Page:VCH Northamptonshire 1.djvu/185

 EARLY MAN In this period we reach a point in the condition of the early inhabitants of Britain which is marked by the introduction of iron and by the appearance of a high development of an art which can be traced back to some of the oldest forms of art in the classical world. It is during this period that Sir John Evans considers the first coinage in Britain made its appearance. As in the case of the Stone age extending into and overlapping the Bronze age, so we find the use of bronze reaching into the Early Iron age. The weapons and implements that formerly were made of bronze were in this period manufactured of iron, but the use of bronze was retained for ornamental purposes and was applied to many objects of personal adornment, to horse trappings, scabbards of swords, etc. The later part of the Prehistoric Iron age corresponds with the Late Celtic period of the late Sir A. W. Franks, formerly keeper of British and medieval antiquities in the British Museum. It is considered that this age was not nearly so long as the preceding one of bronze or the Neolithic age. In the year 1863 was published a work called Horn Ferales, or Studies in the Archaology of the Northern Nations. This was written mainly by Mr. J. M. Kemble, a well known archsologist, in the middle of the last century, and edited after his death in 1857 by Dr. R. G. Latham and Sir A. W. Franks. In this book is a series of objects described by Sir A. W. Franks under the title of ' Antiquities of the Late Celtic Period.' These consist of bronze shields, diadems, collars, pins, rings, horse-trappings (some bearing traces of enamel), iron spearheads, swords and daggers with sheaths of bronze, tyres of chariot wheels and a number of objects of different use. On many of these is a style of decoration which, as Sir A. W. Franks writes, ' is remarkable for its peculiar and varied forms,' and differing from that of either the Romans, Saxons or Danes, The chief forms of this new art are the recurrent spiral and the trumpet- shaped pattern. ' Their Celtic origin,* he states, ' is shown by the employment of coral, by the use of the boar as a symbol, by the presence of enamelled decorations, by the discovery of war chariots, the length and material of their swords and by the presence of chain mail.' He claims no very remote antiquity for these remains. ' They are probably,' he says, ' not more ancient than the introduction of coinage into Britain from 200 to 100 years before Christ, and not much later than the close of the first century after Christ,' when the Roman dominion in this country was firmly established. Since this work was published many other remains which can be classed as belonging to this period have come to light, notably a burying- place at Aylesford in Kent which was investigated by Mr. Arthur Evans. The discovery of this ' urnfield,' as it is called by Mr. Evans, with a description of the various objects from it, forms the subject of a most interesting and valuable paper by him, published in Archaologia, vol. lii. The manner in which he traces the new style of pottery found at Aylesford back through eastern Gaul across the north of Italy to its prototypes of bronze whose home was the Adriatic province is most 145