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the rude walling to the south of the Ty Mawr settlement, as well as with that of Tre Ceiri and other fortresses of the Pre-historic Iron Age. I, therefore, accept the conclusion of Albert Way and Owen Stanley, that it was the citadel to the inhabitants of the island in the Bronze Age, although there is clear proof that it was occupied in later times, and especially during the Roman dominion. Many of the other

Fig. 11.-Gold Lunule, Llanllyfni

strongholds in Wales, as yet undated, have probably had a similar history.

We have noted the evidence that bronze was smelted in the settlement of Ty Mawr. The numerous hoards of broken and imperfect implements and weapons, collected for the purpose of casting, prove that bronze was worked throughout Wales, as well as in the rest of Britain. That, for example, found at Guildsfield, Montgomeryshire, and now in Powis Castle,

1 Barnwell, Arch. Camb., 1864.

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A hoard of broken and imperfectly cast implements has also been met with at Rhosnesney,1 and of horse trappings close to an ancient fort on the Kinmel estate, near Abergele, called, strangely enough, Parc y Meirch or Horse Park, both in Denbighshire; and from South Wales Barnwell has recorded the discovery of leaf-shaped swords, ferrules still holding wooden shafts, spear heads, lance heads and rings, broken or folded so as to be portable.3

These finds not only show that the bronze industry was carried on throughout Wales, with material obtained elsewhere, but also the fact that at this time weapons were as necessary for the community as the implements of daily life.

The bronze was undoubtedly imported into Wales. The gold, however, used mostly for personal adornment in Wales in the Age of Bronze, was probably in part derived from the stream workings in the Valley of the Mawddach near Dolgelly, and in the tributaries of the Towy to the west of Llandovery. It was, however, also imported from Ireland-the Eldorado of North-Western Europe in the Ages of Bronze and Pre-historic Iron. This important conclusion is proved by several finds of ornaments of Irish design, such as the characteristic gold lunule (Fig. 11) found at Llan1 Arch. Camb., 1875, p. 70. 2 Archæologia, xliii, p. 556. 3 Arch. Camb., 1864, p. 224.

6TH SER. VOL. XII.

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llyfni,' in Carnarvonshire, and others at Gaerwen in Anglesey. The beads of amber imply intercourse with the tribes of East Anglia, or of the amber coast, and the general correspondence of the implements and weapons with those in the rest of Britain implies that the inhabitants of Wales were in close touch with the tribes of the rest of the island.

I turn now to the consideration of the tombs of the Bronze Age in Wales. Here, as in the rest of the British Isles, the practice of inhumation, universal in the Bronze Age, began, at the beginning of the Age of Bronze, to yield place to that of cremation, the ashes of the dead being collected, and very generally placed in a large urn, sometimes inverted, and sometimes protected by a stone chamber, and covered with a tumulus or barrow of earth, or a cairn of stones. These burial places abound in Wales, and are amply described in our Archæologia. In the chambered cairn at Plas Heaton, near Denbigh, both inhumation and cremation had been practised, four bodies had been buried in the crouching posture, and there was a funeral urn, with ashes, of the usual type of the Bronze Age. Hilton Price describes the contents of a barrow called Twmpath, in the parish of Colwinston, Glamorgan, that yielded numerous hand-made urns, containing human ashes, and bones proving that pork was used in the funereal feast, along with various articles, a bone pen, a broken saddle-quern, a bronze pricker, and the fragments of a bronze knife or razor. It was obviously a family or tribal burial place, and was based on a floor of stone flags, instead of on the prepared surface of the ground, as is usually the case.

3

We may also quote the discovery of similar funeral

1 British Museum. Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age, p. 145, Fig. 137.

2 Arch. Journ., xiii, p. 295.

3 Arch. Camb., 1851, 274.

4 Arch. Camb., 1888, p. 83.

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urns' at Cae Mickney, Anglesey (Fig. 12), and in a group of cairns or family burial place at Porth Dafarch on Holyhead Island, described by Albert Way. One of these is represented in Fig. 13. It was inverted over the small vase or food vessel. Both these vessels bear the usual Bronze-Age patterns in chevrons and right lines.

These three cases may be taken to illustrate the contents of the normal burial places of the period, in which, although cremation was the rule, in some cases the practice of inhumation was still continued. Various personal ornaments, bronze daggers, flat celts, stone maces, and well-fashioned flint implements, were buried

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Fig. 14.-Temple Vase, Cairn, Llandyssilio, Pembrokeshire
(Arch. Camb., 1868)

with the dead from a religious motive, and probably for use in the land of spirits. In this connection we may note a remarkable discovery in a cairn in Llandyssilio, Pembrokeshire, of a small vessel (Fig. 14), found along with an "incense cup," and a bronze dagger. It is ornamented both on the outside and inside with vertical ribs, reaching from the flat base to the rim, the spaces between the ribs being countersunk, and the whole forming "a miniature Stonehenge."

1 Arch. Camb, 1868, p. 222-231.

2 Romilly Allen, "The Chevron and its Derivatives," Arch. Camb., 1902, p. 182. The details of the Bronze-Age ornamentation valuable essay.

are dealt with in this

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