1894 - 95 .] Dr K Munro on Lake-dwelling Research. 
411 
within its confines the habit of constructing lake- and marsh- 
dwellings was prevalent in former times. Of the culture and 
civilization of the inhabitants of these obsolete dwellings, as dis- 
closed by the technique of the stray objects left behind them, I have 
not spoken, as it is a department which lies beyond the scope of 
this address. Let me, however, just say in a very few words that 
an analysis of the evidence shows that the lake-dwellers were not a 
homogeneous people, except where the system became first 
developed in the early Neolithic Period. There is reason to believe 
that many of the Stone Age settlements, especially in Switzerland, 
continued to flourish during the Bronze Age, without any discon- 
tinuity of the race, till the sudden introduction of iron into general 
use, which seems to have been coincident with the appearance of a 
new people on the scene who subjugated the lake-dwellers and 
destroyed their villages. The sporadic lake-dwellings, found out- 
side the area of their early development, belong almost exclusively 
to the Iron Age. Except among a few localized groups these 
secondary, or as they may be called historic, lake-dwellers had no 
common bonds of affinity either as regards civilization, race, or 
language. The vast majority of the Scottish and Irish crannogs 
flourished in early medieval times, a statement which, according 
to Virchow, is equally applicable to their analogues in North 
Germany. The well-known station of La Tene, at the north end 
of the Lake of Neuchatel — believed by the earlier explorers to have 
been a true lake-dwelling — is now shown to have been an oppidum 
or fort of the Helvetians situated at the outlet of the lake when 
its waters stood at a lower level than they did in modern times. 
The remarkable and unique style of art, disclosed by its remains, 
seems to be identical with that known in Britain as “Late Celtic.” 
It is, indeed, the striking similarity observed between the objects 
found at Glastonbury and those indicative of La Tene civilization, 
now found throughout a large portion of Europe, that gives to the 
English discovery its exceptional importance. It furnishes an 
ethnological clue which both historians and archaeologists would 
do well to consider. Eor this reason alone the Glastonbury trouvaille 
bids fair to equal in archaeological value anything of the kind 
previously known. 
