Aemstuong — Associated Finds of Bronse Celts. 517 



for this belief: — (1) The number of moulds for easting celts that have 

 been found in Ireland, of which numerous examples are in the Academy's 

 collection. (For a list of these, with the localities where they were found, 

 see Appendix I, p. 523.) 



(2) The large amount of native copper available in Ireland. (See on this 

 subject, Appendix II, p. 524.) 



In the present state of our knowledge it is not possible to do more than 

 to indicate tentatively a probable source from which Ireland acquired the 

 knowledge of extracting copper from its ores. It may, however, be suggested 

 that it was from Spain.' The Spanish peninsula, especially its southern coast, 

 is very rich in copper ores, which were worked quite at the commencement of 

 the Metal Period in that country.- It has been said very truly that, "In the 

 present state of archaeological inquiry and mining explorations it would be 

 presumptuous to assign to any locality the earliest production of copper from 

 its ores ; yet there is strong evidence in favour of the view that it was most 

 probably in Cyprus, and, somewhat later, in the south-east of Spain, . . . that 

 the metal was first obtained in Europe."^ The place where copper was first 

 produced from its ores does not affect the present argument, which, once it is 

 admitted that copper was mined at an early period and in large quantities in 

 Spain, is merely concerned with bringing forward evidence to indicate that 

 influences from Spain were operative in Ireland during the transition 

 between the Neolithic Period and the Bronze Age. 



It will be remembered that in Ireland, during this transition period, 

 copper was used unalloyed for making weapons and implements. Among 

 the weapons which analysis has shown to consist of this metal are the scythe- 

 shaped blades termed halberds.* The locality where these scythe-shaped 

 blades originated may now be considered. The Irish examples, according 

 to Coffey,* who made a careful study of the subject, may be placed in 

 the transition between the Neolithic Period and the Bronze Age. The 

 excavations in the south-east of Spain, carried out by H. and L. Siret (to 



' This view is supported by Dechelefcte {op. cit., ii, p. 92), who considers that Western 

 Gaul and the British Islands received the secret of smelting the first metals from the 

 Iberian peninsula. 



'■' See on this point Cartailliao, Ages prehistorigues de V Espagne, pp. 201-206. The 

 author figures a number of stone ' ' Miners' Mauls " that have been found in ancient 

 Spanish copper mines. 



^ Gowland, Journal Boyal Anthropological Inditute, xlii, p. 245. 



^ Cofl'ey, Froc. Royal Irish Academy, xxvii, sec. C, pp. 94-114. (Analyses of five 

 halberds showed that the tin in their composition did not exceed "31 per cent.) Montelius 

 {Archaeologia, Ixi, p. 114) places halberds in the second period of his Bronze-Age 

 Chronology of the British Isles, but Dechelette (op. cit,, ii, pp. 190, 197, and PL I) assigns 

 them to the first period of the Bronze Age. 



