Having already in a former work attempted the arrangement and description of the Ancient Stone Implements and Ornaments of Great Britain, I am induced to undertake a similar task in connection with those Bronze Antiquities which belong to the period when Stone was gradually falling into disuse for cutting purposes, and Iron was either practically unknown in this country, or had been but partially adopted for tools and weapons. The duration and chronological position of this bronze-using period will have to be discussed hereafter, but I must at the outset reiterate what I said some eight or ten years ago, that in this county, at all events, it is impossible to fix any hard and fast limits for the close of the Stone Period, or for the beginning or end of the Bronze Period, or for the commencement of that of Iron. Though the succession of these three stages of civilisation may here be regarded as certain, the transition from one to the other in a country of such an extent as Britain—occupied, moreover, as it probably was, by several tribes of different descent, manners, and customs—must have required a long course of years to become general; and even in any particular district the change cannot have been sudden. There must of necessity have been a time when in each district the new phase of civilisation was being introduced, and the old conditions had not been entirely changed. So that, as I have elsewhere pointed out, the three stages of progress represented by the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Periods, like the three principal colours of the rainbow, overlap, intermingle, and shade off the one into the other, though their succession, so far as Britain and Western Europe are concerned, appears to be equally well defined with that of the prismatic colours.

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In the following pages I purpose to give an account of the various forms of stone implements, weapons, and ornaments of remote antiquity discovered in Great Britain, their probable uses and method of manufacture, and also, in some instances, the circumstances of their discovery. While reducing the whole series into some sort of classification, as has been done for the stone antiquities of Scandinavia by Worsaae, Montelius, and Sophus Müller, for those of France by Messrs. Gabriel and Adrien de Mortillet, and for those of Ireland by Sir William Wilde, I hope to add something to our knowledge of this branch of Archæology by instituting comparisons, where possible, between the antiquities of England and Scotland and those of other parts of the world. Nor in considering the purposes to which the various forms were applied, and the method of their manufacture, must I neglect to avail myself of the illustrations afforded by the practice of modern savages, of which Sir John Lubbock and others have already made such profitable use. But before commencing any examination of special forms, there are some few general considerations on which it seems advisable to enter, if only in a cursory manner; and this is the more necessary, since notwithstanding the attention which has now for many years been devoted to Prehistoric Antiquities, there is seemingly still some misapprehension remaining as to the nature and value of the conclusions based upon recent archæological and geological investigations. At the risk therefore of being tedious, I shall have to notice once more many things already well known to archæologists, but which, it would appear from the misconceptions so often evinced, even by those who speak and write on such matters, can hardly be too often repeated. Not the least misunderstood of these subjects has been the classification of the antiquities of Western Europe, first practically adopted by the Danish antiquaries, under periods known as the Iron, Bronze, and Stone Ages; the Iron Age, so far as Denmark is concerned, being supposed to go back to about the Christian era, the Bronze Age to embrace a period of one or two thousand years previous to that date, and the Stone Age all previous time of man’s occupation of that part of the world.