Vere Gordon Childe, 1930
The Bronze Age
First Published: by Cambridge University Press, 1930
Mark-up: Steve Painter
IV. THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
The Bronze Age peoples of Europe were essentially descendants of the stocks
inhabiting the same or adjacent parts of our continent in Neolithic
times. These were already racially very mixed, and the rise of metallurgy may
well have involved the incorporation of foreign artificers and miners in
the community, as indicated in Chapter I. Commercial activity, such as
necessarily played a prominent part in Bronze Age economics, was also
accompanied by a certain interchange of populations, not to be confused with
mass migrations. At the same time the dry climatic conditions prevailing
facilitated, and in some cases perhaps even necessitated, migratory movements.
We thus are faced, even before the beginning of the Bronze Age, with
groups already differentiated that by no means lost their identity when they
adopted metallurgy. On the contrary, behind the close similarities of
bronze tools and weapons that mark the earliest Bronze Age we discern already
great divergences in pottery, burial rites and other traits. These
divergences soon infect the bronze industry itself. The latter is again
differentiated according as Egyptian or Anatolian traditions predominated
among the local artificers.
In a general way it seems likely that metal first won general acceptance among
the settled farming populations of the coasts and valleys. On the
plateaux and plains where forests were giving way to heath and parkland flora,
more mobile tribes mainly, though by no means exclusively, pastoral, continued for a while to content themselves
with stone tools. Excluding the Aegean and Sicily, there are only three
really important centres of Early Bronze Age culture in Europe, namely, Central
Europe, South-eastern Spain and Britain, though Upper Italy may be
added as a fourth group and the Rhone valley and Brittany were destined soon to
join with the other regions.
CENTRAL EUROPE
In the valleys of the Tisza, the Middle and Upper Danube, the March, the Oder,
the Upper Elbe and the Saale we find a series of allied communities.
They are settled upon the great trade routes connecting the Adriatic with the
amber of Jutland and East Prussia, and Bohemia with Slovakian copper and
Transylvanian gold. It is convenient to designate all these kindred groups the
Aunjetitz cultures, after a great cemetery at Unetice, south of Prague.
There are, however, important differences between the several groups in pottery
and to some extent also in ornaments. Strictly speaking the Aunjetitz
culture is confined to Bohemia, Moravia, Lower Austria north of the Danube,
Silesia and Saxo-Thuringia. On the fringe of this area there are local
groups named respectively after Gata on the Austro-Hungarian frontier, Toszeg
near Szolnok on the Upper Tisza, Perjamos near Arad on the Maros and
Straubing on the Upper Danube in Lower Bavaria.[1]
All equally belong to descendants of the local Copper Age populations,
essentially Danubian II (Lengyel) folk mixed in varying proportions with
intruders from farther north, Anatolians and Bell-beaker folk from Spain. The
latter had profoundly affected the industry of the region, without,
however, leaving any appreciable trace on the physical character of the population. The metallurgy of our region
is nonetheless on the whole inspired primarily by the Anatolian
school, as a consideration of the pins and ear-rings at once betrays. From
Danubian II times onwards there had been indications of Anatolian
penetration in the pottery, Mediterranean shells and stray metal objects
found in graves throughout the Danubian area; prospectors, perhaps from
Troy, had discovered the gold of Transylvania and the tin of Bohemia. In the
advanced Copper Age some ceramic groups exhibit such marked Anatolian
features that one suspects a considerable influx of Orientals. Such would
presumably have been extracting gold, copper and tin for export down the
Danube to Troy, where rich bronze occurs in the second city. But when Troy II
was sacked, the market would be closed. The strangers must produce for
local consumption. The rise of the native Aunjetitz industry dated from that
moment.
The Aunjetitz people were of moderate stature but long-headed: they were not
therefore descended from the exclusively round-headed Beaker folk. They
lived primarily by farming, but undoubtedly controlled the exploitation of ore
and the trade in amber and metals. Their dwellings were for the most
part round beehive pits dug in the loess, but rectangular houses with plastered
wattle walls were also built. The villages were of modest size judging
from the cemeteries, which comprise no more than a hundred graves. The dead were
always interred in the contracted position with the knees drawn up to
the breast. In one case in Bohemia a megalithic kist formed the tomb.
Stone and bone tools including celts (some of flint with rectangular
cross-section as in the northern Neolithic province), hammer-axes, grooved hammer-stones, crescent-shaped
flint sickles, bone awls and chisels, horn picks and axes, are quite
common in the settlements. From hoards and graves we know flat and flanged
celts (both axes and chisels) and quadrangular awls of bronze. The principal
weapon was the flat triangular dagger with wooden or bronze hilt, but two
bronze battleaxes with knobbed butts have been found in Bohemian graves.
The pins all belong to the group with loop heads, and in particular those with
simple roll, knot, perforated globular, racket, disk or husk heads.
Distinctive of the Aunjetitz culture in the narrower sense is the pin with a
cast loop surmounting an inverted conical head. In all cases the shaft is
generally bent near the point. Except for the “manchette” armlet with engraved
or ribbed surface, restricted to Bohemia and the immediately adjoining
territories, the bracelets are less typical. On the other hand, the ingot
torque (Fig. 122) is found throughout the area, as are the spiral
lock-rings of gold or bronze like Fig. 129 and the cognate form of
Fig. 128. Amber necklaces of two or more strings of beads
connected by spacers are common only in Bohemia, Saxo-Thuringia and Bavaria. In
Moravia and Lower Austria amber occurs sporadically, while none is
reported from Hungarian graves. Tubes of rolled bronze leaf and fossil
Dentalium shells, together with imported Cardium shells or bronze imitations
thereof, were likewise strung together for necklaces. Little bone disks
decorated with concentric circles may have had a similar use. Girdles of stuff
or of multiple bronze chains were worn, and scutiform or circular plates might
be sewn on to the former.
