EVIDENCE OF MAN IN GUERNSEY DURING 

 THE BRONZE AND EARLY IRON AGE. 



BY COLONEL T. W. M. DE GUERIN. 



The few objects of bronze that have been found in Guernsey 

 have led some of our archaeologists to suppose that our island 

 ceased to be inhabited by man at the close of the Neolithic 

 period. My object is to review the evidence we possess for and 

 against this theory, and the result to my thinking will be to 

 prove that we have strong evidence of the occupation of our 

 island by man, without interruption, from Neolithic times down 

 to the present day. 



There was no abrupt transition from one period of 

 culture to another, the Neolithic Age lingered on in 

 places remote from the trade routes of metal long after the 

 introduction of copper and bronze in more favoured localities, 

 and in like manner the Bronze Age overlaps the Iron Age. 

 Brittany is a notable example of the latter, as it remained in the 

 Bronze Age for several hundred years after the introduction 

 of iron in North-Eastern and Central France. A striking 

 example of the long continued use of flint implements, at least 

 for ceremonial purposes, is the discovery of quantities of 

 flint flakes and flint scrapers deposited with each interment in 

 Iron Age graves of the first century B.C. at Aylesford, Kent. 

 In fact certain localities, remote from the trade routes of metal 

 and possessed of none of their own, remained more or less in 

 the Stone Age long after the use of metal was general in more 

 favoured places. It is true that one of the great trade routes of 

 metal lay close to us, which led from Spain along the western 

 coasts of France to Brittany and thence to Britain and the North, 

 and that Brittany and the western departments are the richest 

 in France in objects of the Bronze Age, as a consequence of this 

 trade in metal ; and, as a result of their situation near the coasts 

 of France, both Jersey and Alderney are rich in bronze imple- 

 ments. Guernsey on the other hand is poor, but this poverty 

 is to be attributed in great measure to our greater distance 

 from the mainland, and also to the great dangers of the seas 

 around us, rather than to the absence of inhabitants ; for as we 

 shall see we have other objects, besides those of bronze, tj'pical of 

 the Bronze Age, proving the existence of man in our island. An- 

 other reason may be that our island has been more intensely 



