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owing to her great richness in gold; Irish gold ornaments have been found both on the Continent and in Scandinavia; while Scandinavian amber has been found in Ireland. As will be seen on p. 81, the Bronze-Age people were acquainted with the art of weaving; and fine ornaments of horse-hair were sometimes used. The art of making pottery by hand was carried to a high degree of excellence. Shaving must have been fairly common, judging by the number of bronze razors found. We shall find evidence further on in this work to show that corn was probably grown and agriculture fairly advanced. [5] "New Grange and other Incised Tumuli in Ireland," p. 62. The great tumuli at New Grange and the lesser ones at Carrowkeel show that the art of building was well developed, and that the religious ideals of the people had attained a certain fixed form. What the actual dwellings occupied by the people were we cannot say; but it is probable that many of the promontory-forts and some at least of the larger cashels and ring-forts date back to this period. There remain, however, many questions which, as we have said, must be kept over for future investigations. THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE IRISH BRONZE AGE Some discussion as to the absolute chronology of the Bronze Age in Ireland will, no doubt, be expected, though any attempts to give actual dates can only be approximate; the succession of types is really of considerably more importance than the actual date, as such a succession enables objects, finds, and interments to be arranged in a progressive series, and shows the general trend of advance and culture. The doyen of prehistoric archaeology, Dr. Oscar Montelius, of Stockholm, has been the pioneer of the study of the prehistoric chronology of Europe, his chronology of the Bronze Age in Scandinavia having been published as far back as 1885. Since then he has published the results of his studies of the Bronze-Age chronologies of Greece and Italy, and of France, Belgium, South Germany, and Switzerland. More recently (1908) he has put forward the chronology of the British Islands in a notable memoir published in Archaeologia. It may be mentioned that Dr. Montelius visited Ireland some years ago, and speaks with the greater authority as having personally examined the actual Irish evidence. In this memoir Dr. Montelius divides the Bronze Age of Great Britain and Ireland into five periods, and includes in his first period the transitional t
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