2. ARCHEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY.

THIS Chronicle bears a heading new to the 'Quarterly Journal of Science,' and it may therefore be as well to define at the outset the subjects which we shall attempt to represent in it. Of late years Archæology has dived deeply into the records of our race, bringing to the surface many facts and inferences, which throw light on the most recent portions of Geological History. Ethnology also has made rapid progress, and, from having been a mere catalogue of the characters of the several varieties of one Natural History species, has come to possess a wider scope and a higher aim. Archæology and Ethnology thus shade off, on the one hand, into Geology and Zoology, and on the other, into Modern History and Politics. It is in their former relation only that we shall in this Chronicle discuss their progress, as in this respect only do they concern the student of Natural Science.

We cannot do better than begin our new Chronicle with an account of the great work, entitled 'Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ,' commenced by the late Mr. Henry Christy, F.R.S., and M. E. Lartêt, and continued by the latter with the assistance of some of the best antiquaries, including Mr. John Evans, Mr. A. W. Franks, and Mr. W. Tipping; it is published at the expense of Mr. Christy's executors, and is edited by Professor T. Rupert Jones. Three parts have now appeared, illustrated by numerous plates and woodcuts; but there does not seem to be any systematic arrangement, the different objects appearing to have been figured and described as convenience, rather than a system, required. The results, however, are sufficiently interesting now, and will probably be made much more so by the inferences which will hereafter be drawn from their consideration by the experienced savans concerned in the publication of the work.

In the Dordogne district the sides of the valley of the Vézère, and of the gorges of its tributary streams, rise in great escarpments, crowned with projecting cornices, below which are seen horizontal niches or hollow flutings; in these cliffs occur also numerous caves and rock-shelters either at the level of the floods of the present day, or higher up, thus showing that no alteration in the level of the district has taken place since their formation. These cavities are for the most part mere shelters, so we must suppose that when they were inhabited by man, as they no doubt were at a remote period, a protection was erected outside them, or that the people using them were extremely uncivilized. Indeed it is evident that they

Reliquiæ Aquitanica. Being Contributions to the Archæology and Paleontology of Perigord and the Adjoining Provinces of Southern France.' By Edward Lartêt and Henry Christy. London: Baillière.

were used chiefly as fireplaces, for hearth-stuff is abundantly found in most of them; and it is curious to observe that at the present day the cottages of the district are built in precisely similar positions, the fireplaces being situated in the face of the rock. The hearth-stuff has yielded a mine of organic wealth in the shape of remains of animals, which had been killed for food, consisting chiefly of the reindeer, the horse, and the ox, with the ibex and the chamois. The "wild boar was scarce or but little eaten," and with the exception of the horse the fauna tends to a northern grouping. The rock-dwellers were not unaccustomed to more delicate food, as is proved by "the many bones of birds and of salmon which are mixed with the refuse;" they also seem to have been very fond of marrow, as the marrow-bones have invariably been split for the purpose of extracting it. The question whether the rock-dwellers cooked their food is at present unsettled. The bones do not show traces of the action of fire, so that the meat could not have been roasted; and there is not sufficient depth of earth below the hearths to encourage the supposition that it was cooked by being buried in the earth, and having a fire lighted over it. Thus there remains but one method possible-boiling: that these people boiled water is certain because the "boiling-stones" have been found, and they have evidently been heated for the purpose; but no pottery is forthcoming, so the water was probably boiled in hollows in the rock. The climate of the country at the time when the rock-dwellers peopled it, was, as already indicated by the fauna, very much colder than it is now; but another argument has been very ingeniously used by the authors, namely, that in the South of France at the present day such masses of animal remains as we find in the caves, would speedily become a fearfully decomposing mass; besides which the rockdwellers have "almost invariably chosen a southern exposure, and the warmest and sunniest nooks for their residences." The causes of this colder climate have not yet been entered upon; but as there has been little or no change of level, and there are no high mountains in the vicinity, it will certainly be a puzzle. The implements and the fauna point to a much later period than that usually denominated

Glacial," so it is unlikely that the cause was cosmical; and it is difficult to conceive what local changes in the character of the surface would have so great an effect.

