Technologies of enchantment?: exploring Celtic art: 400 BC to AD 100 9780199548064, 0199548064, 9780191626272, 0191626279, 9781283576710, 1283576716

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TECHNOLOGIES OF ENCHANTMENT?

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Technologies of Enchantment? Exploring Celtic Art: 400 BC to AD 100

DUNCAN GARROW AND CHRIS GOSDEN

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries # Duncan Garrow and Chris Gosden 2012 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2012 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978–0–19–954806–4 Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn

Contents List of Figures List of Tables List of Appendices Acknowledgements

ix xiv xv xvi

1. People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period

1

Aspects of the Iron Age Reciprocity and Reproduction Bronze and Iron Social Ontologies The Later Iron Age and Romano-British Periods The Structure of the Book

6 7 14 21 28 35

2. But is it Art? Past and Present Approaches to Celtic Art Approaches to Prehistoric Art Philosophical, Anthropological, and Art-Historical Approaches to Art Celtic Art? Past Approaches to Celtic Art A Summary of Our Approach

38 39 43 46 48 57

3. The Database and Our Methodology

60

Deciding What to Include Constructing the Database Celtic Art: The Basics Biases to Consider The Spatial Distribution of Objects The Temporal Distribution of Objects Dating Stylistic Change Concluding Discussion

61 62 64 66 68 70 79 84

4. Making Materials Making Iron Making Bronze Making Deposits: The Beaten and the Cast Making Decoration Concluding Discussion

87 89 93 97 100 107

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Contents

5. Artefactual Times: Swords, Torcs, and Coins Swords Late Iron Age Swords Sword Deposition The Life Histories of Swords Torcs Torc Decorations Coins and Torcs Summary Concluding Discussion

6. Hoards Hoarding: Recent Discussions Hoards and Celtic Art: Broad Patterns Object Networks Object Types Object Connections Summary Material Networks Fragmentation, Attrition, and Wear Case Study 1: An ‘Early’ Hoard at Ringstead, Norfolk Object Connections Interpretations Case Study 2: A ‘Late’ Hoard at ‘Polden Hill’, Somerset Object Connections Interpretations Concluding Discussion

7. Burials Iron Age Burial: Recent Discussions Burials and Celtic Art: Broad Patterns Burial Types Object Networks Object–Object Connections Object–Human and Object–Animal Connections Summary Introduction to the Case Studies Case Study 1: A Chariot Burial from Kirkburn, East Yorkshire The Burial Process Object and Human Histories Object–Human Connections Horse/Chariot Gear Mail Cloak Pig Bones

112 114 119 123 128 134 141 143 149 152

155 158 160 163 166 167 169 170 172 179 179 182 185 185 189 191

194 197 199 202 205 205 206 208 209 210 210 214 216 217 219 220

Contents D-Shaped Box Connections Beyond the Grave Summary Case Study 2: A Warrior Burial at Mill Hill, Deal, Kent The Burial Process Object and Human Histories Assemblage History Constructing the ‘Warrior’ within the Grave Summary Case Study 3: A Welwyn-type Burial from Baldock, Hertfordshire The Burial Process Object–Object Connections Object–Human Connections Summary Case Study 4: A Mirror Burial at Portesham, Dorset The Burial Process Object and Human Histories Summary Concluding Discussion

8. Settlements Settlements: Recent Discussions Settlements and Celtic Art: Broad Patterns Introduction to Case Studies 1 and 2 Wessex in the Iron Age Metalworking in Wessex Celtic Art in Wessex Case Study 1: The Manufacture of Celtic Art at Gussage All Saints An Introduction to Gussage Celtic Art at Gussage Metalworking Evidence Pit 209 Summary Case Study 2: Horse Gear (and Horses) at Bury Hill An Introduction to Bury Hill Celtic Art at Bury Hill Pits P23, P24, P45, and P57 Special Deposits? Summary Introduction to Case Study 3: Newstead Roman Fort Celtic Art in Roman Forts Case Study 3: Celtic Art and Roman Identities at Newstead An Introduction to Newstead Artefact Assemblages and Interpretations Celtic Art at Newstead Fragmentation, Attrition, and Wear

vii 221 222 224 226 226 229 235 236 240 241 241 243 246 247 249 250 252 254 255

258 259 261 264 264 266 266 267 267 269 271 271 276 280 280 281 283 284 285 287 290 291 291 292 294 297

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Contents

Broader Assemblages Summary Concluding Discussion

9. The Art of Community Dispersed Communities Theatre and Performance Multiple Meanings and Cumulative Styles Negotiating Identities The Dinnington Torc Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3 Appendix 4 Bibliography Index

299 300 304

307 311 313 316 318 323 327 331 336 338 342 367

List of Figures 1.1 Hoard L Snettisham, upper deposit

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1.2 Hoard L Snettisham, lower deposit (Stead 1991d: Plate 8)

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1.3 Hoard L Snettisham, the ‘Grotesque’ torc

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1.4 Detail of the ‘Grotesque’ torc, with a possible human face (Stead 1991a: Fig. 11)

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1.5 Linch pins and terrets (Stead 1985b: Fig. 88)

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1.6 Tower Hill hoard, socketed axes

19

1.7 The Desborough mirror

30

1.8 A Dragonesque brooch

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2.1 Fox’s ‘Grammar of British Early Celtic Ornament: I’ (Fox 1958: Fig. 82)

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2.2 Aspects of Jope’s ‘Anatomy of Early Celtic Ornament’ (Jope 2000: Plate IV)

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2.3 Decoration on the Witham scabbard (Stead 2006: 217)

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2.4 The Cerrigydrudion ‘crown’ (detail)

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2.5 The Battersea shield (Stead 1985a: Plate 13)

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3.1 Quantities of different object types within the database (total no. 2,580)

64

3.2 Overall distribution of findspots within the database (total no. 2,530)

65

3.3 Percentage of artefacts within each context (total no. 1,679)

66

3.4 Distribution of Iron Age brooches (black squares) in relation to all objects within the database (grey squares)

67

3.5 Distribution of Iron Age coins (black dots) in relation to all objects within the database (grey squares)

68

3.6 Amounts of all horse gear within each context (total no. 400)

70

3.7 Percentage of arm rings within each context (total no. 21)

70

3.8 Percentage of massive armlets within each context (total no. 18)

71

3.9 Numbers of objects deposited per phase (total no. 1,491)

72

x

List of Figures

3.10 Numbers of objects deposited per year per phase (total no. 1,491)

73

3.11 Distribution of all datable finds by phase

74–5

3.12a–b Distributions of contextually dated artefacts by phase

77–8

4.1 Two-dimensional decoration on the mirror from Trelan Bahow, St Keverne

88

4.2 Three-dimensional horse gear from Stanwick/Melsonby

88

4.3 The depositional contexts of cast objects

98

4.4 The depositional contexts of beaten objects

98

4.5 The depositional contexts of copper alloy objects

99

4.6 The depositional contexts of iron objects

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4.7 Relative contribution of each object type to the total of all ‘2-D’ surface-decorated objects in the database

102

4.8 Numbers of ‘2-D’ surface-decorated objects with each motif type 103 4.9 Flowing repoussé decoration on the Battersea shield (Stead 1985a: Plate 6)

104

4.10 Relative contribution of each object type to the total of all ‘3-D’ objects in the database

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4.11 Numbers of ‘3-D’ objects with each motif type

105

4.12 The distribution of ‘2-D’ surface-decorated objects in the three impact classes across depositional contexts

107

4.13 The distribution of ‘3-D’ objects in the three impact classes across depositional contexts

107

5.1 Scabbard decoration on a sword from Wetwang Slack (Stead 2006: Fig. 88)

118

5.2 Kirkburn sword, exploded view (Stead 2006: Fig. 87)

129

5.3 Scabbard from the River Thames (Stead 2006: Fig. 70)

131

5.4 Torc terminal types (after Stead 1991: Figs. 7–10)

135

5.5 The Ipswich torcs

135

5.6 European distribution of torcs (after Hautenauve 2005: Carte 1)

136

5.7 A selection of the objects from Snettisham, Hoard F (Stead 1991: Plate 2)

139

5.8 The ‘Great’ torc from Snettisham

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5.9 Schematic diagram of Snettisham, Hoards G, H, J, K, and L, showing metallic composition and stratigraphic position of each torc 141

List of Figures

xi

5.10 The ‘Great’ torc from Snettisham (detail)

142

5.11 Gallo-Belgic A coin

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5.12 Ternary diagrams showing the relationship between metal composition and colour in torcs and coins

146

5.13 Gallo-Belgic C coin abstraction

148

5.14 The Sutton scabbard (Stead 2006: Fig. 49)

150

6.1 Torcs within Hoard L at Snettisham, being recorded on site by Ian Stead

160

6.2 A selection of first century AD horse gear

161

6.3 Sizes of hoards containing Celtic art

162

6.4 Distribution of hoards containing Celtic art and multiple iron deposits by context

163

6.5 Total numbers of each object type within all hoards (total: 1,393)

164

6.6 Relative proportions of each Celtic art object type found within hoards in comparison to those from all other contexts

165

6.7 Percentage of early hoards containing each object type

166

6.8 Percentage of late hoards containing each object type

166

6.9 Object connections in early hoards

167

6.10 Object connections in late hoards

168

6.11 Percentage of Celtic art hoards containing each material

171

6.12 Contribution of each period in terms of all hoards containing each material

171

6.13 Proportion of complete and incomplete items for each object type

174

6.14 Bridle bits, ‘plates’, and ingot ‘cake’ from Ringstead (Clarke 1951: Plates 16, 18 and 19e)

181

6.15 Three of the bridle bits from Polden Hill (Brailsford 1975: Fig. 3)

187

6.16 Three of the terrets from Polden Hill

188

7.1 Relative proportions of each Celtic art object type within burials in comparison to those from all other contexts

200

7.2 Numbers of burials containing each object type over time

201

7.3 Spatial distribution of burial types

204

7.4 Number of burials containing each object type

206

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List of Figures

7.5 Burial K5 at Kirkburn (Stead 1991b: Fig. 127)

211

7.6 Kirkburn, Site 1 (Stead 1991b: Fig. 23)

212

7.7 Kirkburn K5 linch pins (Stead 1991b: Fig. 37)

216

7.8 Kirkburn K5 terrets (Stead 1991b: Fig. 40)

217

7.9 Kirkburn K5 box lid (Stead 1991b: Fig. 47)

222

7.10 Kirkburn K6 (Stead 1991b: Fig. 69)

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7.11 Burial G112 at Mill Hill, Deal

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7.12 Mill Hill, Deal, excavations

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7.13 Photo of skull and crown

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7.14 The crown’s construction

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7.15 Modern reconstruction of the crown, showing the point at which the decoration schemes on each of the two different segments (riveted together) meet

233

7.16 Photo of scabbard decoration

234

7.17 Photo of brooch, strap end, and suspension ring

235

7.18 Reconstruction drawing of grave (Stead and Rigby 1986: Fig. 20) 244 7.19 Fire-dog and bucket drawing (Stead and Rigby 1986: Fig. 24)

245

7.20 Photo of mirror (Fitzpatrick 1997: Plate 1)

249

7.21 Plan of grave (Fitzpatrick 1997: Fig. 2)

250

8.1 Relative proportions of each type of Celtic art object within settlements in comparison to those from all other contexts

262

8.2 Numbers of Celtic art objects found on each site type

262

8.3 Distribution of Celtic art by settlement type

263

8.4 Relative proportions of each type of Celtic art object within hill forts and all other settlement contexts in Wessex

267

8.5 Distribution of metalworking debris at Gussage, by phase

270

8.6 Section of Pit 209 (Wainwright 1979: Fig. 96)

272

8.7 Moulds for making bridle bits (after Wainwright 1979: Fig. 104)

273

8.8 Bury Hill: overall site plan and trench locations (Cunliffe and Poole 2000: Fig. 2.2)

281

8.9 Features in Area 2, Bury Hill

282

8.10 Numbers of each type of Celtic art object found within Roman forts in northern Britain

290

List of Figures

xiii

8.11 A selection of swords and shield mountings from Newstead (Curle 1911: Plate 34)

298

8.12 A selection of horse gear from Newstead (Curle 1911: Plate 75)

300

8.13 Locations of features producing Celtic and Roman horse gear (plan based on Clarke and Jones 1996: Fig. 2)

301

8.14 Locations of features producing Celtic and Roman swords (plan based on Clarke and Jones 1996: Fig. 2)

302

9.1 Battersea shield (detail)

318

9.2 The occurrence of Celtic art on large Late Iron Age sites known as oppida

319

9.3 Dinnington torc (Beswick et al. 1990: Fig. 2)

324

List of Tables 3.1 Chronological subdivisions used (note that calendar dates and correspondences with other schemes are approximate; see Haselgrove 1993 for details of coin phasing)

