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of the Early Iron Age. The common man who had no voice in the government no doubt had to follow his lord to the war he had not helped to make, and, clad in skins and rudely armed, to enter the battle only to be hewn down or to run away. But his lord, mailed, helmeted, crested, driving his chariot across the field, or mounted on an armoured and iron-shod horse, was a formidable fighting man, with some knowledge of the science of

BRONZE HELMETS

"Dawn of British History," Corkran (Harrap)

war, and practised in the attack and defence of towns. A warlike expedition in the Bronze Age was probably in many cases little but a splendid parade, ending in a few single combats and small general bloodshed. The Iron Age produced weapons that were not only much more effective than those of bronze, but so much cheaper that far larger levies could be armed and led into battle. Thus war, the sport of princes, was becoming more costly to the people.

During the time that fighting-chariots were used a warrior was often buried with his chariot. His body, sometimes wrapped in skins or woven stuff, resting on his shield, or with the shield on his breast, was laid between the two wheels of the chariot, these in one case

standing in two trenches cut below the general level of the grave. The bits and trappings of the horses were placed in a trench at the foot, connected with it by a narrow channel containing the chariot pole. The dead man's weapons were laid beside his body and sepulchral vessels placed near. Bones of pigs, sheep, and oxen show that a funeral feast

[graphic]

DRINKING-CUPS

was usually held at the tomb.

From the pottery preserved in tombs we find that the dots, straight lines, and cross-hatchings of the Bronze Age had given place to quite a different decoration of curved lines and flowing designs. The

ware, too, was in general of much finer quality, and most of it was made on the wheel.

covered with a lustrous black.

Funeral urns were often

Ornaments were more varied and numerous. Among the many found in tombs are diadems, necklaces, bracelets, anklets, earrings, rings, and brooches, of gold, bronze, or iron, sometimes decorated with coral or different-coloured enamels. Glass, amber, and coral were used for beads.

That trade received a great impetus from the discovery of iron is shown by Strabo, who wrote at the beginning of the first century A.D. He mentions wheat, gold, silver, iron, cattle, skins, slaves, and dogs as being exported from Britain in his day, while among the imports were bracelets and necklaces of ivory, amber beads, and glass vessels. The tin trade, which had once been so important, seems to have waned by this

time. Bars of iron were used as a medium of exchange, and though coinage was introduced into the south-east of Britain about 200 B.C., the more primitive currency was still used in the interior in Cæsar's time.

With iron tools the art of building with stone arose, but except where stone was more plentiful than timber, timber and mud huts would continue to be the homes of the people. A lake-village of the Iron Age excavated at Glastonbury tells us much of daily life in the west of Britain before Roman influence penetrated there.

The village included sixty or seventy dwellings, and was occupied long enough for five feet of peat to accumulate in some parts. The huts were mostly circular and 18 to 35 feet in diameter, built of wattle and daub on a framework of posts a foot apart. These, with a centre post, supported a thatched roof. The clay floor rested on a layer of timbers laid close together on brushwood covering the lake bottom, as in the Swiss lake-dwellings. Among the relics from the site are a wheel, made on the lathe, a ladder, a dug-out canoe 18 feet long, and part of a loom; pottery made both by hand and on the wheel, stone querns, and a bronze mirror, found with antimony for darkening the eyebrows and eyelashes, and rouge. Crucibles show that the inhabitants smelted metals on the spot. They grew wheat, and had sheep, long-horned cattle, pigs, horses, and dogs as domestic animals, and they also hunted the beaver, otter, roe-deer, and stag.

Enamelling both on bronze and iron was an art that arose in the Early Iron Age, and nowhere was it practised with greater success than in Britain, where the craftsmen evolved processes peculiar apparently to themselves. The distinguishing feature of the age, however, was the introduction of the characters of the alphabet.

This enabled a written language to be developed, and it is believed that even in Britain the natives were

LOOM OF LAKE-DWELLERS

From "The Threshold of History," Hall (Harrap)

acquainted with writing before Cæsar's invasion. With the establishment of a written language the foundations of literature and history were laid. Prehistoric times were past.

The Iron Age, however, went on, and it may be as

well to say a few words about the development of that iron-working upon which a great part of our daily life to-day depends.

The small furnaces of the early iron-workers, seldom exceeding 10 to 15 feet in depth, were wasteful of fuel, labour, and iron. The cinder-heaps left in the Forest of Dean from the iron-working of the Roman occupation

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contained so much iron that they supplied ore to twenty furnaces for some hundreds of years. Charcoal was the only fuel used in England for smelting till the seventeenth century. This, obtained from the surrounding forest, was used to reduce local ore to wrought iron. Many landowners had their own forge and smithy to supply them with iron tools for use on their estates. As the charcoal would turn some of the iron into natural steel, which is brittle, the smith would be under the necessity of remelting it and converting it into malleable wrought iron, and this process, which arose from accident, was found to have advantages which led to its

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