The implements found in the caves and rock-shelters are wonderfully interesting, and, fortunately for antiquaries, are illustrated with the most prodigal liberality. A comparison of them with recent implements in use amongst uncivilized peoples points in the same direction as the fauna, namely, northwards. The implements are either of flint, bone, or deerhorn, and comprise almost every conceivable variety; in flint "from lance-heads long enough and stout enough to have been used against the largest animals, down

to lancets no larger than the blade of a penknife, and piercing instruments of the size of the smallest bodkin;" and in horn or bone every variety of chisel, awl, harpoon, and arrow, with, lastly, eyed needles of compact bone, finely pointed, polished, and drilled, with round eyes so small and regular," that it requires experiment to prove that they could have been drilled with stone. Although we have dwelt too long on this most interesting publication in its unfinished state, we must just mention that it shows already that in these caves the works of art were discovered which have already been noticed and figured in this Journal.* MM. Lartêt and Christy have, indeed, proved that, so far as we know, France was the birth-place of the Fine Arts, the Dordogne Caves having furnished evidence of the cultivation by the rock-dwellers of Music, Painting, and Sculpture, Music being represented by whistles made out of the phalangeal bones of the reindeer or chamois; Sculpture by an ornamented poniard-handle and many similar examples, figured as before cited; and Painting by the traditional red ochre paint of the savage.

Dr. Ferdinand Keller's Lake-dwellings of Switzerland and other parts of Europe,'† which has been translated and arranged by Mr. J. E. Lee, is a work of hardly less interest, and claims also a special notice at our hands. The lake-dwellings consist of pile-dwellings, fascine-dwellings, and crannoges. The pile-dwellings were thus built: piles having been driven into the bed of the lake, their heads were brought to a level and connected by platform-beams, fastened either by wooden pins or by means of mortises or central hollows in the heads of the vertical piles; and the hold of the piles in the bed of the lake was in some cases further strengthened by large quantities of stones being brought in boats and sunk around them.

The fascine-dwellings have a very peculiarly constructed foundation, which was composed of horizontal layers of twigs instead of vertical piles; but a few of the latter were also used as stays or guides for the great mass of sticks. These fascine-dwellings are to some extent of similar construction to the crannoges, which consist of the following portions: (1.) an outer rim, or stockade of piles or boards, enclosing either a circular or oval space, the lowest bed within which is made up of "a mass of ferns, branches, and other vegetable matter, generally covered over with a layer of round logs, cut into lengths of from four to six feet, over which is usuallyfound a quantity of clay, gravel, and stones."

Such are the varieties of substructure of the lake-dwellings; but

* No. III., July, 1864, pp. 578-582,

The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland and Other Parts of Europe.' By Ferdinand Keller, President of the Antiquarian Association of Zurich. Trauslated by J. E. Lee, F.S.A., F.G.S. Longmans.

VOL. IV.

G

"