72

4.1 The links between material, techniques, and depositional context

97

4.2 The links between surface, form, decoration, and depositional context

100

4.3 The links between motif and form

101

5.1 The typology, history, and depositional contexts of relatively complete swords (information from Stead 2006)

120–2

5.2 The depositional contexts of Iron Age swords (data from Stead 2006: Table 11)

123

5.3 The history of damage, repairs, and replacements on scabbards and swords (data from Stead 2006)

127

7.1 Number of burials within each category

203

8.1 Celtic art objects from Newstead

295

List of Appendices Appendix 1 Artefacts illustrated in some of the main works on Celtic art

327

Appendix 2 List of objects used in motif analysis

331

Appendix 3 Hoards containing Celtic art

336

Appendix 4 Burials containing Celtic art

338

Acknowledgements The Technologies of Enchantment project aimed to take a fresh look at so-called Celtic art – the body of mainly metalwork from the late Iron Age and early Roman period in Britain. The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant number 112199) between October 2005 and September 2008, and we are very grateful for AHRC support. Looking back on a project of this kind it is interesting to note how many relationships were involved, some of which have flourished during the course of the project and others less so, for a range of reasons. The project was originally written with Natasha Hutcheson as the named researcher, but between the submission of the application and the result being announced, Natasha gained a permanent job. Duncan Garrow joined the project as a result. John Mack and J. D. Hill were co-applicants on the application and we have worked together productively in various ways, John feeding in anthropological insights and helping to organize a conference at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, in 2007. J. D. has made his own inimitable form of contribution and we are sad that the pressure of work at the British Museum has meant that he has not been a co-author of this book. However, J. D. made very full and forceful comments on an earlier draft, thereby improving it hugely, and his influence is felt throughout, so that he acts as a silent third author. The project has gone through a number of stages. In the first year Duncan constructed the database on which the work is based, and also organized a conference on new approaches to Celtic art in Oxford that took place on 25 and 26 November 2006. From this, a conference volume (Garrow et al. 2008) resulted, and the work for the conference and edited book has helped shape our subsequent thought. During the next year we worked on the first major dating programme for Celtic art in Britain. The radiocarbon dates were generously funded by the AHRC via the Oxford Radiocarbon Dating Service (ORADS) programme. This resulted in an article (Garrow et al. 2010). The work on dating was surprisingly timeconsuming, but the nature of the dates was also formative in our thinking as a whole and indispensable to the rest of the thought and

Acknowledgements

xvii

writing we have undertaken. The Norwich conference on 30 November and 1 December 2007 was the final event of the project, and the final publication for this is in preparation. When the project formally ended in September 2008, Duncan took up a lectureship in Liverpool, having completed a number of chapters in first draft. Over the last two years we have sent chapters back and forth between Oxford and Liverpool, with comments from a variety of people, principally Anwen Cooper, Jody Joy, and J. D. Hill. Jody has also generously provided information and context from his own ongoing work, first on mirrors and more latterly on the Snettisham hoards, which have helped sharpen our own thoughts. Other major repositories of Celtic art are found in the National Museums of Wales and Scotland. We thank Adam Gwilt and Fraser Hunter for providing access to the material and for insightful discussions about it. Many people have contributed to the project with advice and comments. In particular we would like to thank Richard Bradley, Anwen Cooper, Barry Cunliffe, Andrew Fitzpatrick, Melanie Giles, Helena Hamerow, Colin Haselgrove, Dan Hicks, Natasha Hutcheson, Zena Kamash, Gary Lock, Vincent Megaw, Wendy Morrison, Rachel Pope, and Niall Sharples. Special thanks go to those two doyens of British Celtic art, Mansel Spratling and Ian Stead, who have generously offered ideas and support throughout the course of the project. Reading their work, we have become increasingly aware of the acuteness and detail of their observations as well as their ability to relate any individual item to the broadest canvas of metalwork and other finds. We would also like to thank Dave Allen for his help in enabling us to study the finds from Bury Hill at Andover Museum; Simon Clarke for answering our questions about as yet unpublished excavations at Newstead; Mary Davis for letting us read a chapter (about the Polden Hill hoard) of her forthcoming Cardiff PhD in advance of publication; Andrew Fitzpatrick for commenting on the Portesham mirror section of Chapter Seven; Jennifer Foster for taking the time to discuss the metalworking moulds from Gussage All Saints and Weelsby Avenue; Melanie Giles for providing us with access to her PhD (2000); Colin Haselgrove for providing unpublished information about the chronology of ironwork hoards; Dan Pett and Sally Worrell for providing us with data from the Portable Antiquities Scheme so readily; Niall Sharples for saving us a great deal of effort

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and time by providing access to all of his book on Iron Age Wessex (2010) just before it was published; Mansel Spratling for his insightful comments on Chapters Six and Seven; and finally Mike Athanson, John Pouncett, and Fraser Sturt for answering many GIS-related questions over the course of the project. We would also like to thank our families for living with this work for so long and being supportive throughout. Many individuals and institutions have been very kind in granting us permission to reproduce images. In evidence throughout this book, from the front cover to the final chapter, are photos of some of the many beautiful Celtic art objects held at the British Museum, along with numerous illustrations from British Museum publications; we are extremely grateful to J. D. Hill, Jody Joy, and the Trustees of the British Museum for allowing us to use these – the book would have looked very different without them. We would also like to thank John Creighton for allowing us to use versions of his coin images in Chapter Five, Barry Cunliffe for allowing us to use the images from his Bury Hill publication; English Heritage for images from Gussage All Saints; Andrew Fitzpatrick and the Trust for Wessex Archaeology for images from Portesham; Adam Gwilt and National Museum Wales for the image of the Cerrigydrudion ‘crown’ and permission to reproduce Fox 1958. Keith Parfitt and the Dover Archaeological Group for images from Mill Hill, Deal; Julie Gardiner and the Prehistoric Society for images from Polden Hill and Ringstead; the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies for images from Baldock; and Ian Stead for numerous images in his publications (most notably those from Kirkburn, Snettisham, and his Iron Age Swords and Scabbards book). Finally, it is important to thank Ian Cartwright and Alison Wilkins, who prepared many of these images for final publication, and constructed a number of the site plans, distribution plots, etcetera, scattered throughout the book. Finally, we would like to thank a number of people at, and associated with, OUP for their assistance, patience and skill in bringing this book through to publication: Hilary O’Shea (commissioning editor), Taryn Campbell (assistant commissioning editor), Desirée Kellerman (production editor), Marilyn Inglis (proofreader), Richard Mason (copy editing), and Kim Birchall (indexing).

1 People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period ‘You will need your sunglasses to look at that lot’, said a seasoned curator at the British Museum in London as we went to examine some of the gold and silver torcs from Snettisham. There, in the Students’ Room of the British Museum, lying in two drawers, were parts of hoards F and L, spectacular items in their own right, but a very minor part numerically of the whole Snettisham assemblage. From 1948 onwards between 12 and 14 hoards were discovered on a low hilltop in Norfolk, some still buried in small pits, others scattered through the topsoil (hence the uncertainty about the numbers of hoards). Some 75 complete torcs were found, with fragments of up to 100 more (to give a sense of scale, it is estimated that only around 275 torcs have been found from the whole of Europe). The torcs and fragments of other artefacts represent 20 kg of silver and 15 kg of gold (Stead 1991c; see also Chapters Five and Six). The finds from Snettisham have radically changed our views of the skills and scale of Iron Age working in gold and silver, a relatively rare occasion on which a single site makes a real difference to our perception of the past. But it is not just the scale of the finds that is so striking, it is also their nature. Let us take one example. Hoard L was found in a comparatively large pit (Stead 1991d: 450). In the upper deposit was a compact stack of seven silver and bronze torcs (Fig. 1.1) with a layer of earth 17 cm (6⅝ in) deep separating these from a lower deposit with four gold torcs, seven of gold/silver alloy and one of silver (Fig. 1.2). The so-called ‘Grotesque’ torc is found in this lower group and is an assemblage all on its own (Fig. 1.3). This is made of four sets of twisted wire strands, which are in turn intertwined. These terminals have high-relief decoration in a variety of

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Chapter One

Fig. 1.1 Hoard L Snettisham, upper deposit # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

generally circular forms, divided by high ridges and given emphasis by stippling and dots. There is an ambiguity to this decoration – aspects of it could be read as human faces (Fig. 1.4), but only when the torc is turned through 90˚ from the angle when worn on the neck. In any case, the three-dimensional nature of the decoration means that not all of it could be seen at once, with the unseen elements to be remembered or imagined. The decoration shows some wear, indicating that the torc had been worn or handled for some time prior to burial. Its colour is strikingly yellow and there is some suggestion that the hoards of torcs were arranged by colour, with the more golden items lower down. The ‘Grotesque’ torc has a mini-torc threaded through its terminals in the form of a two-stranded gold wire. A flat silver wire is wound round one end of the loop and through the adjacent terminal. Opposite the terminals the loop of the torc is wrapped in gold sheet and at either end the sheet of gold is wrapped round with thin wire and flat silver wire. The diameter of the torc is 203 mm (8 in) and it weighs 801.3 gm.

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period

3

Fig. 1.2 Hoard L Snettisham, lower deposit (Stead 1991a: Plate 8) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

Fig. 1.3 Hoard L Snettisham, the ‘Grotesque’ torc # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

4

Chapter One

Fig. 1.4 Detail of the ‘Grotesque’ torc, with a possible human face (Stead 1991a: Fig. 11) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

The ‘Grotesque’ torc can be seen as an element in a series of relationships spanning the past and into the present. First of all, the torc itself is a multiple object requiring varied skills to make, from the finding and refining of the gold and silver, through the drawing of multiple strands of wire, the casting of the terminals with subsequent enhancement of the decoration, and the soldering of those terminals onto the wire loop. The torc was worn, used, and added to, with its various additions of gold sheet, gold and silver wire. Some of these would have made the item less comfortable to wear, perhaps indicating it was displayed as much as worn prior to its burial. The deposition of the torc was a complex matter, with decisions having to be made as to combinations of colours and types, indicating a complicated aesthetic of colour and form. The Snettisham torcs are part of a larger European corpus of neck rings and torcs, many decorated with motifs usually thought to be Celtic art. The wide sharing of motifs is nuanced by regional differences, so that the plasticity of decoration and the use of stippling and hatching characterize British variants of European styles, and within Britain there are hints of slightly varying styles. At a very broad spatial and temporal level, Iron Age torcs are part of a longer-term history of

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period

5

metal neck ornaments from the Early Bronze Age onwards, as well as a fluctuating use of gold and silver. These two metals were newly deployed in the Late Iron Age to make coins, with torcs having a complicated relationship to coinage, not least in Snettisham itself, where the hoards included large numbers of coins (see also Chapter Five). Iron Age torcs therefore required skills on the part of their maker or makers, but they also demanded skills of discrimination and appreciation from the user. As mentioned, the motifs on decorated torcs occur as part of a broader class of Celtic art objects with decoration in three and two dimensions. By the third century BC, when the Snettisham torcs probably start to be produced, their users and viewers would have been aware of decorations on beaten metal items, such as casques or sword scabbards and three-dimensional pieces such as horse gear. A single torc was both sufficient unto itself but also linked in multiple ways to a broader corpus of metalwork. Over the last two centuries antiquarians and archaeologists have taken up the task of trying to link together and to understand this complex corpus. Despite considerable efforts many uncertainties still exist. Some of them are due to gaps in our knowledge – for instance, were torcs personal possessions or badges of office? More interestingly, some uncertainties may be inherent in the material itself. There is an ambiguity to many of the designs in Celtic art that lead some scholars to see figurative elements – human faces, birds, vegetation – and others to see only abstract forms. Our view, developed later in the book, is that this was an art of ambiguity and enchantment, open to multiple readings and significances, which overall helped to negotiate an inherently unstable social world from around 400 BC onwards. This was not an art of fixed or fixable meanings, but one designed to have an impact on the senses, the emotions, and on notions of key relations with human and non-human forces. We cannot share much experience with people of the past, but something of the general wonder of this material still comes through even in the present day when we are saturated with form and image. Taking the impact of the corpus of Celtic art as our starting point, what role did it play in Iron Age relations? In order to approach such a question we need a theoretical stance, and ours concerns ontology, or the nature of being. Ontologies emphasize the interactions of Iron Age peoples with the material world, and what sorts of outcomes they were trying to achieve (see below). In order to be able to analyze these interactions, we need to re-immerse Celtic art into the broader

6

Chapter One

archaeological record of the later Iron Age and Early Roman periods. Celtic art is found in settlements, burials, hoards, rivers, and bogs. It is connected to a mass of features (the pits at Snettisham) and artefacts (the coins). Recent approaches to the subject have reinforced the ‘art’ aspect of the Celtic finds, by tracing similarities of form and motif over time and space. Such efforts have been valuable in defining the internal links within the assemblage of Celtic art, but have tended to cut it off from many other aspects of archaeological evidence. We will work to renew the connections to this evidence, without losing the insights that can be gained from considering Celtic art as a corpus. Our methods are described in more detail in Chapter Three; our starting point is usually a database, which we constructed by putting onto it all the items of Celtic art in Britain known to us. The database has provided us with a central resource from which to trace out relations over time and space, between the objects on the database and with other aspects of archaeological evidence. Dating has been a key issue in discussing Celtic art, and therefore we have also made efforts to gain radiocarbon determinations of key pieces (Garrow et al. 2010). Our next steps here are to provide a brief, relevant background to the Iron Age, then to outline initially our theoretical approach, before discussing the structure of the book.

