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68 comparatively few. In Europe, on the contrary, some of them were rich and important.

Hoards, again, may be divided into

The greatest of all hoards is that discovered in 1877 by Signor Zannoni, who in excavating for a new sewer on behalf of the municipality of Bologna came across an immense vase of bronze containing no less than 14,800 objects in that metal, and 3 small pieces of iron.

Chantre describes some fifty French hoards, and Evans gives a most interesting table of 110 found in Britain.

The late Sir John Evans in his masterly work on The Bronze Age divided it into three periods. Montelius now considers that five can be satisfactorily distinguished. Types belonging to two periods are very seldom found together. Some cases, indeed, occur in which types of the first and second, or of the third and fourth periods occur together, but the first and third, or the second and fourth, are never, or scarcely ever, represented in the same find. The exceptions to this rule are very rare, which shows that the types were really successive.

This might be termed the Copper Age, most of the metallic objects being of pure copper. Stone implements were still abundant, metal being rare. The axes of copper were simple and flat, without ridges or stops (figs. 4, 7). There were also daggers with a broad flat tang and generally without rivet holes. The objects of bronze were in fact copies of those of stone.

The metallic objects of this period consisted of—

It may be suggested that these were in many cases made specially for the use of the dead in the next world,