of the superstructure very little is known, except that the huts were rectangular, and that each one was provided with a hearth consisting of three or four large slabs of stone. There are some peculiarities in the distribution of these dwellings which deserve notice; for instance, fascine-dwellings "occur chiefly in the smaller lakes, and apparently belong to the Stone age," while many of the pile-dwellings have been inhabited in the Stone, Bronze, and Iron ages. Crannoges have been found chiefly, if not entirely, in Ireland and Scotland, and they appear to have been chieftains' forts, and fastnesses for occasional retreat, while the Swiss lake-dwellings were places of permanent habitation for families and tribes. The latter were placed at a greater or less distance from the shore, and their site appears to have been determined by such circumstances as would be appreciated by people enjoying a peaceful existence, as even the earliest settlers were not only fishermen and hunters, but also shepherds and agriculturists." It also appears that they were traders, even in the Stone age, for such a material as nephrite could only have been obtained by barter, as it does not occur in Europe; while in later times they must have procured iron by the same means. They apparently clothed themselves with hides and skins, as well as with plaited and woven flax, and it seems probable that they had a religion, for Dr. Keller infers certain figures of the crescent moon to have been objects of worship from the earliest period. We have no space to trace the advance of civilization amongst the lake-dwellers during the supposed successive periods of Stone, Bronze, and Iron; but we have said enough to draw attention to the subject, which is illustrated with extraordinary completeness by the discoveries described in Dr. Keller's work, and we therefore leave it, with the question of the existence of the lakedwellings so late as the Gallo-Roman period, to be discussed by the antiquary and the ethnologist.

The Crannoges of Ireland and Scotland were built on shallows or islands, and, as already remarked, appear to have been places of retreat, thus indicating a great contrast in the habits of these people from those of the Swiss lake-dwellers.

Dr. Keller is of opinion" that the different settlements in what are called the Stone, the Bronze, and the Iron ages do not indicate a succession of races, or the destruction of one people by another, but merely different grades of civilization amongst one and the same people," and that the lake-dwellers belonged to the same people as their contemporaries on the mainland. He also accepts the conclusion that certain bronze objects of a peculiar form and ornamentation, such as some of those found in the settlements on the land and in the lakes, are referable to the Celts; and as history makes no mention of any early people but the Celts, who received their civilization in later times from the Romans, he infers "that

it would be contrary to all the facts adduced to arrive at any conclusion but this:-that the builders of the lake-dwellings were a branch of the Celtic population of Switzerland, but that the earlier settlements belong to the prehistoric period, and had already fallen into decay before the Celts took their place in the history of Europe."

Mr. Laing's book on the "Prehistoric Remains of Caithness,"* has been received with small favour by the antiquaries of that county, and his conclusion that the human remains found by him in certain kists and mounds belong to the Early Stone-period, has excited a rather warm controversy; while his assertion that the Caithness people of that time were addicted to cannibalism, has been indignantly repudiated by every patriotic Scot. The last two numbers of the Anthropological Review' contain several papers by Messrs. Anderson, Shearer, Cleghorn, Petrie, and Dr Hunt, in which Mr. Laing's statements and inferences are severely criticized, and the opinion of these authors seems to be that the remains are very recent, probably not more than three or four centuries old. The principal series of graves are said to be the burial places of shipwrecked seamen, and to occur in a raised beach, not in an artificial mound. That some stone implements have been found is admitted, but they do not seem to have been in any case discovered by the explorers themselves; but even if their authenticity is hereafter proved, as Mr. Shearer remarks, "the whole thing is now so mixed up together as to render any of the things in a scientific inquiry utterly useless." Mr. Laing is thus charged by these authors with having made a most extraordinary series of blunders, and to have been rather careless of ensuring the authenticity and isolation of specimens from different localities and of different ages.

66

The Congress of the Archæological Institute, held in London during the past summer, deserves notice here chiefly on account of the luminous address delivered on the occasion by Sir John Lubbock, in which that zealous ethnologist, antiquary, and zoologist, sketched out the present condition of that portion of archæological science which relates to what he terms the Primeval Period," chiefly with a view of showing that the method hitherto employed almost entirely in geology and zoology had been applied to archæology with the same success as had attended its use in the former branches of knowledge. By the term "Primeval Period," Sir John indicated that extending from the first appearance of man down to the commencement of the Christian era, and to

*The Prehistoric Remains of Caithness.' By Samuel Laing, Esq., M.P., FG.S. With Notes on the Human Remains, by Thomas H. Huxley, F.R.S. Williams & Norgate.

† Our notice of this Address is based on the Report of it which appeared in the Athenæum' for July 21st, 1866.