The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

i66 THE BRONZE AGE AND THE CELTIC WORLD
It is not necessary for our purpose to trace in detail these movements, except in
so far as they affect our problem. In the second century, or thereabouts, the Veneti,
one of these tribes, who had taken to the sea, sailed down the channel and settled at
Vannes, at the head of the Morbihan bay.
Their arrival seems to have disturbed the Gaelic lake-dwellers of this region,
for about this time we find people, whose culture show Breton affinities, settUng on
either side of the Irish channel. In the lake-villages of Glastonbury*' and Meare we have
evidence of the arrival of these refugees, and similar evidence may be found in Ireland,
which received its first knowledge of iron and La Tene culture about this time.'° In
Ireland these timid folk built their usual lake-dweUings, and crannogs, in the lakes,
though Macalister has recently seen in these fortified habitations evidence of the
arrival of GaeHc conquerors, who thus defended themselves from the treachery of their
subjects, among whom they were very unpopular. '' But, as we have seen, the Gaelic
war lords, with their bronze swords, had reached Ireland nearly a thousand years
before.
It was during one of these late Kimric movements that the Belgian tribes began
to cross the channel into Great Britain. It is doubtful, at present, whether the
introduction of the use of iron and La Tene culture, which took place about 450 B.C.,
is to be attributed to them, for there were probably many trading posts along the
coast, hke the one excavated at Hengistbury Head,^* which were in touch with the
continent and could have imported these wares. Some of these settlements may even
be earlier than the La Tene period ; this is suspected in the case of Hengistbury, and
was certainly the case at Eastbourne," if the pottery found there recently really
betokens a trading post, and not the arrival of a small group of GaeUc refugees from
the further bank of the upper Rhine.
But these Belgic invaders were almost certainly responsible for the hill-top
camps, which in the south of England seem to be earher than 200 B.C., though probably
»9 BuUeid & Grey (1911, 1917).
3" Macalister (1921) 2. 24, 50.
31 Macalister (1921) 2. 256.
3» Bushe-Fox (1915).
33 Budgen, Rev. W., Hallstatt Pottery from Eastbourne. A.J. II. 354-360.