The pottery of the whole group is very fine, well-baked and burnished, but rarely decorated. It varies in colour from orange to
black and is often mottled like Anatolian wares. The leading form is a
mug or jug with a loop handle attached some way below the rim. In the narrower
Aunjetitz area it is at first pouch-shaped, having a rather
pear-shaped body, a slightly conical neck and an everted rim (Fig. 145).
The body and neck were moulded separately and then joined, a procedure
which leaves a groove round the shoulder. Later the body is suppressed
altogether, and we get the classical keeled mug with cavetto neck (Fig. 147), In both varieties there is a dimple in the base. The earlier pouch-shaped
type alone is found in Bavaria and Lower Austria and recurs with rather
longer and narrower neck and a trumpet mouth in the Hungarian Toszeg group. At
Perjamos and Gata the distinctive type is an hour-glass mug with two
handles descending from the brim to the belly, an essentially Anatolian type
that began to appear even in Danubian II. An amphora is also found in
Bohemia, but there the handles are attached to the neck below the rim.
Together with the mug goes a wide dish with a groove under the broad brim (Fig.
146). There are also a few bowls on hollow pedestals and many
large jars or pithoi intentionally roughened on the outside. Bohemia and
Moravia have also yielded a number of small vases that obviously imitate stone
models, imported presumably from the Aegean. Finally, from Nienhagen on the
northern slopes or the Harz comes a famous clay copy of a Minoan metal cup
of the so-called Vapheio shape[2].
Incised ornament when present is limited to a belt of parallel lines round the
rim or shoulder with fillets hanging from it. In Hungary the incised
lines are replaced by applied ribs arranged in the same way. Small nipples on
the shoulders are found everywhere. The art of the Aunjetitz group is better illustrated by the engraved patterns
on daggers, armlets and pinheads. It is purely rectilinear, the
favourite motive being a small hatched triangle. On round surfaces these may be
arranged in concentric rings. The cross is also found on some disk-head
pins. This rigidly rectilinear style is universal throughout the Early Bronze
Age save for the Spanish and Scottish stone carvings to be mentioned
below. It is sometimes regarded as West European but might equally well be
northern, since similar triangle patterns had been very common on the Corded
Ware vases of Thuringia in the later Stone Age.
In Saxo-Thuringia side by side with regular Aunjetitz graves distinguished by
no superficial monument, we encounter interments under barrows, often
very richly furnished. The most famous are the barrows of Leubingen and
Helmsdorf. Both contained halberds in addition to the normal Aunjetitz armoury.
Such barrows probably belong to descendants of the Neolithic Corded Ware folk
of Thuringia. The halberds and a celt of English manufacture from
Helmsdorf show that these warriors controlled trade routes leading westward as
well as the great amber route along the Elbe. The special culture that
was differentiated under these circumstances in the Saale valley may well be no
earlier than Reinecke's phase B while the Aunjetitz culture proper
occupies both phases A and B.
North of Magdeburg and Glogau no burials furnished with Early Bronze Age
types are known. But at least in Scandinavia and along the North Sea coasts
the old Nordic population still lived on in a Stone Age, burying their dead
either in megalithic long kists or under barrows. In a few such graves gold
spirals of Aunjetitz types (like Fig. 129) or other stray imports have been unearthed to confirm the synchronism of this belated Stone
Age with a precocious Bronze culture. Similarly, south of the Drave the
so-called Slavonian culture seems to lack metal. Yet the pottery includes
keeled mugs quite like those of Aunjetitz and Toszeg. Moreover, one group of
Middle Bronze Age pottery from Hungary is a direct continuation of the Slavonian
tradition.
UPPER ITALY
A contemporary centre of metallurgical industry in Northern Italy must be
inferred from the distribution of certain types such as the flanged celts
like Fig. 20. I. It is not, however, easy to locate the centre accurately.
In the province of Brescia extensive cemeteries, notably the type site of
Remedello, have been explored that go back to the Copper Age, in fact to the
Bell-beaker period. Beside the narrow-shouldered West European dagger and
others of Early Minoan form with midrib and short tang and flint copies of
both, the graves contained round-heeled triangular daggers and even flanged
celts, albeit of pure copper.[3]
Within the period covered by the cemeteries pile-dwellings were being founded
on the Italian Lakes. These were occupied for a long time and have
yielded stone tools as well as Middle and even Late Bronze Age types. But there
are indications that some Early Bronze Age forms were actually cast in
the lake-villages, and amber beads attest their relations with the North. It is
supposed that the lake-dwellers were invaders from beyond the Alps
though their precise home is uncertain. Some of the pots really resemble early
Aunjetitz shapes, but they exhibit a curious spur or thumb-grip at the
top of the handle that is more at home south of the Alps.
The Early Bronze Age culture of Italy is, therefore, still rather vague.
Industrially, Aegean and Spanish traditions met there, even the halberd is
represented in hoards. Ethnically, an old native Neolithic stock was overlaid by
Bell-beaker elements from Spain and immigrants from beyond the Alps.
