A History of Ancient Britain

by Neil Oliver

Something similar has happened to Orkney – but there it is about much deeper time. Whatever passions gripped the place 5,000 years ago are long cooled; no tears are shed now beside the empty tombs and no hearts beat fast in the shadows of tall stones so earnestly raised. But something lingers just the same, the memory of a memory.

How will our existence now - look in 5000 years? Despite our ability to record and store every facet of life, the sheer volume of data will see us lost; much like those earlier peoples of this book. Somewhere we will become a copy of a copy.

It is yet another demonstration of how complex their relationship to the metal had become. What mattered most was not that the object was made of bronze. Much of the real cachet lay in its source, where and from whom it had been obtained. There is something almost deliberately awkward or contrary about what was going on. Often it is in those areas furthest from any natural sources of copper and tin – south-eastern England, for example – that the largest volumes of hoarded bronze are found. People in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, on the other hand – parts of the country where bronze could easily have been made locally – preferred to import the stuff from abroad.

‘Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’.