ASPECTS OF THE IRON AGE Our approach is an object-centred one. We shall start from the form and decoration of artefacts. There are many possible accounts of the British Iron Age and ours will privilege the role of objects, especially metalwork. In order to understand the role that metalwork played in the later first millennium BC, we need to think about long-term and larger-scale trends in cultural approaches to the world. Obviously there was a great deal of change between the Middle Bronze Age and the coming of the Romans, but surprisingly some elements of continuity are also obvious. The main one is a continuing emphasis on deposition in rivers, bogs, dry land hoards, and graves. The emphases of what is placed where shift over time and vary from region to region, but the compulsion deliberately to deposit material carries on. Such a compulsion potentially derived from the need for reciprocity. We argue that people were then enmeshed in a series of reciprocal

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period

7

relations with each other and with broader spiritual powers, in which the basic rules of gift exchange applied – all gifts had to be reciprocated, whether a metal axe or pot given by a neighbour or access to powers of production granted by cosmological powers. Spiritual powers demanded repayment, which were met in part by deposits of metals. All societies are concerned with continuation and reproduction, not just of the physical aspects of life, but of a world that makes sense and has a knowable form. Marx (1973 [1857–8]), writing in the Grundrisse, outlined the conjoined nature of consumptive production and productive consumption, regarding production and consumption as so intimately linked that they were almost the same thing. The cyclical nature of human action, whereby all production uses up existing materials and all consumption helps create something new, is complemented by the notion that production and consumption are simultaneously creative of objective and subjective states. To paraphrase Marx – people objectify themselves in the things they make and things subjectify themselves through being shaped by human hands. Here we arrive at the central Marxist notion that people make themselves in the act of making the world. People strive not just to make the world but to make the world meaningful, where things and people are entities that are significant within the processes of everyday life. In later prehistoric Britain, we argue, reproduction of people and of things depended on a fundamental notion of reciprocity that does form a long-term background to life, against which metalworking and other productive activities need to be understood.

Reciprocity and Reproduction We wish to emphasize two key points and connections here (first discussed by Brück 1999), which complement the one we have just made about the need for reciprocity. Firstly, that from the Middle Bronze Age onwards the domestic sphere of settlements and houses was echoed by the ways in which dead bodies were burnt, buried, or circulated. Secondly, that over the same period life revolved around cycles of transformation in which the human life course of birth, maturation, and death was linked to the making, moving, and deposition of objects (again see Brück 1999). People as individuals and groups were linked in cycles of transformation with house and settlement structures in which everyday activities took place and

8

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more unusual and dramatic forms of action, such as the burning of bodies or the working of metal. We currently have theoretical reasons to link people and things, but there are also compelling empirical reasons to do so in late prehistory, whether these things be house structures, pottery or axes, or human bones. Time is also key. Over short timescales we can see cycles at the scale of human generations in which houses are made and abandoned, metal deposited, etc. But much longer continuities are also evident from the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Iron Age in the patterns of building and replacing houses, making and depositing metalwork at special spots within rivers, and so on. The short-term cycles continue, change, modify, and contradict the longer-term ones, so that there is a dynamic interaction between human action unfolding at different scales. A lot changes in the first century BC, but even here there are hints of continuities reaching back into earlier prehistory. The Middle Bronze Age, from 1500 to 1150 BC, is the period in which the British landscape is first laid out in fields and enclosures, with a small number of houses and structures for productive activities. Especially in southern Britain, decorated Deverel-Rimbury styles are known in the form of Globular, Bucket, and Barrel urns, which have variants in western and northern Britain. Ellison (1981) outlined differences in the distributions of Deverel-Rimbury pottery, which she links to spheres of exchange, with everyday wares moving 10–20 km from their source, and fine wares being exchanged over longer distances. Distributions of fine wares bear some comparison with the axe and ornament classes of metalwork recognized by Rowlands (1976: 164; 1980: 33). Rowlands further divided southern Britain into five main metalworking centres – East Anglia, the Thames Valley, the south coast in Hampshire/Sussex/Kent, south Wiltshire/ Dorset, and Somerset/Devon – on the basis of distributions of tools, weapons, and ornaments (Rowlands 1976: 117–18). The distribution of large weapons, such as rapiers, swords, and basal-looped spearheads, cut across these distributions and were found in considerable quantities in the Thames Valley and in East Anglia where links with the continent, and especially the Seine Valley, were marked. The distribution of metalwork indicated patterns of exchange and alliance, where competition was endemic and warfare a constant feature. There was also something of a division of activities, with upland chalk areas of southern England producing food and especially cattle that people exchanged for metal.

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period

9

The sets of exchanges evidenced by pottery distributions, metal, and other materials continue on into the Iron Age, as Cunliffe’s analysis of pottery distributions shows (Cunliffe 2005). There has been a stress on the competitive nature of exchanges as the basis for social hierarchy, which emerges in Yates (2007) from his analysis of the nature and distribution of field systems in the Bronze Age, where he makes a link between the concentration of field systems and of metalwork, such as that deposited in the Thames.1 What Yates’s analysis ignores is why competition involved throwing bronze and other things into rivers. And here we would see the reciprocal principle as key, building as it does on much previous discussion, especially by Bradley (2005, 2007), who makes a number of major points that we accept rather than feel the need to argue further for. These include the deliberate nature of much deposition and the need to look holistically at material that goes into graves, hoards, and rivers. When the number of items in one context increases, it often leads to a decrease in other areas, suggesting that emphases shifted over time. The distribution of coarse and fine pottery, together with metalwork of various types, helps indicate the patterns of local exchange and broader regional forms of trade in which communities were enmeshed, demonstrating too the obligations within which they worked. The disposal of the dead shows that obligations were not just to the living, but also to the deceased. A conventional sequence sees a prevalence of cremations in undecorated urns and flat graves in the Middle Bronze Age gradually disappearing in the Late Bronze Age, from which point forwards burial evidence is scarce over much of the country until cremations re-emerge in the south and south-east in the Late Iron Age. The mass of new evidence now emerging reveals a more complicated situation. In the Middle Bronze Age cremation is without doubt the more archaeologically visible rite and cremation cemeteries are regularly associated with settlement sites. Indeed there are cases where the layout of settlements and cemeteries parallel each other, with the same pottery and metal types being deposited in both (Bradley 2007: 197).

1

As Sharples (2010: 41) has pointed out, there is reason to doubt whether the laying out of Middle Bronze Age field systems was due to the need for agricultural intensification, spurred in turn by competition in exchange. The crops for rotation did not exist in the Bronze Age and nor is there a marked increase in the cereal production at this time, which would have been needed to underpin exchanges of artefacts.

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Metalwork that was deposited in burials prior to 1500 BC is now found more commonly in hoards on dry land and in bogs, in settlements and in rivers. In both the first and last of these contexts contemporary human bones are also found and the hoards sometimes look like sets of personal equipment (Bradley 2007: 200; Brück 1995). Although cremation was the most common form of burial, parts of human bodies may have been circulating in association with metalwork. Links between settlement and burial contexts were made, blurring any clear distinction between the two. In the Late Bronze Age, after 1150 BC, deposition of metalwork and possibly bodies in rivers intensified, with objects sometimes being deliberately damaged (‘killed’) before deposition. Such deposits were more often associated with structures over bogs or rivers, the most famous of which is Flag Fen (Pryor 2001). Such structures continued to be built into the Iron Age, famously at Fiskerton (Field and Parker Pearson 2003). Cremation is not very obvious in the Late Bronze Age, but nor is it absent. Small quantities of human bone are found in pits within settlements in an area from Kent to the Severn, and these appear to be token deposits taken from the pyre, the majority of which is deposited elsewhere. As Bradley notes (2007: 214), this ‘implies that the burning of human bodies may have been more common than archaeologists had supposed’. Metalwork is deposited near settlements and this might represent part of the group of metalwork produced near the site (Bradley 2005: Chapter 5). Cremations probably continue into the sixth century BC, but these lack grave goods, and without radiocarbon-dating programmes it is hard to be sure when they end. Indeed some cremations are buried under small mounds in Yorkshire and eastern England (Cunliffe 2005: 544). Inhumations before the fifth century are rare, in marked contrast to the continent. Two areas, the south-west and east Yorkshire, practised inhumation burials, the latter producing important finds of Celtic art (as we shall see below), but in general grave goods are rare. The most common indications of the dead across much of Britain in the Iron Age are scatters of human bone in a variety of contexts across settlements, leading to the conclusion that the predominant rite was excarnation. Recently this picture has changed somewhat with three sets of finds of crouched inhumations in shallow graves at Yarnton, Oxfordshire (Hey et al. 1999), Kemble, Gloucestershire (King et al. 1996), and Suddern Farm, Hampshire, of Middle Iron Age

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period 11 date (Cunliffe 2005: 552). These cemeteries varied in size with five inhumations at Kemble, around 35 at Yarnton, with a similar number excavated at Suddern Farm, but out of an estimated cemetery of 300 adults there were 80 children and 180 infants (Cunliffe and Poole, 2000: 201). These new finds have led Sharples to wonder whether inhumation was not a much more dominant element of the burial record than has hitherto been perceived (Sharples, 2010: 280). What seems clear is that some of the burials were dug into subsequently to remove bones, as also happened at Cookey Down, Wiltshire (Lovell 1999). Few grave goods accompanied the bodies. From the late second century BC onwards a small number of burials with rich ornaments are known, for example from Owslebury, Hampshire (Collis 1973), Mill Hill, Deal, Kent (Parfitt 1995), and Whitcombe, Dorset (Aitken and Aitken 1990). These are sometimes known as ‘warrior burials’, although they do not always contain a full set of warrior equipment. Again, these are an important source of evidence for Celtic art and are discussed more fully below (see especially Chapter Seven). Overlapping in time with these burials, there is a resurgence of the cremation rite in the south-east from the beginning of the first century BC, sometimes known cumulatively as the Aylesford-Swarling rite, after two rich graves in Kent. One of the earliest and most recently excavated cemeteries is that of Westhampnett, West Sussex, where 161 cremation burials were made over a 40-year period in the first half of the first century BC (Fitzpatrick 1997b). The burials were arranged around a semicircular space with funeral pyres still evident along with X-, Y-, or T-shaped structures. Only a proportion of the human bone was collected from the pyre for burial. In the very Late Iron Age, from around 100 BC until after the Roman Conquest, large, rich cremation burials of the Welwyn (Stead 1976a) and Lexden (Foster 1986) types are known in the south-east, where elaborate rites are evident in which the ashes of the dead person were deposited in a variety of locations, accompanied in the main burial chamber by rich grave goods, some of which had also been burnt on the pyre (again, see especially Chapter Seven). In the domestic sphere, if we can call it that, continuity and change are evident, a continuing feature being the tendency to abandon houses regularly (Sharples 2010). Houses from the Middle Bronze Age were rarely repaired, indicating a restricted lifespan of their occupants, perhaps linked to the lifespan of significant members of

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the occupying group (Brück 1999). This has the confusing effect for the archaeologist of producing what look like large settlements, which were in fact only occupied by one or two households at any one time. As Sharples (2010: 222–35) has noted, the tendency to abandon houses long before this needed to happen for functional reasons carried on through until the end of the Middle Iron Age, providing a long-term continuity in the basic periodicities of later prehistoric society. Houses might be burnt or dismantled, but the effect was the same: a linkage between the history of the human group and the physical space it inhabited. In the Late Bronze Age larger enclosures, known as ring works, are found from Yorkshire down to Wessex which often have a single large house and evidence of metalworking, such as the sword moulds found at Springfield Lyons, Essex (Buckley and Hedges 1987). There has been some debate as to whether these were centres of communal activities of production, exchange, and feasting or elite residences where these activities were controlled. In the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age many of the fields created in the Middle Bronze Age go out of use, with some not coming back into commission until the Late Iron Age. Instead, extensive land boundaries in the form of linear ditches are constructed in many areas, especially on the chalk, some of which remain in use until the Roman period (Giles 2007a; Gosden and Lock 2007). Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age houses were often larger than their Middle Iron Age successors, and Sharples (2010: 202–7) has impressive figures for the amount of wood, thatch, and mud needed for the large Early Iron Age Pimperne house, compared with the more modest structures from Middle Iron Age Danebury. The other key change was the agglomeration of houses in hillforts from the Early and Middle Iron Age, the first time in Britain that large numbers of households had ever been brought together. The early hillforts often had timber-laced ramparts, increasing the pressures on woodland, as well as bringing a broader community together to construct the banks and ditches enclosing the hillfort. Many people carried on living in small enclosed settlements in the countryside made up of one or two households, but they may have contributed labour and food to the hillforts. From around 400 BC onwards many of these hillforts were abandoned, or used more intermittently, with some such as Maiden Castle and Danebury gaining enlarged enclosing banks and ditches (now using much less wood) and becoming the

