THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

'
IRON.
G05
606 IRON.
survives in Berri, and of whose invasion of Italy in the fifth
century B.C. we have already spoken (p. 394).
In Caesar's time the Belgic tribes had already commenced
ironvvorking in Kent, which continued to be the seat of English
ironwork until the invention of the blast-furnace and the
consequent employment of mineral coal for smelting purposes
finally changed the seat of the iron industry from the Weald to
the North.
A passage of Herodian^ renders it probable that the pre-
Belgic inhabitants of Britain, such as the natives of the Fens,
"
had but recently learned the use of iron. Many parts of
Britain being constantly flooded by the tides of the Ocean
become marshy. In these the natives are accustomed to swim
and traverse about immersed to the waist, going almost naked
;
indeed they know not the use of clothing, but encircle their
loins and necks with iron'-, deeming this an ornament, and
an evidence of opulence, just as other barbarians esteem gold.
They puncture their bodies with pictured forms of every sort
of animal, and accordingly wear no clothing, that they may not
hide the pictures on their bodies." They were a warlike race,
carrying only a small shield, a spear, and a sword girded to
their naked bodies, using neither helmet nor breastplate, which
they held to be only impediments. This peoj)le had been
using bronze weapons for many centuries (c/! p. 501 ).
At Aylesford in Kent iron makes its appearance in a '
late
Celtic' cemetery in company with pottery of the well-known
shapes and decoration, and with gold coins imitated from the
Philippus.
Wherever then we see iron weapons appearing
in the area
just menti(jn('(l, that iiu'tal is seen sup[)lanting ini])lenu'nts of
bronze not by a natural process
of local cvohition, l)ut by ;i
single l)oun(l, and further, in
who l)r(iight
it into use.
every case the Celts are the ])eople
Again, in tlu' time of Tacitus the only distrieti of I'astern
Europe which he refers to as yielding iron is that of the (ioliiu,
"
III.
s-2.
'riiesc arc jii(il)al)ly the trihfs who accnniiii;^ to Carsar usnl iimii rmls fur
money (/'. O'. v. 1"2, iit.ui;tnr aut acre ant iiimio aurco aut tiih'ia h rris, rtc.l.
a Celtic tribe, who dwelt in Transylvania, who, he says, were
subjects of the neighbouring tribes to their shame, as they
mined iron^ To this tribe we may perhaps ascribe the ancient
furnace with a block of iron in it, recently found at Gyalar in
Transylvania: it is of the same type as the furnaces of the
Jura'^. Thus both to the extreme West and to the East the
Celts are the workers of iron.
Now let us turn to the southern peninsulas. There is no
reason for believing that in Spain iron was a slow and gradual
development from bronze, but on the contrary
it seems here as
elsewhere to have come in per saltum. The same holds true
of Italy.
In the Terramare culture can be traced the gradual
transition from stone to copper and bronze, as in Switzerland,
but the Lake-dwellings of the plain of Lombardy 3'ield no
traces of iron.
To this succeeds a culture so different that it has been
described as following longo intervallo.
The remains of this culture ('
Villano ')
extend over the
whole of the Po valley and Etruria, especially the neighbourhood
of Corneto ;
in other words it is coextensive with the area
which from literary tradition we know to have been occu})ied
by the Umbriaus.
Its chief characteristics are the use of iron and the cremation
of the dead.
Archaeologists are agreed in placing the beginning
of the Iron Age in upper Italy at least as early as 1000 B.C.,
that is about the same time that it appears from the evidence
of the Homeric poems
in Greece. But the Achean culture
ditfered toto cuelo from that of the Mycencau Bronze Age.
Thus in Italy and Greece as in ui)])er Europe iron appears at a
bound.
From what jioint did iron thus advance to all
Europe Can ? any spot in Europe
metal can be seen gradually asserting itself^
])arts
of
be found whin'c the later
Fii'st let me point out that it
by no means follows that
even if the method of employing copper for ini])lements was
learned from tlie south side of the Alps the knowledge of
1
Crrm. l.'i.
-
W. Gowland, op. cit., ]i. 52, Fig. '2').