Page:Prehistoric Times.djvu/64

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50
PREHISTORIC TIMES

and Spain[1] are the only known European sources from which tin can be obtained in any quantity, the mere presence of bronze is in itself a sufficient evidence not only of metallurgical skill, but also of commercial intercourse.

Fig. 62.—Bronze brooch, Mecklenburg, three-tenths natural size. Showing the manner in which it has been mended.


Fig. 63.—Bronze celt. Showing the air-vents bent over.
We should hardly, perhaps, have hoped to ascertain much of the manner in which the people of the Bronze Age were dressed. Considering how perishable are the materials out of which clothes are necessarily formed, it is wonderful that any fragments of them should have remained to the present day. There can be little doubt that the skins of animals were extensively used for this purpose, as indeed they have been in all ages of man's history; many traces of linen tissue also have been found in English tumuli of the Bronze Age, and in the Swiss lakes. Figs. 189—190 represent pieces of fabric from Robenhausen in Switzerland; they belong, however, in all probability,

  1. Tin is said to have anciently been obtained in Pannonia, near the modern Temesvar, but I do not know whether the mines were extensive. See Howorth, Stockholm Prehist. Congress, p. 533.