A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 
objects are from Maiden Bower, including the one illustrated at a in 
fig. 63, part of the humerus of Bos primigenius broken for the extraction 
of the marrow for food. This is one of the rarest of bronze age 
animals ; part of a similar bone of the Celtic ox, B. longifrons, is shown 
at B to illustrate the difference in size of the two animals. These bones 
were found with many hundreds of others in a bronze age excavation 
in the chalk on the west side of Maiden Bower. Amongst the bones 
were two human teeth, a lower human jaw with teeth much worn, 
four pieces of a human skull, and a small piece of one of the long 
bones of a human leg. 
THE LATE CELTIC OR IRON AGE 
There is no definite separating line between the ages of the later stone, 
bronze and iron implements. Stone implements continued to be exten- 
sively made and used during the whole of the bronze age and during the 
age in which iron was known, and its use was continued during the 
Roman and part of the post-Roman times. In the form of ‘ flint and 
steel’ for tinder boxes and in gun flints the last feeble remnants of the 
stone age in Britain have lasted till modern times. 
Sir John Evans states that the bronze age practically ceased for 
cutting instruments in the third or fourth century B.c. and that in the 
southern parts of Britain iron was known in the fourth or fifth century 
B.c. Prehistoric iron weapons and tools are rarely found in Britain, 
owing to the rapid destruction of the metal in the soil, and the writer has 
no record of the finding of any in Bedfordshire. In the iron age be- 
tween 200 B.c. and 100 B.c. the first British coins appeared, many of which 
have been found in Bedfordshire. 
Two of the most important late Celtic antiquities found in this 
county are in the form of vases fashioned on the lathe in Kimmeridge 
shale. They were discovered in a sepulchral deposit at Warden,’ or Old 
Warden, and are now preserved in the Archzological Museum at Cam- 
bridge. As will be seen from the accompanying illustration of one of 
the pair (fig. 64), they are of elongated and remarkably elegant form, 
each being made in two separate pieces and about 14 inches high. No less 
than ten cordons are turned round the body of the vases. The bases are 
deeply moulded, and the necks are short but highly finished. The 
resemblance of these vases, in form although not in material, to some 
of the late Celtic pottery found at Aylesford, Kent, is remarkable, and 
has been pointed out by Dr. A. J. Evans, V.P.S.A. 
The traces of pre-historic huts are common in south Bedfordshire ; 
there is a large group on Blows Downs near Messrs. Forders’ lime works, 
Dunstable, with isolated examples distant from the group ; there are 
several isolated huts on Dunstable Downs, an extensive group on Tottern- 
hoe Hill, and many on the downs, on the east side of Valence-end farm, 
two and a half miles south-west of Dunstable ; others are on the Warden 
1 Arche@ologia, \ii. 352. 
170 