SPAIN
As a centre of Early Bronze Age industry South-eastern Spain ranks in
importance with Bohemia and even perhaps the Aegean. Here, too, it looks as if
the rise of a local Bronze Age coincided with an interruption of relations with
the Eastern Mediterranean, which obliged foreign metallurgists, settled
round the rich lodes of copper and silver, to produce for a local market. The
effects of earlier eastern trade are illustrated by the Copper Age
settlements and cemeteries of Los Millares in Almeria and of Palmella in
Portugal. At Los Millares the dead were buried in beehive tombs built of
stones and roofed by corbelling. Similar, but sometimes even finer, tombs are
known from Granada, Andalucia and Southern Portugal. The tombs at
Palmella are similarly shaped, but hewn out of the rock. Both types seem to be
derived from the Eastern Mediterranean. That is confirmed by the
discovery at Los Millares of ostrich-shell beads, pins of hippopotamus-ivory,
vases of stone and plaster, painted pottery and bone combs, as well as
flat celts, West European daggers, saws, arrowheads and other copper
implements. With the Oriental imports are found also Baltic amber, English jet
and French callais. The pottery in all the above-mentioned tombs includes
Beaker ware mingled with undecorated local vases sometimes of Early Minoan or
Cycladic form.
Siret[4] believes that these rich tombs belonged to Oriental colonists
who had founded trading-posts at points commanding the sea route to the
North and the local supplies of ore. He insists that the rarity of gold and
silver at this time is due to the fact that the precious metals were
exported to the Ancient East and the Aegean, just as in Denmark, when in Late
Neolithic times the amber trade with Bohemia was established, that
substance, formerly common in every tomb, ceased to figure in the grave
inventory. In the Bronze Age culture that succeeded that of Los Millares, silver
became relatively common and foreign imports correspondingly rare, as might be
inferred on the assumption of the interruption of eastern trade.
The chief centre of Early Bronze Age civilisation lay in Almeria, the type
station being El Argar in that province.[5] The same culture spread all
along the east coast of the Peninsula to the Pyrenees and is traceable, though
in an impoverished form, in Andalucia and Southern Portugal.
Physically the Bronze Age population of South-eastern Spain was mixed. Among
the males long-heads and round-heads were represented in approximately
equal proportions; the women on the other hand were predominantly
brachycephalic.
The El Argar folk were certainly farmers and as surely also metallurgists.
Moulds, grooved hammer-stones and slag have turned up in several
settlements. The people doubtless exploited the local copper and silver ores,
but the supply of tin which had to be imported from Galicia, the
Cevennes, Brittany or Cornwall was irregular. None of the tools analysed
contained as much as ten per cent, and the majority consist of unalloyed
copper. In Almeria the El Argar people lived on hilltops defended by great stone walls, sometimes pierced by a
postern reminiscent of Mycenae. The houses were agglomerations of
rectangular chambers with stone foundations for the walls. Some may have
boasted two storeys. The dead were buried, contracted, within the settlements,
among or under the houses, either in small kists of six thin slabs or in large
jars. Some sarcophagi, hollowed out of stone, are also assigned to this
period. Against a wall in one village was an altar-like construction
embellished with horn-like ends suggesting a well-known Minoan cult object, the
horns of consecration.
The principal tools are celts, flat or with low flanges, and quadrangular awls.
As weapons were employed round-heeled knife-daggers, halberds and the
bow and arrows. The daggers, as in the Cyclades, were not seldom attached to
the hilts by small silver rivets. As noted, the daggers eventually grew
into short flat swords. The halberd, the most distinctive weapon of the peninsula, is already foreshadowed by flint blades from Los Millares and
contemporary sites. The bronze specimens vary widely in shape: most are
symmetrical, some have very broad butts, the rivets may be quite big and a
broad midrib is frequently used to strengthen the blade. The arrows were tipped
with tanged copper heads, generally lozenge-shaped and seldom barbed.
The type goes back to the Copper Age culture of Los Millares. Narrow plaques of
schist, perforated at either end, were probably worn on the wrist by
archers as a protection against the recoil of the bow-string. Elsewhere such
wrist-guards are found in graves with Bell-beakers.
The ornaments are dull in comparison with the Bohemian. The most interesting is
a diadem, an open circlet of silver or sheet copper, shaped so as to
leave an upright projection in front. Plain rings of silver or bronze wire were worn
on the arms and fingers and in the ears. Another ornament for the arm
or neck was made from a boar’s tusk perforated with a series of holes through
which small copper rings were stuck. Beads of rolled copper leaf or
coiled wire together with shells were hung on necklaces. There are also a few
imported beads of callais, segmented beads of Minoan or Egyptian faience
and imitations thereof in bone. Pyramidal bone buttons with V perforation
served to fasten the garments.
The El Argar pottery, like that of Aunjetitz, is normally unornamented and red,
black or mottled. Handles are virtually unknown, nor is the base ever
dimpled; rounded bottoms are indeed common. The main forms are goblets with
inverted rims on a solid pedestal (Fig. 149), dishes with similar
rims, big carinated bowls with flattened conical necks (Fig. 148), and
keeled mugs with cavetto necks (Fig. 150). The latter closely
resemble the Aunjetitz form in profile, but never have handles. Such parallels
need imply no direct connection; they are rather developments of Copper
Age types in which North African and Aegean elements were prominent, and some
of which reached Central Europe along with the Bell-beaker culture.
