the weapons found in very distant parts of Europe, implies more extended intercourse between different countries than any which existed in those centuries. On the whole, then, the evidence is conclusive that the use of bronze weapons characterizes a particular phase in the history of European civilization, and one which was anterior to the discovery of iron, or at any rate, to the general use of that metal for cutting purposes.
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| Fig. 4.—Copper (?) celt from Waterford—6 inches long, 334 wide at the broader end, and 178 at the smaller, which is about 1-16th thick. | Fig. 5.—Winged celt, or Paalstave, from Ireland. |
Evidently, however, the transition from the use of bronze weapons to those of iron must have been gradual, and there must have been a time when the two were in use together. M. Ramsauer, for many years director of the salt-mines at Hallstadt, near Salzburg, in Austria, has discovered an extensive cemetery belonging to this transitional period. He has opened no less than 980 graves, evidently of those who even at that early period worked the salt-mines which are still so celebrated. The objects discovered are described and figured in an album, which has unfortunately never been published, but of which Sir John Evans and I secured a copy. The foregoing table will sufficiently prove the importance of the discovery.
That the period to which these graves belonged was that of the transition between the Bronze and Iron Ages, is evident; both because we find cutting instruments of iron as well as of bronze, and also because both are of somewhat unusual, and we may almost say of intermediate types. The same remark applies to the ornamentation.