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period 13 sole centres of occupation in a countryside in which the smaller settlements were more or less abandoned (Sharples 2010: 76–7). This model works well for Danebury and Maiden Castle, but is less convincing in other areas, where hillforts were not permanently occupied by large numbers of people at any stage (Gosden and Lock 2007). The disposal of the dead was a matter of choice and judgement, perhaps because a dead body was potentially powerful, either positively or negatively, and needed to be treated thoughtfully and with care. What we might see as two worlds, that of humans and of spirits, interpenetrated, and the movement of a person between these realms at death was perhaps not final or one-way. The dead were members of society and needed their own protocols and forms of approach. In these post-Cartesian days we might want also to separate people and things, but here again caution is needed. As we have mentioned, metal items entering rivers were subjected to violence, perhaps in ways that echoed the harm they had helped wreak on humans. Furthermore, humans were involved in cycles of transformation from conception to death and beyond; so too might things be. Brück (2006) has emphasized the use of fire in making pots, metalwork, and drying grain. We might go a step further and see the interplay of the major elements – earth, air, fire, and water (also wood?) – as key to social and political relations. It is possible that human bodies were surrendered to one of these elements: burial linking to earth, excarnation to air, cremation to fire, and river deposit to water. Making pots involved a combination of earth, air, and fire. Metallurgy, particularly that involving bronze, gold, or silver, applied fire to a solid ore that was melted to a liquid, cast, and returned to a solid state. The technologies available in the pre-modern period could not reach temperatures sufficient to melt and cast iron, so that it could only be worked in a solid state. Metalworking was a technology capable of producing both striking and useful items, but it involved harnessing dangerous forces of transformation, such as extreme heat and physical strength, which made it an arena both of possibility and danger. Transformations were key in later prehistoric Britain, as people went through their life course that included the social use of the body after biological death. Things were also transformed and few of these transformations were more dramatic than that of metalworking, which involved extreme

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temperatures, the large-scale consumption of a great range of material, human strength, and skill.

BRONZE AND IRON Metals participated in and dramatized broader sets of transformations that can be seen in Bronze and Iron Age society. Changes in the nature of metalwork were not primarily to do with technology, as we might conceive of this, but concern broader sets of values connected ultimately to the reproduction of society. Iron technology was thought to have taken over from bronze because it was technologically superior – iron is particularly suited to implements for cutting and piercing, given its qualities of hardness and sharpness. Iron implements, it was thought, quickly became widespread and accessible to more (all?) levels of society and so brought about a democratization of arts and crafts generally (a classic statement of this view is put forward for the Aegean by Snodgrass, 1991, Chapter 5, 1980, 1983, influenced by Childe 1942: 183). The Bronze Age has been seen as more open and international than the Iron Age, in large part because of the trade in copper and tin ores or in finished bronze artefacts. Evans (1881) was one of the first to laud the open and aristocratic nature of the Bronze Age world, sentiments echoed most recently by Kristiansen (1998) and Kristiansen and Larsson (2005). The Iron Age is characterized as more pragmatic, technically effective, and to some degree a more democratic world, which lacked the openness, innovation, and heroism of warfare and travel seen in the Bronze Age. We will argue that bronze and iron had a long relationship before iron became common. This happened not for purely technical reasons, but because iron eventually helped a new set of values to develop. Iron only became common in Britain after 400 BC, which is when bronze also returned after an absence of centuries. This was also the point at which Celtic art appeared in Britain and it did so as part of a positive re-evaluation of metalwork. In order to understand this whole process of change, we need the perspective provided by the long history of the relationship between bronze and iron. A first point to make is that iron objects are almost as old as those of bronze, going back in very small numbers to the third millennium BC,

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period 15 pre-dating the movement to a full-scale bronze technology in many cases (see Pare 2000: fig. 14.1). It is now recognized that different regions started producing bronze in larger amounts at different times, with the British Isles being relatively precocious with bronze production pre-dating 2000 BC, whereas Crete may not have produced its own bronze for at least another 500 years (Sherratt 1994). In the case of iron, there was a more exaggerated version of this pattern of delayed and regionally differentiated uptake. Second-millennium ironworking was mainly restricted to Anatolia and Georgia as far as we know, with occasional objects of iron, such as the dagger from Ganovce in Slovakia, dating back well into this millennium (Harding 2000). Precocious ironworking is also in evidence, notably at Hartshill Copse near Reading in southern Britain around 1000 BC, where it is carried out with bronzeworking (Collard et al. 2006). We can conclude that iron was a known, if minor, element of people’s material culture across Europe and throughout much of the second millennium BC, but that ironworking was reluctantly adopted as it did not easily fit the set of values that were connected to bronze. One of the classic statements of the shift from bronze to ironworking is provided by Snodgrass (1991). His scheme for change had three stages. In Stage 1, which pre-dates 1150 BC in the Aegean, the area of his interest, iron was known but used in small quantities and had a semi-precious value. In Stage 2 (1150–1050 BC in Greece) a shortage of bronze causes experimentation with ironworking, which becomes more proficient and efficient. In Stage 3 iron is widely available and largely replaces bronze for making practical artefacts (Snodgrass 1991, Chapter 5). Snodgrass’s scheme is reprised, although often in less explicit form, across Europe (1991, Chapter 5). Haarer (2001) uses historical records ranging between the Old Assyrian period (2000–1600 BC) and fourth-century Greece to show that between the start of the second millennium BC and the middle of the first, iron demonstrated a continual decline in value, whereas bronze kept a more constant worth. This has two implications – there was no sudden drop in the value of iron to make it much more accessible (indeed it was still relatively valuable at the beginning of the first millennium BC, being found in rich graves along with gold); there was no sudden spike in the value of bronze indicating a crisis in supply. Even once iron started to become common this did not happen everywhere, so that it only became common in Mesopotamia after 750 BC (Haarer 2001: 265), several centuries after this happened in

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Cyprus, Crete, or Greece (Sherratt 1994). The advantages of iron were not immediately self-evident, but were enmeshed in a complex system of values, a point to which we will return. An idea once prevalent in north-western Europe was that iron took over from bronze partly because of problems with the bronze supply. Features of Late Bronze Age depositions include both their scale and the large numbers of identical axes, some of which have very high levels of lead, making them functionally useless as chopping tools (O’Connor 1980; Huth 2000: 184–8). Given the scale of this deposition at the end of the Bronze Age, many are now concluding that bronze was not in short supply. The opposite might even be true – ‘over-production probably killed bronze’s symbolic value and attraction’ (Verlaecht 2000: 203). Rather than supply and demand as straightforward economic drives, it is preferable to see complicated shifts in value systems as the cause of change. In Britain after around 800 BC the deposition of bronze declined markedly, and this is true of hoards, river finds, and evidence of settlements (O’Connor 1980; Needham 2007) – there being few burials at this time, as we have seen. The deposition of iron does not become common until 400 BC or later. Looking at one of the best-understood sequences of material culture from Danebury hillfort, the number and weight of iron objects only increase in ceramic phase 6, which is currently dated as starting in 400 BC (Salter and Ehrenreich 1984, figs. 10.4 and 10.5). It might be that there is little iron in evidence before this date because it was scarce and/or being recycled. However, the data on production that we have, albeit fairly slim, indicates that specialist smelting and smithing sites do become more common after 400 BC (Salter and Ehrenreich 1984: 151). Rachel Pope (personal communication) has found the same pattern when looking at evidence of production in individual houses. Looking again at deposition, Haselgrove and Hingley (2006) have found a considerably larger number of iron objects being deposited after the fifth century BC. From around 400 BC the assemblages known as Celtic art also start to be produced in bronze, iron, and later gold and silver. This happens as metals are subject to a different value, so that as iron becomes common so too do these other metals. As we shall see in more detail in Chapter Two, the corpus of material we have come to call Celtic art is made up of a broad spectrum of objects, including horse and chariot gear, human ornaments, swords, shields, mirrors, tankards, helmets, and figurative objects. This miscellaneous group is picked out by a

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period 17 relative complexity of form and decoration from other contemporary items and compared to most metalwork that precedes it. In terms of decoration, Celtic art is part of a set of styles found across Eurasia from the early first millennium BC to the early Medieval period (Wells 2008). To gain an initial impression of the nature and significance of Celtic art, let us contrast it with earlier periods of Bronze Age metalwork. Between the Middle Bronze Age metalwork known as the Acton Park phase and the Early Iron Age Llyn Fawr assemblages metalwork behaves typologically. Needham et al. (1998) have demonstrated through a programme of radiocarbon dating that Bronze Age metalwork phases each last around a century, changing in a regular typological manner. As we shall discuss in more detail in the next chapter, the material we know as Celtic art does not generally change in an easily understood typological manner (although some aspects, notably fibulae and coins, do). For instance, terrets2 (Fig. 1.5), the most common of all Celtic art forms, are not easily typed, nor are their changes easily understood or charted. Each new worker dealing with terrets comes up with a slightly different grouping to those previously (compare Fox 1958, Spratling 1972, Palk 1992, and Macdonald 2007b). This, we argue in more detail in the next chapter, is due to an emphasis on variety and difference on the part of the metalworkers of the later Iron Age and not a function of small sample sizes or taphonomy. In generalizing this point, we would say that the metalwork of the Bronze Age emphasized quantity, whereas that of the Iron Age stresses quality. The large assemblages of similar objects, principally axes (Fig. 1.6) and spears from the Ewart Park phase (Needham 2007) can be contrasted with the mixed hoards of the later Iron Age. Not all is difference and some mark of the crucial nature of the changes can be discerned by looking at the resemblances echoing between items from the Wilburton and Ewart Park phase and (to some degree) Llyn Fawr and the later Iron Age. From the Wilburton phase onwards offensive and defensive weaponry deriving from the Middle Bronze Age is joined by horse gear, such as cheek pieces, phalerae, and slightly enigmatic double loops that might be terrets, as well as nave rings (O’Connor 1980). Personal ornaments, such as pins and bracelets, are rare. In the following Ewart Park phase pins diversify in form and increase in numbers, to be joined by finger and neck rings. Tweezers 2

Terrets are metal rings used to guide the reins from the horse(s) to the cart/ chariot and then the charioteer.

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Fig. 1.5 Linch pins from Kings Langley (above) and Stanwick (below) and terrets from Westhall (above) and Stanwick (below) (Stead 1985b: Fig. 88) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

and razors are more in evidence. Horse gear has also diversified with new and continuing types. Evidence of attention to the human body and of horses is still found in attenuated form in the following Llyn Fawr phase, before the evidence fails. This mix of types, including horse and chariot gear, weaponry and personal ornament, is found again from the fourth century BC, an interesting return to some of the tropes of the Bronze Age. But in addition to this echo of earlier ways is a massive difference in form and decoration. Bronze Age metalwork is decorated with studs, rivets, simple geometrical patterns, or ribs and pellets. This cannot

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period 19

0

100

200 mm

Fig. 1.6 Tower Hill hoard, socketed axes (after Miles et al. 2003: Figs. 11.4, 11.5, 11.10, and 11.11)

compare in its complexity to the decorations found on Celtic art, which is aimed at quite different effects.3 One only needs to compare 3

Elsewhere in the Bronze Age world, heavily decorated metalwork is found, but again in fairly standard forms. In looking at southern Scandinavia, Sorensen (1989a and b) has contrasted a formalized world of later Bronze Age ritual and artefacts in Montelian periods V and VI (roughly 800–500 BC) with the Pre-Roman Iron Age period 1 (c.500–300 BC), but this is not the case in Britain.

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the Snettisham torcs with any of the neck ornaments of the Bronze Age to detect quite a different set of sensibilities brought about by a desire for complexity. A Snettisham torc requires considerable skill from the maker, but also from the viewer whose senses are educated and skilled in quite new forms of appreciation. To say that Iron Age metalwork is more complex and the product of greater skill than that of the Bronze Age is not to make an argument for progress or to denigrate the products of the earlier age. Instead we wish to make a more cultural point, which is that metalwork had a different role in the transformations linking people and the powers of the world in the Iron Age than it had played previously. Relationships in the Iron Age were arguably more fluid and negotiable than in the earlier period. Metalwork was not just more complex but also ambiguous in its decoration, which was open to multiple interpretations. This argument is key to our approach and will take the rest of the book to develop and ground. This decorated world of qualities in metalwork, which starts around 400 BC, persists in changing forms through the Romano-British and Early Medieval worlds. It contrasts in many ways with that of the Late Bronze Age, which nevertheless developed the types and assemblages that carry on for many centuries in elaborated form. Metal is a quick medium, able to take on influences from elsewhere and transform them. Bronze and iron have contrasting qualities. As noted earlier, bronze can transform from a solid to a liquid and back to a solid again, a dramatic change of state. But iron can only be worked in a solid state. Hingley (1997) argues that the capacity of iron to rust, returning it to a state like that of soil, gave it a series of links to notions of fertility that influenced its deposition in ditches and pits. If this argument is correct, iron became common in the Middle Iron Age not because methods for working it became more sophisticated, but rather because iron achieved a new and interesting position within the notions of transformation developing from around 400 BC onwards. Iron did not replace bronze but rather repositioned it, and became part of a broader shift within the world of objects from an emphasis on quantity to one of quality. Metals were less prominent in the Early Iron Age than at any other time in the later second or first millennia. They then re-emerged as central after 400 BC as part of a new emphasis on quality.

