TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 915 
such and such phenomeua may have originated, but how, as a matter of fact, they 
did. Hence in the investigation of origins and evolution the special value of the 
European field where the evidence has been more perfectly correlated and the 
continuous records go further back. An isolated example of the simple volute 
design belonging to the ‘Reindeer Period’ has been found in the grotto of 
Arudy. But the earliest cultural strata of Europe, from the beginning of the 
Neolithic period onwards, betray an entire absence of the returning spiral motive. 
When we find it later propagating itself as a definite ornamental system in a 
regular chronological succession throughout an otherwise inter-related European 
zone, we have every right to trace it to a common source. 
But it does not therefore follow that the only alternative is to believe that the 
spiral decoration of the Irish monuments necessarily connects itself with the 
ancient stream of intercourse flowing from Scandinavia. 
We have to remember that the Western lands of gold and tin were the goals 
of other prehistoric routes. Especially must we bear in mind the early evidence 
of intercourse between the British Isles and the old Iberic region of the opposite 
shores of the Continent. The derivation of certain forms of Bronze Age types in 
Britain and Ireland from this side has already been demonstrated by my father, 
and British or Ivish bronze flat axes with their characteristic ornamentation have 
in their turn been found in Spain as well asin Denmark. The peculiar technique 
of certain Irish flint arrowheads of the same period, in which chipping and grind- 
ing are combined, is also characteristic of the Iberian province, and seems to lead 
to very extended comparisons on the Libyan side, recurring as it does in the 
exquisite handiwork of the non-Egyptian race whose relics Mr. Petrie has brought 
to light at Nagada. In prehistoric Spanish deposits, again, are found the actual 
wallet-like baskets with in-curving sides, the prototypes of a class of clay food- 
vessels which (together with a much wider distribution) are of specially frequent 
occurrence in the British Isles as well as the old Iberian area. 
If the spiral decoration had been also a feature of the Scandinavian rock 
carvings, the argument for derivation from that side would have heen strong. 
But they are not found in them, and, on the other hand, the sculptures on the 
dolmens of the Morbihan equally show certain features common to the Irish stone 
chambers, including the primitive ship figure. The spiral itself does not appear on 
these ; but the more the common elements between the Megalithic piles, not only 
of the old Iberian tract on the mainland, including Brittany, but in the islands of 
the West Mediterranean basin, are realised, the more probable it becomes that the 
impulse came from this side, The prehistoric buildings of Malta, hitherto spoken 
of as ‘Phcenician temples, which show in their primitive conception a great 
affinity to the Megalithic chambers of the earliest British barrows, bear witness 
on this side to the extension of the Aigean spiral system in a somewhat 
advanced stage, and accompanied, as at New Grange, with intermediate lozenges. 
In Sardinia, as I hope to show, there is evidence of the former existence of monu- 
ments of Mycenzan architecture in which the chevron, the lozenge, and the spiral 
might have been seen associated asin Ireland. It is on this line, rather than on the 
Danube and the Elbe, that we find in a continuous zone that Cyclopean tradition 
of domed chambers which is equally illustrated at Mycenz and at New Grange. 
These are not more thau indications, but they gain additional force from the 
converging evidence to which attention has already been called of an ancient line 
of intercourse, mainly, we may believe, connected with the tin trade between the 
East Mediterranean basin and the Iberian West. A further corroboration of the 
view that an A’gean impulse propagated itself as far as our own islands from that 
side is perhaps afforded by a very remarkable find in a British barrow. 
I refer to the Bronze Age interment excavated by Canon Greenwell on Folkton 
Wold, in Yorkshire, in which, beside the body of a child, were found three carved 
chalk objects resembling round boxes with bossed lids. On one of these lids were 
rouped together, with a lozenge-shaped space between them, two partly spirali- 
form partly concentric circular ornaments, which exhibit before our eyes the 
degeneration of two pairs of returning spiral ornaments. Upon the sides of two of 
these chalk caskets, associated with chevrons, saltires, and lozenges, were rude 