In the East Spanish cradle of the El Argar culture, so rich in artistic
production of the Stone and Copper Ages, no indications of decorative activity
assignable to the Bronze Age have come to light. But in the North-west
(Northern Portugal, Galicia and the Pyrenees), where isolated bronzes of El
Argar form and traces of contemporary mining have come to light, two curious
series of rock-carvings exist that may be described here. The first and
older group is a degenerate descendant of the well-known Copper Age group described by Burkitt.[6] Its
patterns seem to represent yet more conventionalised versions of the human
figure. The body has become a rectangle or three concentric circles round a
central dot. The head is denoted by a vertical line starting from the
periphery and sometimes terminating in a circle or a cross. A pair of short
oblique strokes, sprouting from the upper corners of the rectangles or the
appropriate cords of the circles may be added to represent arms, and legs may
be similarly indicated (Fig. 153). Some of these figures may stand
for the four-wheeled carts depicted on the Copper Age monuments.
In a later group conventionalisation had proceeded even farther. Of the old
figures nothing now remains but circles sometimes traversed by a radial
line and enclosing a round hollow, termed a cup mark (Fig. 153), or a
group of such. But mixed up with these geometric figures on some rocks are
highly conventionalised but quite recognisable animals, carved in the same
technique. Apart from these animal figures the later Galician rock carvings offer most interesting parallels to the “cup and ring” markings
of the British Isles. They thus supplement the evidence afforded by beads
and tools for the continuance of those ancient trade relations along the
Atlantic coasts of which the distribution of megalithic tombs give proof in
the Stone Age.
Settlements and cemeteries of classical El Argar type are common only along the
east coast of the peninsula from the Ebro to Gibraltar. In Portugal El
Argar types occur principally in the late degenerate forms of the local
megalithic tombs. The same remark applies to the Pyrenaean region where a local
megalithic culture evolved in the Copper Age out of a fusion of Portuguese, Bell-beaker and local Neolithic elements, now accepted some El
Argar types of tool and pottery. In time the range of the El Argar culture
may be considerable. It must begin quite early in the second millennium BC,
yet, at least in its homeland, it has no successor till the Iron Age.
Apart from the limited adoption of El Argar types in the south, it seems that
the natives of France were incapable of fulfilling the conditions
requisite for regular supplies of metal. Though isolated bronzes of early type
are widespread, burials furnished with such are confined to the
north-west corner and the extreme east (Savoy and Jura). The negative evidence
is supplemented by the discovery of a few Bronze Age trinkets among
Neolithic or Copper Age grave goods in the stone kists of the Cevennes or the
allees couvertes of the Seine-Oise-Marne basins.
In Normandy and Brittany on the other hand a series of tombs furnished with
Early Bronze Age types testifies to a vigorous though belated metal
industry. The Armorican culture probably belongs rather to the Middle Bronze
Age, like that of the Rhone, and so does not rank as an original centre of
metallurgy, but it is nonetheless more convenient to mention it here at the
expense of chronological exactitude. The Bronze Age graves lie
conspicuously outside the areas where the famous megalithic tombs are
concentrated. They seem to denote a new and probably intrusive culture. The
tombs are generally chambers built of small stones not bonded with any mortar and
roofed either with a single large capstone or with a corbelled vault. The
whole structure was buried beneath a mound or cairn. Usually no passage
connected the chamber with the exterior of the cairn, but some tombs with a
corridor of access in Normandy may belong to this period. The tombs were designed for one interment
only, and in most cases the body had been burned, though inhumations
occur.[7]
The furniture includes flat celts and round-heeled daggers[8] of bronze and
superb tanged and barbed arrowheads of flint. One wooden dagger-hilt had
been studded with 1333 little gold nails; other daggers are bronze hilted.
Wrist-guards for the bowman have been found but rarely. Among the ornaments
may be mentioned a ring-head pin of silver and rare beads of amber or
vitreous paste.
A curious vase regularly accompanies these burials. It is strictly biconical
though the upper cone is shorter and more depressed than the lower one.
Two or four wide strap handles unite the rim to the keel where the two cones
join. The vases may be decorated with herringbone incisions or with rows
of hatched triangles along the keel and base and the same inverted below the
keel and along the rim. This is the same style of decoration that we find
generally on bronzes and gold ornaments throughout the Early Bronze Age. The
origin of this culture is at the moment unknown.
The Early Bronze Age cultures in Savoy and Eastern France are chiefly
represented by burials under barrows, which may still contain stone axes (celts)
together with bronze offerings. They are inspired partly from Bohemia and
Hungary like the Rhone culture of the Middle Bronze Age.
At the close of the Neolithic Age the dominant folk on both sides of the Rhine
possessed the culture termed by Burkitt “Pile-dwelling”. They dwelt in fortified settlements. At the same
time part of the country was overrun by Corded Ware makers from farther
east and the Bell-beaker folk from the West. Mixed communities arose under
these conditions. From an amalgamation between the two intrusive groups
sprang the so-called Zoned-beaker group. This people already possessed
round-heeled daggers of true Bronze Age type. A large proportion of them went
downstream and settled in Britain, as we shall see below.
In the Rhineland itself, however, a kindred group, including more Pile-dwelling
elements, remained behind and created the Adlerberg culture, so called
after a village and cemetery on a knoll of that name on the outskirts of Worms.
The huts were pit-dwellings, partly sunk in the earth, and the graves,
situated among the huts, each contained a contracted corpse. Round-heads were
predominant in the population. The grave goods are poor and primitive
rare flat celts, round-heeled flat daggers and quadrangular awls of bronze, and
pins with broad rolled heads and a shaft bent like a sabre. The latter
type was also imitated in bone. The graves also yielded flint knives and
arrowheads, bone and allegedly ivory rings, and beads and shells, including
Mediterranean species, pierced for stringing.
