168, T.) According to M. de Mortillet, the Cassiterides[1] of the ancients are to be sought rather in the islands off the coast of Brittany than in the Scilly Isles, in Cornwall, or on the west of the Iberian peninsula.
Fig. 155.—Bronze Palstave, Tin Mine, Villeder, 34.
The Iberian peninsula was undoubtedly, as Mr. Howorth[2] points out, one of the chief centres from which the civilised peoples of the Mediterranean were supplied with tin. Pliny[3] tells us that tin-stone is associated with gold in the stream-working of Galicia. It may have been sought in the Bronze age in the province of Asturias, since primitive tools are discovered in the old workings.[4] It is picked up at the present day, by the children in the fields, in the valley of the Douro, and reduced by the peasants in the simple manner recorded above. It abounds also in Portugal, in the neighbourhood of Bragança, and in other localities. (Fig. 168, T.)
- ↑ Those who are interested in the vexed question of the Cassiterides, will find it ably discussed by M. Hans Hildebrand (Congr. Int. Archéol. Prehist., Stockholm vol., p. 578. He follows Strabo in placing them in the west of Spain.
- ↑ Howorth, Archæology of Bronze.
- ↑ xxxiv. 47.
- ↑ Busk, Int. Congress Archeol. Prehist., Norwich vol., p. 163.
