Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/177

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LATE CELTIC
169

light, but the foreign contributions to this section are scanty when compared with those of our own country.

"The antiquities under consideration consist of shields, swords, and daggers, horse-furniture, personal ornaments, and a number of miscellaneous objects, some of iron, some of bronze, and frequently decorated with enamel. All these antiquities exhibit a style of decoration remarkable for its peculiar and varied forms, and testify to an extraordinary skill in working metals." (Horæ Ferales, p. 172.)

On finishing his descriptive details of the objects in question—the more perfect and highly decorated being delineated on seven plates of beautiful illustrations—he proceeds to show that their original owners could be no other than the Celts.

Since 1864, when Sir A. W. Franks wrote his description of the "Late Celtic" antiquities of the British Isles, a large number of similarly decorated objects have been discovered throughout Great Britain and Ireland. Some have been incidentally found as stray relics in fields, peat-bogs, the beds of rivers, etc.; others were among the contents of hoards or hidden treasures, graves and inhabited sites, associated with other objects which gave a clue to their date.

Among sepulchral sites the following may be mentioned, as examples of burials by inhumation which have yielded relics of this