The commonest pot is a rather biconical or pear-shaped mug with ribbon
handles that may be decorated with rows of incised triangles like the
Armorican vases.
GREAT BRITAIN
The round-headed Beaker folk who descended the Rhine settled in Great Britain,
introducing there their own habit of individual burial under a round
barrow in contrast to the collective interments under a long barrow practised by the supposedly older “Neolithic” long-heads. Naturally the
invaders from the East did not exterminate the older population. The latter
continued to bury their dead for a time in the family vaults under long
barrows, and, though the round barrow eventually became universal, probably
ended by absorbing the intruders. They at any rate played a part in the
development of the bronze industry. Yet the oldest metal objects in Britain
have been found under round barrows and with beakers. Though flint and stone
are far commoner than metal with such pottery, the Beaker folk probably
introduced the knowledge of metallurgy or the organising ability needed to make
that knowledge effective; the establishment of the necessary
organisation naturally took time for invaders in a strange country.
Our knowledge of the British Bronze Age being founded in a peculiar degree upon
a study of the funerary pottery and associated grave goods, our account
of it must begin with a description of the main types. The beakers[9] that
symbolise the invaders have been divided into three main classes by
Thurnam and Abercromby, denoted by the letters A, B, and C most unhappily
since, while the A and C beakers are closely allied, the B beakers are placed
in a class apart by ornament and associations as well as by form.
Beakers of class B stand nearest to the continental varieties. The rims are
everted and the profile forms a graceful reversed S curve down to the base. The clay
is fine, often red and generally burnished. The ornament is arranged in
predominantly horizontal zones, as a rule alternately plain and decorated. The
patterns, repeated round the zones, are quite simple chevrons, triangles, Xs.
The decoration was executed either with a cog-wheel or short-toothed
comb of bone or wood whose square teeth, rolled over the wet clay, have left an almost
continuous series of little rectangular depressions, or (in North Britain)
with a cord impressed upon the damp clay or finally with a simple pointed
implement. Beakers of this type are found all over the island. They are
regularly associated with bronze, or perhaps copper, daggers of West European
type (Fig. 41), barbed and tanged flint arrowheads, stone
wrist-guards and buttons with V-perforation, but never with objects of Nordic
type (stone battleaxes or flint daggers).
Beakers of types A and C bear a close family likeness. The neck is practically
straight or even inturned at the rim and makes a definite angle with the
globular body instead of rising out of it in a continuous swelling curve. In
type A the neck is relatively long in comparison with the body while in C
it is shorter. These beakers exhibit a greater variety of ornament than those
of class B. The arrangement is no longer exclusively horizontal; a
division into panels or metopes is common, and occasionally vertical bands
predominate. The patterns include saltires, elongated triangles and lozenges. Cord-impression is not employed, but in addition to the remaining devices
applied to the decoration of B beakers, we have the imprint of
fingernails and of a hollow reed or bird's legbone. In type C horizontal
ridges in relief may be used decoratively. In the same class are to be
included a small group of beakers with handles. Such appendages are foreign to
the pure bell-beakers of Western Europe, but are not rare in Bavaria and
farther east. With beakers of types A and C are associated flat round-heeled
daggers with rivets for the handle (Fig. 42), flint daggers, stone
battleaxes and flint arrowheads.
Lord Abercromby[10] believed that the Beaker folk landed at one
point on our coasts, probably in Kent, and spread gradually northwards.
The gradual degeneration of type A would provide a time scale for checking
their advance. The theory of a single landing place is now generally
rejected, and class B beakers must be excluded from the typological series as a
group apart. On the other hand, the C beakers, which may well be
decadent descendants of the A group, are really commonest in North Britain, So
the people who made them may in truth have spread northwards by land
routes rather as Abercromby imagined.
Partly, at least, contemporary with the beaker burials are others, accompanied
by a quite unrelated vase termed a food vessel. This was the funerary
pot of the “Neolithic” stock and originated in North Britain or Ireland out of a
bowl found in the long barrows and contemporary settlements. The
allegedly Neolithic bowls were round-bottomed so that food vessels showing this
peculiarity may be regarded as early. Such are lotus-shaped with
ornament even on the base; they are termed type A by Abercromby. Very soon the
base was flattened and a groove developed round the widest part of the
body. As a further development, or more probably as a derivative
of another variety of “Neolithic” bowl, the part above the grooves was
contracted somewhat to form a slightly concave neck, the groove being now in a
well-marked shoulder. The classical types of England are a modification of this. The lower part is an inverted truncated cone; above this comes a
marked shoulder bearing one (types 1 and 2) (Fig. 151) or two
(type 4) grooves or none at all (type 3). The shoulder is surmounted by a short
concave neck. In all food vessels the rim is broad and moulded, generally on the inside.
Food vessels, especially in North Britain and Ireland, are very richly
decorated. The cog-wheel technique, distinctive of Beaker ornament, is indeed
comparatively rare on food vessels south of Derbyshire, while cord impressions
are exceptional farther north. On the other hand, three methods of
ornamentation strange to beakers were freely employed on food vessels in
Ireland and Western Scotland, but grow progressively rarer as we proceed
southward in England. They are termed by Abercromby the whipped-cord, the
looped-cord and the false-relief techniques respectively.
