Some discussion as to the absolute chronology of the Bronze Age in Ireland will, no doubt, be expected, though any attempts to give actual dates can only be approximate; the succession of types is really of considerably more importance than the actual date, as such a succession enables objects, finds, and interments to be arranged in a progressive series, and shows the general trend of advance and culture. The doyen of prehistoric archaeology, Dr. Oscar Montelius, of Stockholm, has been the pioneer of the study of the prehistoric chronology of Europe, his chronology of the Bronze Age in Scandinavia having been published as far back as 1885. Since then he has published the results of his studies of the Bronze-Age chronologies of Greece and Italy, and of France, Belgium, South Germany, and Switzerland. More recently (1908) he has put forward the chronology of the British Islands in a notable memoir published in Archaeologia. It may be mentioned that Dr. Montelius visited Ireland some years ago, and speaks with the greater authority as having personally examined the actual Irish evidence. In this memoir Dr. Montelius divides the Bronze Age of Great Britain and Ireland into five periods, and includes in his first period the transitional time when copper was in use (Copper Period), which he places at from the middle of the third to the beginning of the second millennium B.C. Now, though the division of the Irish Bronze Age into five periods may be accepted, we should hardly care to place the first period as early as Dr. Montelius suggests; and without going into the question of the time at which the period commenced, we might take the period of its ending at from about 2000-1800 B.C. In this period would be included the flat copper celts of early form, copied from the stone celts of the preceding Neolithic Period, some few small, flat knife-daggers of copper, and the earliest of the halberds. Stone implements, no doubt, remained largely in use; and the very finely decorated hammer-axes probably belong to this period. It is possible that gold--which, on account of its colour and appearance on the surface of the ground, must have been one of the metals first noticed and made use of in prehistoric times--was used for making ornaments at this period, or possibly, as Prof. Gowland suggests, may have been hammered into ornaments even during the preceding Neolithic Age.[6] There is, however, no gold object in the National Collection which we should care to place so early. [6] Journal Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. xlii, p. 259. The second division of the Bronze Age (the first period of the true Bronze Age) would fall between 1800 and 1500 B.C.; and in it would be included, as the principal types, the flat bronze celts--including those with the edge much wider than the blade--flanged celts, small bronze daggers, the later halberds, jet buttons with conical perforations, and the early types of jet necklaces, and probably the gold lunulae.