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period 21 Lying behind our arguments so far have been a series of broader theoretical discussions. We will now consider these before looking in a little more detail at the world of the later Iron Age.

SOCIAL ONTOLOGIES Over the last few hundred years we have separated the terms science, religion, and magic. This seems a natural separation to us, but is in fact historically and culturally unusual. In thinking about periods of the past like the Iron Age, our task is not so much to imagine what it would be like to recombine these terms, but to think what it would be like if we had never separated them in the first place. In our ontology science denotes eternal, unchanging, and empirically verifiable forms of cause and effect contained today within the laws of biology, physics, and chemistry. Religion emphasizes a single or multiple set of divine powers. Magic is a tricky and denigrated term, so that dictionary definitions encompass meanings that include the ability to produce illusions or tricks, the use of incantations and spells to procure desired outcomes, and the human control of supernatural agencies. Magic is linked to enchantment. Even in our world of today, science and magic can overlap to produce wondrous effects, in the form of substances that burn under water, or simulating a volcano using baking soda and vinegar. Nineteenth-century thinkers, including the sociologist Max Weber and the anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1871), thought the human history of engagement with the world moved from magic to religion to science, each more institutionally based and objectively correct than the previous one. As part of this progressive movement of history, people shifted from a belief in spirits and magical powers, to a belief in many gods and then just one, to emancipate themselves finally through the application of reason, which found its purest expression in science. The separation between science and religion is now being questioned (Gaukroger 2006), whereby religion is seen to provide the context for science over the last few centuries when vicars have been naturalists, chemists, or geologists. Only in the last century has real antagonism grown up between advocates of science or religion, and then only on the part of a few. Science and magic have also been closely related: the economist John Maynard Keynes

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described Sir Isaac Newton not as the first of the age of reason, but as the last of the magicians, struggling to understand the riddles of the universe in the same manner as the ancient magi. The progressive move from magic to science provides too partial an account, and in all our minds there are aspects of religion (even if we are atheists), magic (despite our rationalism), as well as a broader scientific idiom. The history of the three terms is not one of replacement, but of co-existence in cultural worlds emphasizing each discipline in different measure. There are grounds for thinking that in many periods of the prehistoric past the mix of these three terms was different and indeed seamless, so that separate concepts for each may not have existed. In order to look at varying conceptions of powers in the world, and human relations with plants, animals, and things, the term ‘ontology’ is becoming central. Ontology is conventionally used as a singular noun to refer either to the study of being and existence, or being and existence in general. In this latter usage, which is the one we shall develop, ontology refers to the things of which the universe is composed and the relationships between them. In a Western approach to ontology, it is the specification of energy, mass, chemical composition, or biochemical operations that are important. In such an objective view of the world there can be only one reality, so that our use of ontologies in the plural is controversial. We are not so much arguing that matter, or cause and effect, take multiple forms, but rather that people engage with the multiplicity of the universe in different ways. Each cultural engagement highlights and renders differing aspects of the world, each with their own concepts of cause and effect. The world and its workings become apparent to people not through passive contemplation, but through practice and practical knowledge. Skilled action represents a series of little experiments in what it is possible to do with materials in concert or competition with other people. Every type of cultural engagement has a different skills base from which people consequently understand the world differently. In the Iron Age and Roman periods, as we have argued, reproduction revolved around a notion of reciprocity that aimed to meet the demands of the non-human and the human worlds, and it is within these demands that the technical aspects of metalworking are embedded. In an older usage of the word, ontology came to designate the really real, the nature and structure of reality, which humans attempted to

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period 23 apprehend and work with or against (Gosden 2008). Brute, inanimate reality stood opposed to the lively and active intentions or desires of human beings. In a Western view, as Viveiros de Castro has written (1998: 469), a series of opposed terms connect to reality on the one hand and human society on the other, so that nature opposes culture, as a universal against the particular, the objective to the subjective, the physical to the social, fact to value, the given to the initiated, body to mind, necessity to spontaneity, and so on. This series of oppositions has grown up in a Western, scientific mindset, and not all cultural forms take these divisions for granted. Descola (1994) lays out three different ways of conceiving of the world – animism, totemism, and naturalism. The last of these is the Western view, dividing nature (to be investigated by the physical or biological sciences) from culture (probed by social sciences and humanities) in a manner that is historically particular, having evolved in the last few hundred years. Both animism and totemism blur the difference between culture and nature. The former term does this by allowing aspects of personhood to adhere to animals, plants, rocks, rivers, and so on, which may have desires and intentions in some ways similar to human motivations. Totemism mixes things up in the opposite direction, as it were – if a wallaby or cockatoo can be emblematic of a clan or other human group, then people may share characteristics of behaviour or inclination with those species, which are not truly separate from the human group. A particularly influential account of such blurring between our categories of people and the broader world is contained in the work of Viveiros de Castro (1998), who coins the term ‘perspectivism’ to understand the manner in which in Amazonia plants and animals are seen as subjects that apprehend reality from their own points of view, but in ways that echo human perceptions and relations. Animals and spirits see themselves as humans of slightly different kinds, and outward differences of the body conceal a human soul within a jaguar or tapir. The author says that where Westerners see a world of multiculturalism in which there is both difference and equivalence between human cultures, Amerindian people see multinaturalism in which various species have their differences underpinned by basic similarities of spirit (Viveiros de Castro 1998: 470). The echoes between varying types of being require particular kinds of respect, so that these schemes of reality have a moral element to them telling people what they need to do to live well.

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Both Descola and Viveiros de Castro draw their ideas from work with Amerindian hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists. Similar ideas are developed by Ingold (2000), stemming from understandings of circumpolar hunter-gatherers. These insights are drawn from the American continent and from work amongst mobile peoples, providing an interesting but rather particular empirical basis to the ethnography. Recently there has been a growing discussion of ontology (or animism) within archaeology.4 Within archaeology the term ontology has useful overlaps with other discussions, principally those concerning ritual and functional action (Brück 1999, Bradley 2005), and those around the agency of objects or their ability to affect people. As with the broader discussions from which they derive, archaeological thoughts on ontology oppose two sets of dualisms: that between mind and body and the difference made between culture and nature. Things, plants, and animals can be mindful, purposive, and able to influence people, so that they might be seen as persons, having many of the key characteristics of personhood. If things can be persons then it makes less sense to see them as part of nature and outside of culture, thereby blurring or dissolving this distinction. In a Western ontology nature is governed by laws that lie outside history and are invariant over time and space. If nature is done away with, its workings can be historicized and the possibility then arises that things can act differently at varying times, depending on the relationships in which they are enmeshed. Human beings may relate to things, such as metal artefacts, as animate objects with whom they have to cultivate relationships, both with the objects themselves and the powers that lie behind them. The idea of reciprocity is not limited to the human world in which gifts must be acknowledged and repaid, but to many other things. Or rather the human world is extended to include persons of many different kinds, some of whom might look to us like objects or biological species. Such beliefs are not random, irrational, or optional, but part of how the structure of the world is seen to be. They can be debated, challenged, and rethought, just as our own beliefs can, but it would be dangerous in the extreme to ignore or refuse to engage with the most potent powers in the world. The task of the archaeologist is to lay out the key relationships and the human/ material practices associated with them. Such ideas overlap with other 4

See the special section in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, vol. 19 (2009), and that in Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 15 (2008).

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period 25 recent discussions in anthropology and Science and Technology Studies concerning the relationships between people and things. We shall pick out three key thinkers – Alfred Gell, Bruno Latour, and Tim Ingold – as a brief entry point into these discussions. In a paper entitled ‘The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology’ (1992) and a posthumously published book, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (1998), Gell developed what he described as an ‘anthropological theory of visual art’. It is not necessary here to recount in detail all of the arguments he puts forward, many of which are undoubtedly best encountered first hand in any case. However, given the title of this book, it is certainly worth discussing briefly what he is getting at with the ‘technology of enchantment’ idea. Essentially, Gell advocates a move away from an anthropology that discusses art in a purely aesthetic sense, or that focuses on symbolic meanings. Rather, he would prefer us to view artworks as a kind of ‘technology’; that is, as objects which do things, have effects or agency, within society (1992: 43). Of key importance to his argument is the notion that ‘the power of art objects stems from the technical processes they objectively embody: the technology of enchantment is founded on the enchantment of technology’ (ibid: 44, original emphasis). The main example that Gell uses to illustrate this point is that of the canoe prow from the Trobriand Islands (off the eastern coast of New Guinea). He argues that these intricately decorated and visually striking objects have very real effects on people as they approach from across the sea, essentially enchanting islanders into offering more valuable shells or necklaces, as part of a Kula exchange, than they would otherwise have done. It is in this sense that the canoe prows work as a technology of enchantment. The reason why this enchantment occurs is not some hidden meaning within the decoration, nor a neuro-psychological effect of the complex patterns; ‘the canoe-board is not dazzling as a physical object, but as a display of artistry explicable only in magical terms’ (ibid: 46). As the Trobriand Islanders understand it, the skill involved in carving a prow in such a way could only have come about as a result of magic; if the owner had access to a carver with such magical powers, then the owner too must be in possession of impressive powers (ibid). It is in this sense that people are enchanted by the technology of the canoe prow’s manufacture (Gell 1998: Fig. 5.2/1).

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It is worth mentioning that others writing about Celtic art have discussed Gell’s work before. Gell himself briefly mentions Celtic knot-work in his exploration of art’s apotropaic effects (1998: 84). Within Iron Age archaeology, Macdonald has discussed the potential that Gell’s theories might have to offer for the study of La Tène art (2007a: 336), while Giles has drawn on aspects of his work in her consideration of the aesthetics of martial objects (Giles 2008). Our intention in including a reference to Gell’s work in the title of our book was not simply to borrow a catchy phrase. We felt specifically that it would be interesting to explore the idea that Celtic art objects could themselves have functioned as ‘technologies of enchantment’, working in comparable ways to Trobriand Island canoe prows. Certainly, in many cases, Celtic artefacts were produced as a result of the impressive technical prowess that Gell views as crucial, and even today do have an undeniable effect on the senses. We also draw inspiration more generally from broader aspects of Gell’s work, perhaps most of all his move away from simply discussing the aesthetic value of ‘art’ objects, and towards trying to understand their effects on people and each other. Enchanting objects are one instance in which things have agency over people, causing them to act in ways they would not if objects were not there. Gell’s central question is not what objects mean but what they can do in the creation or nuancing of social relations. In the rest of this book, we too have not attempted to enquire into the meanings of Celtic art, exploring instead the relations that objects have with each other in creating an ‘inter-artefactual domain’, to use another of Gell’s terms. The inter-artefactual domain concerns links of style and form between objects so that they come together to form a meta-domain having influence over human actions, perceptions, and modes of value creation. This is an idea prefigured and paralleled in David Clarke’s Analytical Archaeology (1968) where he talks of objects en masse influencing people, using human muscles and skills to reproduce them. Similar ideas have also been developed by art historians (e.g. Mitchell 2005) looking at the rules of appreciation that paintings and other forms impose upon the viewer. Latour (1993, 2005) is developing a related but different idea when writing of a ‘symmetrical anthropology’ or actor-network theory. Human life is not just social, in that it is made up of objects as well as people in ever-changing networks. Both people and objects can be actors in such networks and we should not judge prior to an

