British 
Islands? Is it to this earlier intercourse with the land of the Vikings that we 
must ascribe the spiral scrolls on the slabs of the great chambered barrows of the 
Trish Bronze Age—best seen in the most imposing of them all, before the portal 
and on the inner chambers of New Granze ? 
The possibility of such a connexion must be admitted; the probability is great 
that the contemporary appearance of the spiraliform ornamentin Ireland and on the 
Continent of Europe is due to direct derivation. It is, of course, conceivable that 
such a simple motive as the returning spiral may have originated independently 
in various parts of Europe, as it did originate in other parts of the world. But 
anthropology has ceased to content itself with the mere accumulation of sporadic 
coincidences. It has become a historic study. It is not sufficient to know how 
