cumulative, and cannot therefore be fully developed here, but out of many, I will mention a few cases in illustration.
Some years ago, an old battle-field was discovered at Tiefenau, near Berne, and described by M. Jahn. On it were found a great number of objects made of iron; such as fragments of chariots, bits for horses, wheels, pieces of coats of mail, and arms of various sorts, including no less than a hundred two-handed swords. All of these were made of iron, but with them were several fibulæ of bronze, and some coins, of which about thirty were of bronze, struck at Marseilles, and presenting a head of Apollo on one side and a bull on the other; both good specimens of Greek art. The rest were silver pieces, also struck at Marseilles. These coins, and the absence of any trace of Roman influence, sufficiently indicate the antiquity of these interesting remains.
A very similar collection of antiquities has been obtained from the ancient lake-village near La Tene, on the Lake of Neufchatel. This interesting locality will be referred to again in the chapter on Swiss lake-villages, and I will here only observe that 50 swords, 5 axes, 4 knives, and 23 lances have been discovered, but not a single weapon of bronze. Nine coins have been also found here, while not a single one has been met with in any of the Stone Age or Bronze Age villages. Yet the Gauls had a coinage of their own nearly three hundred years before Christ, and the Britons, as Sir John Evans[1] has well shown, about a century or perhaps one hundred and fifty years later.
Some very interesting "finds" of articles belonging to the Iron Age have been made in the peat bogs of Slesvick, and described by M. Engelhardt, Curator of the Museum at Flensborg. One of these, in the Moss of Nydam, comprises clothes, sandals, brooches, tweezers, beads, helmets, shields, shield bosses, breastplates, coats of mail, buckles, sword-belts, sword-sheaths, 100 swords, 500
- ↑ The Coins of the Ancient Britons, 1864, by Sir John Evans, K.C.B., F.R.S.