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period 27 investigation what either people or things can do – these capacities can only be established empirically situation by situation. But because both people and things can potentially be active we must always have a balanced or symmetrical consideration of human and non-human actors. In Latour’s view, people have tended to obscure objects, securing for themselves the only active roles, making it important to insist on the role of objects in human life. We should note that the opposite problem can often obtain in archaeology, where people are often occluded by things. As archaeologists we have to work hard to create symmetry by reintroducing people as convincing analytical categories, but it is not always clear what analytical forms prehistoric people should take. We are not convinced that people of the distant past without written or oral records present us with the same analytical categories as those in anthropological, sociological, or historical study. Ingold emphasizes more the ecological or biological sets of relations in which people and their objects grow into forms created by the totality of relationships (Ingold 2000). He raises the possibility that growing children and making things are not as different as they might seem, as both are creative processes that depend for their form on numerous other relationships. Like many scholars, Ingold refuses to make a distinction between cultural and natural worlds, seeing relationships of growth, change, and decay operating across a differentiated globe, but not one divided simply between cultural and natural forms. Ingold has also emphasized that many forms of cultural knowledge allow animacy to rocks and trees or personhood to bears and elk. How far are such approaches helpful to the study of Celtic art? First of all, issues of reproduction are key. Metalwork in the Iron Age and Roman periods seems to have been enmeshed in a series of cycles of transformation linking the human lifespan, groups occupying house structures, the making of pottery, metal, and the processing of grain. Furthermore, there may well have been play between the elements of earth, air, fire, and water that were all important in making, using, and depositing key materials, such as pottery and metalwork (Hill 1995). All this happened within an ethic of reciprocity between humans and broader powers of the universe, which include the dead and other spirits. The regular, intentional deposition of bones, both human and animal, pots, metalwork, as well probably as many perishable items hard to detect archaeologically, indicates a need to

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bury materials in particular ways, probably as an attempt to maintain the productive powers of the world. From the Middle Bronze Age onwards the archaeological evidence is replete with instances of individual or mass deposition of objects, which changes constantly over time, but never goes away. There is a pattern and purpose to these deposits, which suggests that people did not casually seek a relationship with other powers, but that these relationships had rules specifying what appropriate deposits were, when they should be made, and by whom. The existence of rules or practices specifying, for instance, that a proportion of newly made metalwork should be buried, seems to be evidence of magical beliefs. But the making of metal was also bound by very precise actions. To make a bronze object of a specific type needed the exact combination of copper with tin or lead, the correct steps to be followed in smelting and casting, as well as a knowledgeable deployment of wood, clay, wax, bone, and so on (see Chapter Four). We would consider such precise steps to belong to the realm of science or technology, as skills to be applauded. To the metalworkers any such distinction between technical skills and spiritual relations would seem odd and unnecessary. Just as much skill might have been needed to deposit some finished metal as to make it in the first place, and the necessities in each case were equally binding. Having undertaken this considerable excursion into theory, let us return to the archaeological material, as we have not yet focused in detail on the later Iron Age during which period most of the material we shall discuss is to be found.

THE LATER IRON AGE AND ROMANO-BRITISH PERIODS The period we are centrally concerned with is that from 400 BC to AD 100, spanning the later Iron Age (using the terminology of Haselgrove and Pope 2007) and the earliest Roman period. A dating programme has shown that Celtic art in Britain starts around 400 BC, not much later than that on the Continent (see Chapter Two for a broader discussion of dates, and especially Garrow et al. 2010). In southern Britain Celtic art was conceived in a world of developed hillforts and small settlements, with the former lasting into the first century BC or

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period 29 longer. In the Midlands and East Anglia people lived in small open settlements and sometimes larger agglomerations. There were enclosed farmsteads and hillforts in northern England and Scotland, together with more strongly enclosed single settlements in the western zone encompassing the West Country, coastal Wales, and western Scotland and the isles (Cunliffe 2005: Fig. 4.3). Pottery traditions varied, with much of the country north of the Severn-Humber line being aceramic at the start of the later Iron Age, except for north-western Scotland. Elsewhere a variety of bowls and jars were found in locally distinct forms, such as the well-known saucepan pottery groups in southern and central England (Cunliffe 2005: Fig. 5.11). From the first century BC (or slightly before) wheel-turned wares are found in the south and south-east, sometimes connected with the new cremation rite. These new pottery distributions cut across the old, indicating that basic connections of local exchange were changing. Elsewhere older traditions continued, including large areas that still lacked pottery (Hill 2007). Regional differences are marked, as are changes through time. Therefore, as one looks at the distribution of Celtic art (discussed more fully in Chapter Three), it is striking how ubiquitous it is, especially in the southern part of Britain. Less is found in the Atlantic west than elsewhere and little is known from the Highlands, but other than that lacunae mainly exist in places like the Weald which seem relatively devoid of Iron Age settlement. East Anglia, the Thames Valley, and Yorkshire show especially marked concentrations. In contrast, both brooches and coins (see Figs. 3.4 and 3.5) present a much more southerly distribution. One immediate comment we would make about Celtic art is that it links communities that might otherwise be different in most aspects of the archaeological evidence. The early start we have given to Celtic art, at around 400 BC, might seem controversial to some, appearing to be too early. Even more debatable is a hiatus we have recognized between roughly 20 BC and AD 40. During this period we believe few objects that can be classed as Celtic art were being made or deposited, and when this form of art returns in the early Romano-British period it is of a quite different type, emphasizing colour on flat surfaces (for instance on plate fibulae and horse gear), as well as figures of humans and animals or other forms of cast and repoussé decoration on decorative plaques. The complex engraved decorations with their asymmetrical patterns have

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Fig. 1.7 The Desborough mirror # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

mostly disappeared (Fig. 1.7). In the first century BC considerable cultural changes are evident, especially in the south and south-east. The most discussed of these are connected with the so-called oppida, large sites with many foreign imports of artefacts from Gaul and elsewhere in the Roman world. The term ‘oppidum’ refers in its simplest form to a town. However, with the exception of Silchester (Fulford and Timby 2000), none of the other oppida appear to have been large centres of population. Instead sites like Camulodunum (Colchester) (Hawkes and Crummy 1995), Verulamium (St Albans) (Niblett 1999, 2001), or Bagendon (in Gloucestershire) (Moore 2006) have complex ditches enclosing a large area with small centres of productive activity and burials but no large centres of population. Rather than being based on old centres of power, many of these new sites were in areas that had had little or no occupation in earlier centuries (Hill 2007), showing a certain volatility in relations from the first century BC onwards. A feature of the evidence at this time is a marked rise in the production of metalwork, principally fibulae and coins, which by the late first century BC are being minted with rulers’ names on them for the first time. None of the oppida sites have any

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period 31 ‘classic’ works of Celtic art – swords, shields, mirrors, and torcs were all absent from these sites – although Silchester shows evidence of the production of horse gear (Fulford and Timby 2000). Indeed, a more limited range of metalwork is present generally across Britain, including figural ornament, such as animal and human figurines, bowls, and so on. Shrines also emerge for the first time in the first century BC, with square or rectangular structures and considerable depositions of coins and fibulae (Smith 2001). Again, classic works of Celtic art are absent. The shrines may demonstrate the emergence of ritual as a separate category of action in people’s lives, a point we will develop later. In other areas of material culture, wheel-turned pottery is taken up in the early first century BC (or earlier) in some places, but not until after the Roman invasion of AD 43 in others. New pottery forms include plates, dishes, cups, and bowls, indicating quite new forms of food consumption (Cool 2006, Hill 2007). In the later Iron Age new foci of production emerge, especially to the south and east of the Severn-Pennine line. One set of foci is within the oppida. At Silchester the first three phases are characterized by features cut into the natural subsoil and overlain by a dark earth, indicating a period of abandonment between the Late Iron Age and Flavian deposits (Fulford and Timby 2000: 9). In period 2 (c.15 BC– c.AD 40/50) what would previously have been round houses give way to rectangular buildings in an orthogonal layout with streets. One grave (F1297) contains evidence of moulds and crucibles, as well as pot and bone. The moulds were used to produce winged terrets like those at Stanwick and Polden Hills, as well as knobbed/platform terrets of a previously unidentified type, in addition to rings, linch pins, and pennanular brooches (Fulford and Timby 2000: 407). Much more mould debris was scattered elsewhere. Period 3 (c.AD 40–50/60) has a more varied set of evidence from pits along the northern palisade, indicating precious metalworking, especially silver, for coins and jewellery. Period 2, by contrast, shows bronze casting of Iron Age type, paralleled by the roughly contemporary working at Gravelly Guy (Lambrick and Allen, 2004), together with coin minting. Metalworking on the site sees a switch from earlier traditions of metalwork on Period 2 to more Romanized practices in Period 3. Other contemporary sites show broadly similar evidence, although it is less full or well reported due to more partial and older excavations. In the Chilterns, to the north around the River Ver, is a dispersed multi-centred set of sites of habitations and burial, unlike

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the urban set-up of Silchester. During this period one of the largest collections of Augustan and Tiberian imports from Gaul and Italy can be observed, especially at sites such as Skeleton Green (Bryant 2007: 66). Baldock to the north-west reveals signs of brooch manufacture (Stead and Rigby 1986: 122–3) as well as other forms of craft such as spinning and pottery making, in amongst extensive cremation cemeteries of the Aylesford-Swarling type. Although it is possible that evidence of settlement has not yet been discovered, it is also possible that Baldock represents a combination of productive activities and burial, mainly of burnt bodies. Such a combination makes little sense to us, but does encourage some thought as to whether the productive transformation involved in making was linked in some way to the destructive transformation of bodies after death. The complex set of evidence from Verulamium (St Albans) has received considerable attention, with interpretation shifting towards the idea that the site might have been a ritual complex, possibly on the boundary of a number of territories (Haselgrove and Millett 1997; Niblett 1999). The area seems to reflect some distinct zones, with the dyke complexes at Prae Wood to the south and Gorhambury to the west as centres of agricultural and craft activities. Cemeteries such as King Harry Lane, St Stephen’s, and Verulam Hills were placed on the slopes and provide important skyline features visible from the central enclosure of St Michael’s in the valley bottom (Bryant 2007: 71). St Michael’s enclosure is poorly known, being buried deep beneath the later forum/basilica. Here mould slabs for coins have been found and other evidence of metalworking, which complements the deposition of metalwork in the boggy area round the River Ver (Haselgrove and Millett 1997: 284). There was metalworking on the same site through into the Roman period. The organization of space in terms of different activities, as can be seen at Verulamium, and the movement through space in processions or more everyday activities, were clearly important. Such movements through space may also be movement in time, linking the activities of the present with a continuing connection to the dead of previous generations. There is also an elemental aspect to these activities, in that manipulation of earth, air, fire, and water was a recurrent feature. Items of pottery or metal were consumed on funerary pyres, having themselves previously been made through the action of fire. We prefer to see the sites for organizing activities in Verulamium and elsewhere less as ritual complexes, but rather as places where key

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period 33 powers were played with and displayed. The dangerous but productive activity of metalworking harnessing high temperatures and skills was linked to the destructive force of death and the need to deal with dead bodies. The Claudian invasion of AD 43 exaggerated many of these existing trends, bringing with it also new agents of power, principally the army and the bureaucracy, together with outward signs of their presence, such as towns, roads, and forts. Roman productive industries such as metalwork and pottery making were active from about a decade after the Roman invasion, swamping the country with new forms. A profound change saw the decline of regionally specific coarse wares, found from the Middle Bronze Age onwards, which had been a key shaper of local identities. As ever, this change is more marked in some areas, especially the south, than others. In many parts of Britain pottery becomes commonplace for the first time. Novel aesthetics were introduced in metal, with highly coloured but symmetrically ordered decorations on horse gear and plate brooches. Particularly in the north new forms develop, such as the Dragonesque brooch, which combine older tropes, like the S-curve, with the new delight in colour (Fig. 1.8). By the time such forms are being made the Roman presence in the west and north is a generation old, with adults born into a Romano-British world. But much is still to be negotiated in terms of identity and role. Unsurprisingly, metal artefacts are key negotiators, acting as switch points for the old and new identities as they meet and change. There are two phases of Celtic art in Britain, with a gap between them. The earlier Iron Age emphasis on asymmetrical, curvilinear decorations and complexities of form reflects part of a desire to give items new qualities, in contrast to the older Bronze Age emphasis on quantity. This world has come to an end in the south and south-east at least by about 20 BC, and around this time metalwork is dominated by coins and fibulae. Styles that we can still call Celtic art re-emerge in the middle of the first century AD, drawing on older sinuous forms but with a new colourful appeal to the eye. The Iron Age world from 400 to 20 BC is one of many instabilities: there is little clear evidence of social hierarchy until the very end, and the main centres of power are the developed hillforts where they exist. Cosmological powers are distributed across the landscape without any structural indications and mainly evidenced now by deposits of material, principally metalwork. Celtic art is complex, ambiguous, and incredibly varied. We

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Fig. 1.8 A Dragonesque brooch # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

would see this complexity of form and decoration as playing a role in negotiating the unstable and uncertain sets of relationships between people and with sacred powers. This was a game to be played constantly and to changing rules, without any real winners. Greater stability of relationships emerge in the very Late Iron Age, with people of power appearing and the sacred crystallizing around shrines and temples. In this world the complex ambiguities of Celtic art had no real place, as they were disturbing presences indicating uncertainty not fixity. Celtic art in its returning form (in the mid-first century AD) might then be expected to fit into a world where social roles were firmly held in place by the state, with power less

