Note 755 — Chapter IV

The Hon. John Abercromby (Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxxv, 1905, p. 262) affirms that ‘the few bronze swords, spear-heads, etc., of the Bronze Age and Hallstatt Period, that first filtered in driblets into this country, and were then reproduced with variations by native smiths, were too precious to be laid by for ever in a grave, even at the end of the Bronze Age in Britain’. Is not this begging the question? If small bronze weapons were ‘laid by for ever’ in graves in the earlier period, when bronze was scarce, why should not large ones have been laid by when it was common? And if gold ornaments were not too costly to be sacrificed, why should bronze swords have been deemed so precious?