In the first a cord, twisted tightly round a pin or other thin core, is
impressed upon the damp clay, a style of decoration known also on “Neolithic”
pottery in Scotland. The looped-cord effect may be obtained by twisting two
cords together to form a braid which is impressed upon the clay, then
unwinding the braid and forming a new one with the cords twisted in the
opposite direction. The false relief is obtained by impressing on the soft clay
a bone or wooden implement with a triangular point like that of a penknife so
as to produce a series of triangles whose bases form a continuous line.
The process is repeated with the point of the instrument inverted so as to
yield a second series of triangles whose bases shall be parallel to those of
the first but whose apices point to the junction of the bases of the first
series. A zig-zag band is thus left in relief between the two sets of
inverted triangles. Sometimes an actual triangular stamp of wood
may have been employed. And in any case the effect is similar to that
of the fretwork technique on Central European pottery described in the next
chapter. It is already seen on some true bell-beakers from North Spain and Central Europe.
Though covered with patterns, food vessels seldom exhibit such distinctive
motives as are seen on beakers of class A. We may, however, draw attention
to the radial cruciform or stellate patterns on the bases of some Irish and
Scottish examples. They distinctly recall the patterns radiating from the
bases of vases of the bell-beaker class in Spain and Portugal.
The food vessels of early type are found principally in Ireland and the more
mountainous northern and western portions of Great Britain. In Southern
England funerary vases of this group are quite rare, and all belong to late or
degenerate types. Food vessels, in fact, doubtless belong to the
“Neolithic” stock, dispossessed in the south by the Beaker folk. Nevertheless
fresh arrivals from the south-west, whence the “Neolithic” people had
presumably come, are highly probable. A reinforcement of Spanish influence is
demonstrated by the radial decoration mentioned above as well as by the
contemporary halberds, the chambered tumuli of the type of New Grange, the
carvings on stones there and elsewhere and other cognate phenomena.
With food vessels are associated flat triangular daggers, celts and awls of
bronze, flint arrowheads and stone battleaxes, but no wrist-guards or
flint daggers and very few buttons with V-perforation. The skulls of corpses
interred with food vessels, like those from the “Neolithic” long
barrows, are quite often long-headed in contrast to the pronounced
round-headedness of the Beaker folk. Moreover, in some instances food vessels
accompany cremated interments and may even contain the ashes.
To adapt them better to the function of ossuaries, the food vessels were
eventually greatly enlarged, becoming what are termed cinerary urns. The
general adoption of cremation, signalised by the appearance of the cinerary
urn, may be conveniently taken to mark the beginning of the Middle Bronze
Age here, although no corresponding changes in the buried bronze offerings can
be detected. And it must be noted that even beakers were in use side by
side with early cineraries.
Sharply defined cultural groups are not distinguishable in Great Britain till
the Late Bronze Age, but even in our period we can discern the working
of a principle, recently enunciated by Dr Fox.[11] In the predominantly
lowland area south-east of a line from Teesmouth to Torquay foreign cultures
of continental origin tend to be imposed; in the highland country to the
north-west such tend to be absorbed. In our period the Beaker culture
maintained itself for a long time in the south; in the north the native Bronze
culture characterised by food vessels soon developed and superseded it.
Two overlapping phases of the British Early Bronze Age are thus obvious; the
first, marked by the earlier types of beakers, witnessed the arrival and
expansion of the round-headed invaders; during the second the older population,
distinguished by the food vessels, reasserted itself. Thanks to the
blending of two traditions the native civilisation of the British Isles during
these two periods was vigorous and original.
While they undoubtedly cultivated grains and engaged in trade and industry,
our Bronze Age ancestors were semi-nomadic. As Dr Curwen[12] puts it
“like the patriarch Isaac who ‘sowed in that land and found in the same year an
hundredfold ... and departed thence’ our Bronze Age ancestors inhabited
a site from one to five years until the cornplots were exhausted and then moved elsewhere”. No
large villages have been found, and the earlier burials do not
constitute regular cemeteries. A few fortified enclosures on hilltops were
certainly occupied by the Beaker folk, but their foundation dates from an
earlier age. The defences, of which Windmill Hill near Avebury offers the
typical example, consisted of concentric moats interrupted by frequent
causeways.[13]
The dwellings of the period were mainly circular. In England the hut was
excavated in the chalky ground and completed probably by a conical roof of
skins. In Scotland beaker sherds have been found in “hut-circles” of which
the foundation only, a circular bank of stones and turf, survives; the
nature of the superstructure is unknown. In one near Muirkirk in Ayrshire[14]
a post-hole was observed near the centre as well as a large hole
full of ashes and cracked stones that served as a cooking-pit. Such hut-circles
are scattered all over the moors throughout the British Isles and are
easily seen when the heather is not too high. In all a gap in the circular
bank, often flanked by great stones, marks the doorway. In some later huts
(Late Bronze Age) on Dartmoor[15] the megalithic jambs and the stone lintel
above them are still in position. These show that by the Late Bronze Age
at least the hut with low narrow doorway (2 feet 9 inches wide by 3 feet 9
inches high) was already well established. Sometimes the door opens on to a
low narrow passage, often bent in an elbow. A comparison with the snow huts of
the Esquimaux suggests that these features were designed to exclude
currents of cold air. The superstition about draughts that makes railway
travelling so painful even now is clearly very old. The inhabitants of
hut-circles seem to have enjoyed the odorous warmth of human bodies clustered about a
reeking fire as much as their Arctic representatives. The stone hut-circle,
with its analogues in the beehive tomb, is an Atlantic-Mediterranean device
inherited from the old “Neolithic” stock in Britain, but it continued to
grow into even more elaborate forms during the Iron Age.