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period 35 negotiable or easy to challenge. The ‘frontier’ art of northern England, southern Scotland, and Wales played a vital role, not so much in displaying identity as in developing it in new forms (Davis and Gwilt 2008; Hunter 2008). Celtic art is fascinating in its longevity and changeableness, playing an active role in shaping vital relationships between people of various sorts and divine powers. New sets of ontology are perceptible as the nature of reproduction shifts, along with the structures of production, deposition, and the form and decoration of artefacts. This is a simple précis of the tale we have to tell and our task for the rest of the book is to substantiate, nuance, and add to the outline we have provided here. It is to the structure of the book we now turn.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK We shall attempt a thick description of Celtic art, linking this to the broader interpretative structure we have laid out here, probing people’s notions of ontology, of power and identity. We thought that a simple way to provide such a description was to follow the process of metalwork from making to using and finishing with deposition. However, the evidence is uneven, being fullest for deposition and in need of careful interpretation for both making and use. As we mentioned above, deposition is often seen to be ‘structured’ in later prehistory, but so too might be production and use. However, the evidence for various phases of metalwork varies, there being little on production, and we need to extrapolate from it the notion of use. Indeed, most evidence comes from deposition and hence we have given more space to it, looking at settlements, burials, and hoards. The book uses a modified version of the making-using-depositing structure, as we shall see. In the next chapter we describe the previous work on Celtic art from the nineteenth century through to the present day. We shall differentiate our approach from most scholars of the past. Key to what we are attempting is to look at the play of metalwork within broader efforts to influence sets of relationships between people and spiritual powers, reflecting as much on what objects do as on what they mean. We lay out some of the broader anthropological, philosophical, and art-historical theory that has been of use to us,

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before looking at other approaches to prehistoric art. Our analytical work was based around a database of just over 2,500 objects; Chapter Three describes how the database was put together, looking also at its main findings, and of course some of its biases. We will then make some initial observations about the distribution of Celtic art in time and space, as such trends were fundamental in orienting how our analyses developed. The nature of decoration is central to our contention that Celtic art represented works of quality, as opposed to the quantity emphasized in the Late Bronze Age. We shall make some initial observations about the construction of decoration and its changes over time, leading us to think a little about what sorts of impacts it might have had. Chapter Four begins a consideration of making, although as we shall see there the evidence is somewhat scant and needs careful interpretation. Hard evidence for the making of iron or bronze is patchy and unsatisfactory; the working of gold and silver is even more poorly known, at least before the striking of coins. Nevertheless, we survey what evidence there is, pointing out, as others have before us, that different objects might be produced in particular types of site. Chapter Five looks at particular object types of Celtic art. We focus on swords, which seem to have varied histories, some being deposited soon after they were made, whereas others were quite ancient by the time they entered the ground. We complement this continued consideration of swords with an analysis of torcs, most especially those from Snettisham, which allows us to look at some of the most striking objects worn on the human body and the changes they went through between production and deposition. The gold of torcs links them intimately to coins, which are not always categorized as Celtic art, but they do show some interesting patterns of use, which was certainly not centred around the market exchange emphasized by earlier work. Our aim is also to look at use, as best we can. Although the exact histories of objects are difficult to be sure about, we can say that many items of Celtic art were old and used when deposited, and the histories they brought with them may well have been consequential. In focusing on object assemblages within three different types of depositional context (hoards, burials, and settlements), Chapters Six to Eight set out to move discussions of Celtic art away from a ‘masterpiece’ approach – in which objects are somehow isolated, occasionally by the original act of deposition, but mostly by contemporary scholarship – towards a recontextualized account, which

People and Materials in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period 37 traces human/object ‘networks’ that have a clearer significance in terms of past practice. In our use of the term ‘network’ we draw broad inspiration from actor-network theory (e.g. Latour 2005), in which humans and objects are seen as equally important in the constitution of society. However, we also seek to extend this wider theorization into a distinctly archaeological domain, assessing what people, animals, objects, and features on archaeological sites can tell us when looked at in detail, and as particular and unique combinations. The notion that objects should be understood in relation to one another can hardly be claimed as new. However, in terms of the study of Celtic art, there arguably is still work to be done in this regard. Associations between objects have been considered predominantly in circumstances where they are able to assist with dating (torcs found with datable coins, ‘Iron Age’ horse gear found with ‘Roman’ military equipment, and so on). In Chapters Six to Eight, it is not for their chronological value that these connections are investigated, but for their ability to provide insight into the much broader world of human and object ‘networks’. Contrasts between the combinations of objects in hoards, burials, and settlements can further sketch out patterns of combination and effect. In Chapter Nine we summarize our arguments, returning to the broader picture of Iron Age and Early Roman life; in doing so, we revisit many of the issues raised above. Before concentrating on our own approach though, we need to look at the long history of work on Celtic art, albeit in brief form, taking up also the question of ‘what is art?’

2 But is it Art? Past and Present Approaches to Celtic Art

We have just stressed the linkages between science, religion, and magic as key in our approach to making, using, and depositing Celtic art. What we have not yet discussed is the term ‘art’ itself. Today art is often seen as antithetical to science, associated with the emotional and the irrational as opposed to scientific rigour and reason. In our rethinking of science, whereby we arrive at an appreciation of the qualities and quantities of materials, such as those needed to alloy bronze, we do not want to separate it from religion and magic. These latter terms concern also the study of human relations, their links to the material world in both its causative and moral aspects. Taken together, the three terms provide for a rounded view of human and material relations, a roundedness missing when one or two are considered alone. It is likely that the three terms were not separated in late prehistory or even in the Roman period, although the relative emphasis on each might well have shifted from one period to another. Nor can the three of them easily be separated from notions of art. Art derives from making, using, and depositing objects. The analysis of art, in both anthropology and archaeology, often concentrates on the use or impact of art, its reception, rather than on making or use. Much of the discussion of Celtic art has been in a different vein, for it attempts to define and date styles, as well as the forms and motifs that make them up. Ultimately such discussions are interested in the manner in which motifs coming out of the Mediterranean world of the first millennium BC were incorporated and transformed by workers north of the Alps to form quite new styles, ambiguous and varied. We too are interested in style, but not so much in its history or even its changing impact on viewers, although this later element will be

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important. We want instead to develop a more holistic analysis stressing the whole process from smelting to deposition, each step of which potentially had social impacts and cultural effects. Fine metalwork was an active ingredient in many elements of people’s lives and was not simply a bearer of meaning or of ethnic identity. Quite how people engaged with it causes us to combine ideas of art, science, magic, and religion in a potent mix.

APPROACHES TO PREHISTORIC ART It seems as though archaeology acquired a category of prehistoric art through a series of accidents: the pattern of discovery in the nineteenth century; a growing appetite for ‘primitive’ art in the twentieth; and the expansion of the market in antiquities. (Bradley 2009: 26)

Bradley’s general point is a powerful one: current notions of art have been constructed over the last two centuries (at least) into a form that is culturally specific. We need to be aware of these histories in order not to follow them too unthinkingly; to decide whether the term ‘art’ is useful at all; and quite how we want to use the term. Pretty much everyone dealing with the term ‘art’ feels simultaneously wary of its associations, but also loath to jettison it completely. We too will use the term with some discomfort and need to explain how and why we shall use it. We can discern two basic attitudes to prehistoric art. First it is used in accord with a vague definition, which sees decoration as something beyond function, but which instead bears a cultural or ethnic interpretation. Powell’s Prehistoric Art (Powell 1966), despite its broad title, refers only to Europe and over half the book is dedicated to discussing Bronze and Iron Age metalwork: The first conscious art style to be created in Europe north of the Alps emerged in the mid-fifth century BC among those Celtic peoples who had been enjoying a trade in luxuries with Greeks and Etruscans. (Powell 1966: 185)

The term ‘first conscious art style’ is interesting, relegating previous forms to decoration. The importance of Celtic art was that it was the first to be also linked with a people, the Celts, rather than some more generalized archaeological culture like the Hallstatt or Urnfield in

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central and western Europe respectively. Peoples have art; cultures have decoration. Celtic art can join Roman art, Viking art, Scythian art, and so on. From late prehistory onwards peoples emerge with their own sensibilities, mythologies, and high culture. Celtic art is part of a broader European La Tène culture, clearly distinguished from earlier Hallstatt forms, although taking some tropes such as the sun and water birds from these earlier forms, rooted in the Bronze Age. Celtic art was an amalgam of influences, but with its own logic. In addition to motifs from the Mediterranean and the continuation of a limited number of earlier forms, there might also have been some influence from the Scythians and even Persia, by way of Thrace. As Wells (2008) has recently pointed out, we should expand the range and nature of connections of which Celtic art is a part. Commenting on Jacobsthal, one of the key originators of current thought on Celtic art (see below), Wells writes What is now clear, but was not so clear in Jacobsthal’s time, is that societies all across the temperate zones of the eastern hemisphere, from Iberia in the west, across the whole of Europe and the Mediterranean, through the lands north of the Black Sea, as far east as China, were manufacturing small metal figurines in this period (Wells 2008: 25).

Taylor (1994: 374) points also to east-west connectivity provided by the grassland steppe from the Altai Mountains in Mongolia to the Danubian plain of Hungary and beyond. Metalworking traditions and forms of decoration moved back and forth across Eurasia. In these more globalized days we are inclined to accept wide connections as important and to view the particular art styles of Britain in the later Iron Age as one of many localized versions of these broader styles. Celtic art in Britain did not derive in a straightforward way from local traditions of ornament. Neolithic and Bronze Age art, at least as it survives into the present, concerns the marking of rock surfaces through incision, pecking, and paint, the decoration of pottery in some periods and of metalwork in others. As we have seen, surface decoration of metalwork in the Bronze Age is not especially striking to the modern eye. British metalwork generally lacks the complex engraved and repoussé decoration found on sheet metal elsewhere in Europe from the Middle Bronze Age onwards, with some exceptions, mainly on goldwork. The general forms to which later Iron Age decoration was applied, such as swords, horse and chariot gear, have a longer local heritage, but the forms of these artefacts have changed from the earlier to the later periods and new types, like torcs

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and mirrors have been added. In all, Celtic art is novel in Britain, revolutionary even, setting up a series of complex forms of decoration found through into the Medieval period. But it is also in its origins linked in an obscure way to broader developments in metalwork, in which the styles in Britain and Ireland form the most westerly element of Eurasian trends. Such links are obscure, as we shall see below, as it is hard to trace clear continental precedents for British forms, which soon go their own way. Whether British forms develop their own idiosyncrasies to a greater extent than regional differences elsewhere in Europe is an interesting question, with the suspicion being that they do, but this is not a line of enquiry we will pursue in any detail. What we will look more at is the unprecedented nature of Celtic art within the decorative forms of the British Isles, as herein lies a clue to its social and cultural importance. A second broad approach to art, overlapping with the one emphasizing motifs and their origins, is the mythological. This is most pronounced in the Scandinavian world, linking human, animal, and bird figures, as well as more abstract sun or eye motifs, to various myths, ancient and less so. From Kaul’s (1995) treatment of the Gundestrup cauldron or Bronze Age metallurgy (1998) to Kristiansen and Larsson’s (2005) broad treatment of the mythological structures of the Bronze Age, there is an attempt to write a form of oral history through objects. Myths are seen to be transmitted and sustained through long-term modes of storytelling, song, and performance. In Kristiansen and Larsson’s view there are similar structures to myth from the Middle East to Scandinavia forming a broad historical substrate through which people wrestled to make sense of key issues of life and death. They argue that the international world of travel and trade in the Bronze Age helped sustain this commonality, which was to fragment to some degree in the Iron Age. It follows that the written accounts in the Mediterranean and the Near East from Gilgamesh onwards record broadly occurring forms of myth which come through into the historical period in north-western Europe when writing finally appears. Fine metalwork, as the focus of story and performance, would have been intimately linked to myths and their telling, so that we can read the symbols on that metalwork as indicating known elements, such as the broad occurrence of the divine Twin Rulers. At some level we are very sympathetic to this approach. The effort that went into metalwork indicates that it was used in ways that would have been culturally extremely consequential. The art that

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comes down to us is silent, but it must have been embedded in story, song, and performance. There could also have been broad structures of myth across western Eurasia. Where we are more wary is in interpreting motifs and forms in terms of specific figures or events in myth, as the burden of proof is a heavy one and recourse to mythological interpretation tends to mix up historical references from a number of periods into a generalized Indo-European horizon (Bradley 2009: 150). At a methodological level we are focusing less on the meanings of things, but rather on their impact on the senses and the emotions, and our overall feeling is that British Celtic art was made to be ambiguous and susceptible to multiple readings. Others have tried to link myth and metalwork, with the most sophisticated attempt being that of Miranda Green (1996). In the course of the book we shall mention, but not dwell on, issues of myth and meaning. Much effort in older approaches to prehistoric art went into charting the flow of styles and motifs over space and time, as part of broader efforts at tight dating and the definition of cultural groups. More recent approaches have come to focus on the impact that art had on people and their social relations. Most explicit in his focus on perception is Wells’s attempt to use neuroscience and the psychology of perception to understand image and response (also the title of his book) in a series of forms from La Tène through to the Early Middle Ages. Interestingly, the term ‘art’ does not appear in the book, which looks at two- or threedimensional figurative ornament (Wells 2008). Instead of using and defining art, Wells’s focus is on the visual impacts of objects on people and how strong visual impressions, particularly of figurative ornament, altered notions of self and of the group in a variety of physical settings. For Wells artefacts have agency but no art. Bradley’s recent book has a similar title to that of Wells’s (Image and Audience), with art mentioned in the subtitle (Bradley 2009). Bradley’s key intent is to re-immerse art into the broader context of life, reversing the process by which previous analysts have come to consider art as a separate phenomenon. He looks first at how prehistoric art has been decontextualized. Bradley feels that parallel processes of definition have been applied to so-called ‘primitive’ art, both ethnographic and prehistoric, over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, creating this as a valuable category informing us about prior or foreign sensibilities, but then distancing this from our lives through its display in museums and galleries. In opposition to the modern sequestering of art is the idea that in their original context items we label as art were intimate parts of life.

