H— ANTHROPOLOGY 195 



dated about 1400 B.C. Now admittedly the coincidence of Perjamos and 

 Aunjetitz may not be altogether exact, and Aunjetitz and Perjamos ceramic 

 forms and even knot-headed pins and ingot-torques outlast the bounds 

 of the Early Bronze Age or Danubian IV as defined by hoards. But even 

 if the relevant graves be transferred to the beginning of the Middle Bronze 

 Age (Reinecke B), it is difficult to admit that Perjamos jugs and Aunjetitz 

 mugs persisted virtually unchanged for 1400 years or to spread over so 

 long a period even the 180 graves of the Szoreg cemetery from which some 

 of our beads come. 



And the foregoing are not quite the earliest imports recognised in 

 Central Europe. Willvonseder found a very small blue segmented bead of 

 the sort made in Egypt from 1600 to 1300 B.C. at Leopoldsdorf near 

 Vienna in a grave with a Bell-beaker. Of course, it is now recognised 

 that Bell-beakers are not confined to period III ; some are contemporary 

 with early Aunjetitz. Still taken altogether these undoubted imports 

 provide really cogent arguments for the limiting date of 1500 B.C. proposed 

 by Aberg for Aunjetitz. Clearly that would fit in beautifully with the 

 more speculative considerations adduced above for earlier periods. And 

 notoriously it is difficult to make a Bronze Age of two thousand years 

 look credible outside the Central European and Britannico-Hibernian 

 economic systems — in south France for instance. 



Perhaps then it may be legitimate to consider a short chronology such 

 as I have previously advanced on several occasions as a still plausible 

 alternative to the long one outlined to-day. Till incontrovertible evidence 

 from the geological or botanical side makes it obsolete, it is still permissible 

 to consider in conclusion how the low dating endorsed by the fresh data 

 just adduced affects the general credibility of Montelius' hypotheses. 



In our previous pictures of the Tigris-Rhine tract we shall have to 

 transpose individual items to fit a Central European chronology based on 

 synchronisms through Greece with Egypt and altogether independent of 

 Asia. We then get two scenes both disclosing the cultural continuity 

 and gradation recognisable only in the first picture on a long chronology. 

 At the beginning of the Central European Bronze Age towards the middle 

 of the third millennium B.C., the following zones could be distinguished: 



(i) The metropolitan civilisations of Egypt and Babylonia. 



(2) Relatively provincial civilisations in Crete, Syria and Hittite Asia 

 Minor, but all fully literate and truly urban. 



(3) Bronze Age towns in western Anatolia and peninsular Greece 

 whose walls may enclose from 4 to 11 acres and defend not only smiths 

 but also specialised potters and many other craftsmen. Most are illiterate, 

 but literate urban civilisation is already dawning at Mycenae. 



(4) In Macedonia and the Balkans and on the Middle Danube stable 

 villages exist ; their size can be estimated from the cemeteries comprising 

 a maximum number of 180 graves. Besides farming the only specialised 

 industry is metallurgy, and commercial organisation is too rudimentary to 

 make metal generally available for tools. 



(5) In Czechoslovakia and South Germany a similar economy reigns, 

 but the settlements are less permanent and the maximum number of 

 graves so far reported from a cemetery is 100. 



(6) In North Germany, Denmark and South Sweden are bands of 



