For our present purposes it is of no great consequence which opinion prevails, as these forms have no bearing on those of other countries, especially as their date does not seem to be doubted. Worsaae places them all between the years 700 and 1000,[370] or in the second and latest Iron age, and as no one seems to dispute this, it may be accepted as an established fact. Their peculiarities of form, and the smallness of the stones of which most of them are composed, are such that the date here ascribed to them does not necessarily bring down that of the true megalithic remains to anything like the same age. It takes away, however, all improbability from the assertion that these may be much more modern than was supposed, and this much is certain that there was no break between the great English and Irish circles and the Viking graves; or, in other words, men did not cease to mark their sepulchres with circles and cairns, and then after a lapse of centuries revive the custom, and begin it again on a smaller scale. There may be a descent, but there was no solution of continuity, and any one can consequently form an idea how long a time must have elapsed before the great Wiltshire circles could have degenerated into those of Hjortehammer. [Illustration: 119. Circles at Aschenrade. From Bähr.] There is one other group of monuments it seems worth while to illustrate before leaving this branch of the subject. They are found in the extreme east of the province, on the banks of the Dwina, in Livonia. At a place called Aschenrade, about fifty miles as the crow flies from Riga, is a group shown in the accompanying woodcut.[371] The arrangement is unusual in Europe, but is met with in Algeria, and seems to be only such a combination of the square enclosures of Scandinavia as we would expect to find in a cemetery, as contradistinguished from a battle-field. In these graves was found enormous wealth of bronze and other metal and personal ornaments, many of which are engraved in Professor Bähr's book. They resemble in many respects the celebrated "find" at Hallstadt, in the Salzkammergut;[372] but mixed with these Livonian treasures were great numbers of coins and implements of iron of very modern form. The coins are classified as follows:-- German coins, dating from A.D. 936 to 1040. Anglo-Saxon coins, dating from " 991 " 1036. Byzantine coins, dating from " 911 " 1025. Arabic or Kufic coins, dating from " 906 " 999. It is curious that the Eastern coins should be so much earlier than the others, but they are only five in number, and may have been preserved as curiosities. The dates of the others prove, at all events, that some of these tombs are not of earlier date than 1040, and all, probably, are included in the century which preceded that epoch.