129 : 19. Hallstatt iron culture. See Baron von Sacken, _Das Grabfeld von Hallstatt_; Dr. Moritz Hoernes, _Die Hallstattperiode_; Bertrand and Salomon Reinach, _Les Celts dans les vallées du Pô et du Danube_; and Ridgeway, _The Early Age of Greece_, pp. 407–480 and 594 _seq._ There is a brief summary by Ridgeway which it will serve to quote: “Everywhere else the change from iron weapons to bronze is immediate but at Hallstatt iron is seen gradually superseding bronze, first for ornament, then for edging cutting implements, then replacing fully the old bronze types and finally taking new forms of its own. There can be no doubt that the use of iron first developed in the Hallstatt area and that thence it spread southwards into Italy, Greece, the Ægean, Egypt and Asia, and northwards and westwards in Europe. At Noreia, which gave its name to Noricum, less than forty miles from Hallstatt, were the most famous iron mines of antiquity, which produced the Noric swords so prized and dreaded by the Romans. (See Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, XXXIV, 145; Horace, _Epod._, 17 : 71.) This iron needed no tempering and the Celts had found it ready smelted by nature just as the Eskimos had learned of themselves to use telluric iron embedded in basalt.... The Hallstatt culture is that of the Homeric Achæans (see Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, pp. 407 _seq._), but as the brooch (along with iron, cremation of the dead, the round shield and the geometric ornament), passed down into Greece from central Europe, and as brooches are found in the lower town at Mycenæ, 1350 B. C., they must have been invented long before that date in central Europe. But as they are found here in the late bronze and early iron age, the early iron culture of Hallstatt must have originated long before 1350 B. C., a conclusion in accordance with the absence of silver at Hallstatt itself.” Keller, p. 160, describes an iron sword modelled after the same pattern as those of bronze; Schenck, p. 341, mentions a copper axe exactly like those of stone, and another of bronze of very primitive pattern. These and numerous other examples show the gradual growth of each age. The generally accepted date for Hallstatt is about 900 or 1000 B. C. Even Rice Holmes approves of this. (See 2, p. 9.) But if we believe that iron spread from Hallstatt, and it was in Etruria at 1200–1100 B. C., and in Greece, in the form of swords like those of Hallstatt, at 1400 B. C. (according to Ridgeway), together with pins and various other objects which originated in the Tyrol, it is certainly very conservative to place the appearance of iron in Austria at 1500 B. C. Iron weapons were found in the remains of Troy from the war of 1184 B. C. See Ridgeway, _op. cit._, and Lartiaux, p. 179.