Though tin was exported from Cornwall, bronze was not manufactured there
till a comparatively late period. Bronze came from the East, and the
great centre whence radiated the trade in bronze weapons was the basin
of the Po.
What seems to be abundantly clear is that the export of tin from Britain
had come to an end by the first century of the present era. Caesar, on
invading Britain, heard nothing about it, and when Britain was finally
conquered, the Romans who worked the lead mines in the Mendips, and gold
and copper in Wales, totally neglected Cornwall, holding it to be
worthless. They never settled there, only traversed it to the Land's
End, leaving behind them a couple of square camps, some coins, few and
far between, and some Samian ware; but this shows little more than that
a traffic went on between the Britons of Cornwall and the Romans and
Romano-British beyond Exeter. The fact that the Romans had no idea that
tin was to be found in the peninsula shows that the mining for it had
ceased there for some time previous. The Brythonic Celts are held to
have invaded Britain B.C. 300; and it is probable that from that date
the industry in tin mining carried on by the Ivernian natives declined
rapidly and expired, leaving not a tradition behind.
It is noteworthy that the Dumnonii were behind the British peoples in
the east. They had no coinage, whereas those in the south-east had
theirs, copied from a stater of Philip of Macedon. No Greek coins had
reached the Dumnonii, and they had consequently none to copy, however
clumsily.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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