Hut-circles generally occur in little groups, evidently tiny hamlets of from
four to twelve families. Adjacent to some groups, for instance on Dartmoor
and on Spartleton Edge in the Lammermoors, remains of irregular enclosures,
fenced by dry walls of stone, are noticeable. They may denote the cornplots
of the semi-nomadic villagers.[16]
Nearly all Early Bronze Age burials have been marked externally by a mound of
earth or a cairn of stones. But the barrows and the grave beneath them
vary considerably in structure. The simplest form of barrow is a roughly
circular mound; from their external appearance such tumuli are termed “bowl
barrows”. The base of the mound is sometimes surrounded with a ring of large
stones, technically called a peristalith, that served to keep the material
of the tumulus in place. Occasionally such a ring of stones or a circular
trench dug in the virgin soil encircles the grave but is completely buried by
the mass of the barrow. Very close attention is therefore needed during the
excavation of even a simple bowl barrow to disclose these and other
possible structural features. A more elaborate monument is the so-called “bell barrow”. Here the mound is surrounded by a ditch or fosse with a
bank outside it; a narrow belt of level ground, known as the berm, generally
intervenes between the inner lip of the encircling fosse and the base of
the mound proper. Some gigantic tumuli, covering built chambers, such as the
celebrated Maes Howe in Orkney, could be classed as bell barrows though
some believe them to be Neolithic rather than Bronze Age. In a third type,
christened the “disk barrow”, the central eminence has virtually
disappeared; we have, that is, an immense berm encircled by fosse and rampart.
Such are supposed to be late in the Early Bronze Age; disks are
generally earlier.[17]
The normal grave of the Beaker people was a simple trench or, in hard country,
a short kist built of six stone slabs at the centre of the barrow. In
Ireland and Northern and Western Scotland some round cairns which covered
circular or more often cruciform chambers, roofed by corbelling, are still
assigned to the Bronze Age. Such chambered cairns are clearly connected with
the old long barrows that covered similar chambers. And it must be
remembered that Early Bronze Age pottery, principally Beaker ware, has been
found in quite a number of long barrows, showing that such family vaults
were still in use when the Beaker folk reached our shores.
“The standing stones on the naked wine red moor are a feature of British
highland scenery scarcely less impressive than the grandeur of their setting.
Mr Burkitt[18] has already described the principal characters of menhirs,
alignments and cromlechs as well as Stonehenge,[19] but a few additional
words on the stone circles are indispensable to any account of the Bronze Age
in Great Britain. It has been suggested that the stone circle developed
out of the peristalith of a cairn or from the buried setting under one.[20] At
Clava near Inverness we actually find circles of huge upright stones
enclosing the chambered cairns, and at Callernish in Lewis a similar ring of
uprights encloses a chambered tumulus but just touches its periphery. Our stone circles vary widely in
character and doubtless also in date and function. All consist of upright
stones placed so as to form a ring, but the number, size and arrangement of
the stones are variable. There are circles whose stones barely emerge
above the surface of the ground and others like Avebury (Wilts), consisting of
stupendous blocks of stone. Some large circles are surrounded by a
fosse and bank like the Rings of Brodgar (no bank) and Stennis in Orkney, Arbor
Low in Derbyshire and of course Stonehenge itself and Avebury. The
diameter between the stones of Brodgar is 340 feet. A much smaller example of a
similar type (without bank) is to be seen at the Broomend of Crichie
near Inverarie with a diameter of only 38 feet. Its six pillars surround a
central burial kist. In a specialised group, confined to Aberdeenshire, the
uprights increase in height progressively throughout a semicircle, and a huge
horizontal slab, termed the recumbent, lies between the two highest
which are of course adjacent. Some circles at least were sepulchral. For
example, a kist containing a food vessel was found so precisely in the centre
of a circle on Mauchrum Moor on the west coast of Arran that grave and circle
must have been conceived as a single monument. The food vessel
incidentally fixes the Early Bronze Age date of this circle at least. But
others may be later in date and need not have been connected with any
burials. Sometimes two circles are closely juxtaposed as in the famous Grey
Wethers on Dartmoor.
Near many stone circles stands a single upright termed the outlier. Such are
attached to all sorts of circles in all parts of the country, e.g. to the
fossed Ring of Brodgar in Orkney, to most Aberdeenshire circles, to the small
ring termed the Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire, etc. Outliers furnish one of the principal arguments to those who
believe the circles to have been astronomical. The outlier would be a
pointer to mark some celestial event viewed from the centre at a stated season
of the year. Unfortunately in quite a number of cases the only possible
phenomena to which many of these outliers might have been orientated prove to
be of such an inconspicuous nature that they are unlikely to have
attracted attention in our clouded heavens. Indeed it is fantastic to imagine
that the ill-clad inhabitants of these boreal isles should shiver night-long in rain and gale, peering through the driving mists to note eclipses and
planetary movements in our oft-veiled skies.
