land, there have frequently been found Roman coins, belonging to the first centuries after Christ, but none older. The objects found in those tombs, exhibit a remarkable general resemblance, not only in pattern, but also in form; this however affords no proof, that they were manufactured by one people, and by them spread over Europe, because the details differ in different countries. On the contrary in the iron-period we see again a common step of civilization for the European people; we find the first traces of the new civilization, which rose upon the ruins of the Roman civilization, but which necessarily commenced with imitations of the preceding one. But, at the same time, the tombs shew that this imitation commenced later in the north, and particularly in Scandinavia, than in the south, and west of Europe. In the Scandinavian tombs of the iron-period there have never been found, as in those of southern and western Europe, Roman coins dating from the first centuries after Christ; for the Roman coins, which have been discovered in the North, have been turned up in fields, sand-banks, &c., but never in tombs. Celtic coins have never been discovered in Scandinavia. The oldest coins which have been found in the North, in connection with antiquities of the iron-period, are Byzantine coins, or more commonly imitations of Byzantine coins, the bracteates of gold, which are for the most part imitated from coins of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. The imitations of the coins are then of course of a still later date. Thus, the tombs of the iron-period in the south shew an earlier influence from Rome, but the northern tombs, of the same period, shew a much later influence from Byzantium. It is therefore not only easy to understand why the remains of the old civilization in the bronze-period are so rare in the south of Europe, and so numerous in the north, particularly in Ireland and Denmark, where the Romans never were, but it will also now be much easier to explain the monuments of the bronze and iron-period, in Scandinavia.
We have seen, not only that the antiquities of the iron-
