The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

GREEK LANDS AND THE BASIS OF CHRONOLOGY. 115
so cannot be later than the latter date. It is probable that it was a souvenir of the
raid of 1220 B.C., upon which Seti placed his name some ten to fifteen years later.
Thus Type D was in use in 1220 B.C., and must have developed earlier, for we must
allow some years to have elapsed since the " Achseans " left the Danube basin for Greek
lands, a few more before many of them had estabUshed themselves as kings, and a
further interval before they can have organised a piratical expedition on a sufficiently
extensive scale to threaten the safety of Egypt. Fifteen years would be the shortest
possible time for such a succession of events, thirty years more hkely. So we may
consider that some of these intruders left the Danube basin about 1250 B.C. Now it
must have been about this time, or rather earUer, that the Briges, from the north of
Macedonia, crossed the Hellespont into Asia Minor, where they became known as
Phrygians. This movement appears to have been one of a succession of similar raids,
which carried the Thraco-Phrygian people from the Danube basin eastwards. It seems
probable that our " Achaean " intruders were part of this body, who, instead of moving
on to the east, had passed southwards in search of adventure.
Type G, as we have seen, has been found at the famous cemetery at HaUstatt, in
some of the older graves. This cemetery is believed to date, at the earhest, from 900 B.C.,
but iron was found in most of the graves, and the bronze swords were few in number, and
from graves in which no iron was found. We may safely conclude that these swords
belong to the very beginning of this period, and had been in use for some time previously.
It is always a difficult matter to determine how long a given type of implement or
weapon remained in use. Besides this we must allow for overlapping, that is to say for the
period during which a tj^pe stiU survived in use after its successor, which was doubtless
in many ways its superior, had been designed. I am inclined to beheve that about
twenty-five years is sufficient to allow for this overlap, though possibly on rare occasions
an obsolete weapon may have been preserved longer, especially as a trophy or memento.
If we allow a period of one hundred years between the introduction of one type
and the first use of its successor, we shall be able to fit the two ascertained dates, and
this period seems on the whole reasonable. Types A and B are, however, scarce in
Central Europe, though Type B seems, in a modified form, to have persisted
longer in the Baltic region. I propose, therefore, to reduce the hundred years to fifty
in each of these cases.