The cover-stones of certain Scottish kists containing food vessels or beakers
exhibit a curious carved decoration, and allied patterns can be seen on
the stones of the peristaliths and chambers of the famous chambered tumuli at
New Grange and Lough Crew in Ireland. Here Professor Breuil has been able
to distinguish four series.[21] The first, simple engraved lines, and the
second, consisting of spirals and other curvilinear figures executed by
pocking, are anterior to the building of the tumuli, which partly hide the
markings. Subsequently other patterns — lozenges and diapers — pocked all over,
were squeezed into the spaces left by the earlier figures. Designs of the same
series, Breuil's group IV, recur together with spirals, on the underside
of the stone covering a kist containing a beaker at Carnwath in Lanarkshire
(Fig. 154). Between these limits fall a large series of patterns,
allied in design and technique to group II but executed on living rock surfaces
in Southern Scotland and Northern England. The commonest device here
is the “cup-and-ring marking”: a shallow depression, 1-2 inches in diameter
hammered out in the rock surface, is surrounded by from one to eight concentric circles,
pocked out; a groove often runs from the centre to just beyond the
outermost circle (cf. Fig. 153). Cognate curvilinear patterns, showing
very clearly the motive of a pair of human eyes that is just discernible
at New Grange, are carved on a chalk drum found under an Early Bronze Age
barrow at Folkton in Yorkshire. Probably in all these carvings we have very
conventionalised versions of the human figure or parts thereof and perhaps of
ritual objects such as bull-roarers. The peculiarity of the group lies in
the use of curvilinear motives that are otherwise foreign to the Bronze Age art
of Europe except at a later date in Scandinavia and Hungary. The
spirals have been interpreted as due to Mycenaean influence. In any case the
carvings do indicate very close connections with the South-west. The
spirals of New Grange have parallels, which cannot be accidental, on the walls
of the great passage grave of Gavr’inis, Brittany. The cup-and-ring
markings exhibit no less significant similarities to the Galician rock carvings
mentioned previously. These carvings can hardly be merely decorative. As we
have no insight into their inner function and significance, we mask our
ignorance by calling them religious or magical.
The purely decorative art of our Early Bronze Age is illustrated on the pottery
already discussed and on the weapons and ornaments. Of the latter the
most striking are the gold lunulae and jet necklaces described in Chapter III.
All show the strictly rectilinear patterns of triangles and similar
motives usual everywhere at the period, engraved in the case of bronzes and
lunulae and punctured on the jet beads.
The main types of tools and weapons in use have already been sufficiently
summarised in dealing with the grave goods associated with beakers and food vessels. The only important
addition to the list, given by a study of the few hoards assignable to the
period, is the halberd that was, as noted in Chapter III, very common in
Ireland. It must again be insisted that flint was very freely used, not only
for arrowheads but also for all sorts of knives and scrapers, and polished
stone celts, as well as battleaxes, were still current. Yet copper or
bronze flat celts were manufactured locally. Moulds for casting such have
turned up in Scotland to an extent unsurpassed anywhere on the continent
outside South-eastern Spain, and the distribution of actual specimens
coincides fairly closely with that of Early Bronze Age settlement as disclosed
by Beaker burials. On the other hand, Dr Fox[22] contends that the bronze
knife-daggers were imported from the South by sea. They are certainly
concentrated in South-western England and become disproportionately rarer to
the east and north. Commercial or other connections with the Iberian
Peninsula were certainly close during the period. And a dagger whose wooden
hilt was decorated with tiny gold nails affords a link with contemporary
Brittany. At the same time contact with the lands across the North Sea is
illustrated by the amber necklaces and flint daggers of Scandinavian type as
well as by beads in the form of a double-axe a well-known “Neolithic” type in
Denmark.
Thus three currents met in England during the Early Bronze Age: one from Central
Europe represented by the invading Beaker folk, another from the
Iberian Peninsula, perhaps unconnected with popular movement, and a third,
plainly mercantile, from Scandinavian countries. That explains the intense
vigour and originality of our Bronze Age civilisation.
1. CHILDE. The Danube in Prehistory. Oxford, 1929
2. EVANS, A.J. The Palace of Minos at Knossos. London, 1921 ff
3. PEET. The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy and Sicily. Oxford, 1912
4. “L’Espagne prehistorique”. Revue des questions scientifijues, Brussels, 1893
5. SIRET. Les premiers ages du metal dans la sud-est de l’Espagne. Brussels, 1889
6. BURKITT. Our Early Ancestors. Cambridge, 1926 (p 217)
7. DU CHATELLIER. Les epoques prehistoriques et gauloises dans la Finistere. Rennes, 1907
8. Dechelette figures as halberds certain blades from S. Fiacre, Morbihan. An
examination of the weapons, now in Oxford, disclosed not the straight
transverse lines left by a halberd shaft, but the semi- circular plate usually
left by dagger hilts.
9. BURKITT. Our Early Ancestors. Cambridge, 1926
10. ABERCROMBY. Bronze Age Pottery of Great Britain and Ireland. Oxford, 1912
11. “A Bronze Age Barrow on Kilpaison Burrows”, Arch. Camb. 1926
12. CURWEN, C. “Prehistoric Agriculture in Britain”, Antiquity, i
13. CRAWFORD AND KEILLER. Wessex from the Air. Oxford, 1927
14. FAIRBAIRN. “Further Discoveries ... in Hut-circles ... in Ayrshire”. PSAS. LIV
15. Dartmoor Research Committee Reports in Trans. Devonshire Association, xxvi-xxvn, xxix, xxx
16. CURWEN, C. “Prehistoric Agriculture in Britain”, Antiquity, i
17. CRAWFORD. “Barrows”. Antiquity, 1
18. BURKITT. Our Early Ancestors. Cambridge, 1926
19. CUNNINGTON AND NEWALL, in WAM. XLIV; Arbor Low, GRAY, in Arch. LVIII; Stennis, THOMAS, in Arch, xxxiv
20. CALLANDER. “Recent Archaeological Research in Scotland.” Arch. LXXVII
21. BURKITT. Our Early Ancestors. Cambridge, 1926
22. Fox. Arch. Camb. 1928, p. 145