In    Great   Britain    the  objects  found  with    burials    are


68  PREHISTORIC   TIMES

comparatively  few.      In  Europe,  on  the  contrary,  some  of
them  were  rich  anci  important.
Hoards,  again,  may  be  divided  into

(i)  Treasures.
(2)   Stocks- in-trade.
The  greatest  of  all  hoards  is  that  discovered  in  1877  by
Signor  Zannoni,  who  in  excavating  for  a  new  sewer  on  behalf
of  the  municipality  of  Bologna  came  across  an  immense
vase  of  bronze  containing  no  less  than  14,800  objects  in
that  metal,  and  3  small  pieces  of  iron.^

Chantre  describes  some  fifty  French  hoards,  and  Evans
gives  a  most  interesting  table  of  1 10  found  in  Britain.
The  late  Sir  John  Evans  in  his  masterly  work  on  The
Bronze  Age  ciivided  it  into  three  periods.  Montelius
now  considers  ^  that  five  can  be  satisfactorily  distinguished.
Types  belonging  to  two  periods  are  very  seldom  found
together.  Some  cases,  indeed,  occur  in  which  types  of  the
first  and  second,  or  of  the  third  and  fourth  periods  occur
together,  but  the  first  and  third,  or  the  second  and  fourth,
are  never,  or  scarcely  ever,  represented  in  the  same
find.  The  exceptions  to  this  rule  are  very  rare,  which
shows  that  the  types  were  really  successive.
Period  i

This  might  be  termed  the  Copper  Age,  most  of  the
metallic  objects  being  of  pure  copper.  Stone  implements
were  still  abundant,  metal  being  rare.  The  axes  of
copper  were  simple  and  flat,  without  ridges  or  stops
(figs.  4,  7).  There  were  also  daggers  with  a  broad  flat
tang  and  generally  without  rivet  holes.  The  objects  of
bronze  were  in  fact  copies  of  those  of  stone.
The  metallic  objects  of  this  period  consisted  of —
(i)  Small  bronze  blades.
