92 



NOTES ON IMPLEMENTS OF THE BEONZE AGE FOUND 



IN WILTSHIEE, WITH A LIST OF ALL KNOWN 



EXAMPLES FOUND IN THE COUNTY. 



By the Eev. E. H. Goddaed. 



Dr. Oscar Montelius, in his important paper on " The Chronology 

 of the British Bronze Age," printed in Archmologia, Ixi., 97 — 162 

 (1908), has attempted to do for Great Britain what he had already 

 done for the Continent, viz., to fix approximately the actual as 

 well as the relative age of the various types of weapons and im- 

 plements found in these islands which can be classed as belonging, 

 broadly speaking, to the age of Bronze. Whether his conclusions 

 will all be accepted by future archaeologists remains to be seen, 

 but it is certain that they will be widely quoted. Following the 

 general tendency of recent writers he pushes back the dates of 

 the introduction of both iron and bronze some hundreds of years 

 beyond those suggested by Sir John Evans. Thus he places the 

 beginning of the Iron Age in Great Britain and Ireland at about 

 800 B.C., and the beginning of the Bronze Age at about 2500 B.C., 

 dividing the intervening 1700 years into five periods : — 

 Period I., from cir. 2500 to 2000 B.C. 



„ IL, „ „ 2000 to 1600 B.C. 



„ ILL, „ „ 1600 to 1400 B.C. 



„ IV., „ „ 1400 to 1150 B.C. 



„ v., „ „ 1150 to 800 B.C. 



Period I. 



Period I. may, he says, more correctly be called the " Copper 

 Age," for most of the metal objects in use during this period were 

 of copper " without any intentional alloy of tin," ^ or it may equally 

 well be regarded as the last stage of the Stone Age, for it is 



^ Meaning that such tin as is to be found in them is not in greater pro- 

 portion than the small amount often present naturally in copper ores. 