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Thus decorative metalwork can be studied in relation to the funeral rites and votive offerings, and decorated monuments in relation to the people who performed their rituals there. It is rarely possible to infer the meanings of ancient images without the help of written evidence, but it may be possible to investigate the relationship between the designs that were created and displayed and the audiences who encountered them (Bradley 2009: vii).

The trick with the term ‘art’ is to use it to designate decorated items with an unusual impact on people, thus picking them out as special in some way, but not in the process to abstract these art objects from broader sets of artefacts, built structures, or landscapes. Art should be both special and a part of life, creating obvious difficulties in defining something that is both distinct and contextualized. Bradley uses Celtic art as a key example of material that has been too forcefully decontextualized (2009: 12–25). Celtic art has been discussed in a specialist literature, but makes little appearance in broader surveys of the Iron Age in Britain (Bradley 2009: 15–16). In general terms, the approaches of Wells and Bradley have much in common with our own, in their emphasis of re-immersing Celtic art in broader flows of Iron Age and Roman life and also in their stress on the impact that objects had on senses and emotions and through them on social relations. Both also draw on anthropological and art-historical works on art, as we do, and it is worth considering these before defining our own position a little more fully.

PHILOSOPHICAL, ANTHROPOLOGICAL, AND ART-HISTORICAL APPROACHES TO ART This is a huge subject. Our survey, such as it is, will emphasize those aspects of other people’s work we have found useful in developing our own approach here. Many of the approaches that echo most closely what we are trying to develop concentrate on human activity within the flow of life, looking also at how human beings live their lives through multiple relations with other people, other species, and material things of various kinds. Views of this kind go back at least to the start of the last century, when Dewey and others began developing broadly ecological notions of what it means to be human. Dewey’s central problem was the nature of experience. Since

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Descartes, experience has been seen to be something that happened inside the human organism, primarily in the head. For Dewey experience emerged within an environment that was physical and social, mediated through language and other forms of symbolic systems, constantly responding to the ambiguities of the world. Meaning arises in transactions between people using various forms of communication. Humans attempt to organize their experience, making it whole and satisfying in the face of contradictions and uncertainties, according to Dewey. The body from an early age becomes a medium of expressive activity, and aesthetic experience integrates different aspects of activity, providing the possibility of wholeness, even if this is a goal never to be achieved. The form of a work of art unfolds as a temporal process, showing what the work is about. Art creates human ideals in action, showing the possibility of wholeness and integration not just for the individual, but for the group as a whole (Dewey 2009). There are many gerunds in Dewey’s writings as he emphasizes that experience derives from activity with others, both human and non-human. The idealistic aspect of his writings, stressing human drives for holism and unity in the face of uncertainty and contradiction, have been criticized, but he does balance the positive and negative aspects of life, and in the former domain art and aesthetics have a big part to play. For Dewey art was part of life and as heightened experience helped throw the problems of life into new perspective. This immersion of art into the overall flow of activity also comes out in the work of people like Ingold, who we mentioned briefly in the last chapter. Ingold (e.g. 2000), influenced by the work of J. J. Gibson, also sees action as key to perception, understanding, and communication, which take place between people rather than within a solitary person. What much recent work has tried to add to Dewey and others is a greater emphasis on the active nature of material things in shaping human relations and experience. This has been the central focus of diverse thinkers such as the art historian W. J. T. Mitchell (2005) and the anthropologist Alfred Gell (1998). For Mitchell paintings and other objects impose rules of perception upon us that derive from the canons of style within which they were made. A painting that aims at three-dimensional perspective operates by a different set of conventions from the attempts of Cubists to capture a fourth dimension, or the more two-dimensional explorations

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of colour of someone like Piet Mondrian. We can refuse to abide by the conventions that paintings try to set, but if we do start to accept them we are drawn into a particular set of experiences and attempts to make the world meaningful. These come from the painting (or three-dimensional object) itself as well as from the viewer. As we saw in the last chapter, Gell, in developing the technology of enchantment idea, was also looking at the effects that things had on people, with the idea that dazzling objects, such as a Trobriand Island canoe prow, were evidence of the cosmologically derived skills of the maker. Technologies of enchantment were not just those that dazzled the eye and the sensorium, but were indications that the makers could channel the creative powers of the universe in effective ways because they were in good standing with the spirits, gods, or other cosmological powers. However, this notion did somewhat contradict Gell’s analysis of form and decoration as elements that might dazzle the eye and hence confuse the brain. In a creative and very useful paper (unassociated with the Technologies of Enchantment idea), Gell discusses a directly parallel debate conducted within art history and anthropology, which focused on whether ‘anthropological art’ should indeed be termed art (Gell 1998). He reminds us that, in the post-Duchampian era, anything can become art, irrespective of whether its maker intended it as such, and suggests that we therefore should not worry ourselves too much when using the term. Gell sees artworks primarily as ‘vehicles of complicated ideas’ put on display for consideration (ibid: 36), and argues that it is actually a positive thing to ‘enfranchise “artefacts” and allow for their circulation as artworks, displaying them as embodiments or residues of complex intentionalities’ (ibid: 37). From this latter statement in particular, Gell’s reasoning strikes a chord with recent archaeological approaches to material culture, in which objects have come to be viewed as perfectly capable of providing access to the broader meanings, ideologies, and desires of the societies in which they originated. If, following Gell, we take the term art as a relatively fluid one, which encompasses objects that are (a) held up for us to think about, (b) interesting, and (c) can embody complex ideas about the people who made and used them, then, arguably, as long as we bear the difficulties of the term in mind, it is perfectly possible to carry on using it in relation to past material culture, Celtic art included. Thinking about Gell’s work over the course of our investigations into Celtic art, we have come to the conclusion that Gell concentrates rather too much on the moment and act of perception, saying much

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less about the efforts that went into making things, their overall histories, and subsequent disposal. In developing our analysis we are trying to look at the processes as a whole that involved metalwork. This is partly because the act of perception and its immediate impact are now denied to us as archaeologists, but for the more positive reason that when grappling with the past or the present we can only understand any one moment in the flow of life if this is embedded within the overall flow. We will concentrate on metalwork, but will, to some degree, think about the links that metal had with other aspects of material culture, with landscapes, settlements, and so on. In approaching Celtic art, now a very old subject, with a new set of theoretical approaches and archaeological aims in mind, we hope to be able to reinvigorate present understandings of some of the great treasures of prehistoric Britain, and indeed their less impressive but no less important material cousins. As a result of doing so, we also hope to shed new light more broadly on the kinds of society that these items were caught up in, roughly between the fourth century BC and the beginning of the second century AD.

CELTIC ART? The term ‘Celtic art’ combines two contested terms. We have just seen some of the difficulties with the idea of art. The word ‘Celtic’ has also become a problematic one. Its viability, which is inevitably linked to the concept of people in the past known as the Celts, has been much debated in recent years (e.g. James 1999; Megaw and Megaw 2001; Cunliffe 2003; Collis 2003), and so we do not intend to consider it in detail here. Suffice to say, the concept of ‘the Celts’ blurs modern identities, historically defined linguistic groups, the (mis)understandings of Classical authors, and archaeological evidence to an extent that is unacceptable to some, rendering the term essentially useless, archaeologically, in many people’s eyes. Interestingly, the term ‘Celtic’ arguably works best of all in relation to the body of material that has come to be described as Celtic art. It would be hard to deny that many of the objects included in Megaw and Megaw’s survey of Celtic art across Europe (2001), for example, do indeed share certain formal and decorative qualities, despite a distribution extending from Ireland to Anatolia. Similarly, there are also shared elements of style between

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Iron Age/Romano-British ‘early’ Celtic art and the Early Medieval ‘late’ material seen in brooches, manuscripts, carved stones, etc. (see Megaw and Megaw 2001, Ch. 7; Harding 2007, Ch. 11). If ‘Celtic’ is used simply in this sense, without ethnic associations, to describe a general style of making and decorating objects, the term can be a useful and indeed meaningful one. It should not, therefore, necessarily be abandoned altogether. The concept of ‘art’, both in itself and more specifically in relation to this particular set of material, is equally problematic. As Megaw and Megaw point out, the very idea of art, as distinct from craft, is a relatively recent one (2001, 16–20). Today, art means many different things to different people, and in the recent past it would have meant different things still. We can be pretty much certain that people in the Iron Age did not see the material culture we now term ‘Celtic art’ as ‘art’ in the sense that we understand it. However, as with ‘Celtic’, that does not necessarily mean we should banish the word entirely from our vocabulary. Arguably more important than either of these theoretical justifications for our continued use of this problematic term is the fact that Celtic art represents an extremely useful shorthand with which to refer to a body of archaeological material – one which forms the central focus of this book – that would otherwise be difficult to name. We could, for example, have replaced ‘Celtic art’ with ‘decorated metalwork’ or ‘prestigious objects’, but these terms would have been even more inaccurate or problematic in many ways. Having been in use for such a long time, the phrase ‘Celtic art’ immediately and effectively conjures up a set of artefacts in one’s mind – the Battersea shield, a Snettisham torc, a beautifully decorated mirror such as Desborough. However, as we will see in the next chapter, while this core of the Celtic art corpus is solid and easily imagined, its edges are rather hazier and more difficult to see. The point at which an item cannot or should not be described as Celtic art is difficult to identify. As a result, the point at which our research ends materially is equally vague, an attribute that we view as a strength not a weakness. It is important to remember, however, that the presence of fuzzy boundaries towards the edge of the category is hardly unique to Celtic art within prehistoric archaeology, or indeed beyond. Whether defining pottery styles (e.g. Gibson 2002) or monument types (e.g. http:// thesaurus.english-heritage.org.uk/), or for that matter diseases or racial categories (Bowker and Star 1999), the act of categorization necessarily imposes artificially solid borders around fluid entities.

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In choosing to look at Celtic art, we are to an extent giving in to our basic fascination with nice objects. However, the body of material it encompasses also provides us with an extremely useful sampling strategy. Within the confines of our study, it simply would not have been possible to look at all decorated objects or all metalwork over the course of the Iron Age and Early Roman period. Indeed, it was not even possible to include all ‘Celtic art’ in the project database: brooches and coins were omitted, as were non-metal objects (see Chapter Three for a more detailed discussion of the reasoning behind this). Over the course of the project, many people asked how we could justify these omissions. The simple answer is that we had to draw a line somewhere, as every archaeological project does. Interestingly, the fact that we began our investigations in the Iron Age (rather than in the Upper Palaeolithic or the Bronze Age) and ended them in the Roman period (rather than carrying on through to look at Medieval Celtic art) has not attracted comparable questioning. It is also important to point out that, although we did not include some items in the database, they certainly are incorporated into the book as a whole. Decorated non-metal items and undecorated metal ones, brooches and coins, are all brought into sharp focus at various stages throughout the text. The category of Celtic art represents a starting point for our inquiry, not a solid line at which it stops.

PAST APPROACHES TO CELTIC ART The study of Celtic art has been linked to an understanding of barbarian Europe: the flowering of a series of styles of fine metalwork within an aristocratic milieu was seen as a key indicator of the nature and health of society prior to the coming of Rome. Celtic art derived from earlier Mediterranean influences to the north and west emanating from the Greeks and Etruscans, themselves under the influence of eastern civilizations. In the eastern Mediterranean, Celtic art was ideal for the diffusionist, looking at influences moving across Europe that maintained traces of their original forms, although being constantly transformed. The main transformations with which Celtic art was associated were those stretching from Hallstatt, with its Bronze Age roots, to La Tène, comprising a mixture of southern and northern influences. La Tène material culture was of course rather variably

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associated with an ethnogenesis, the birth of the Celts, about which much has been written (James 1999, Megaw and Megaw 2001, Collis 2003, Cunliffe 2003). An aristocratic art, evidence of great skill, northern in conception and execution, but with early perceptible southern roots, it is unsurprising that Celtic art has been much discussed, bringing with it as it does issues of power, ethnicity, gender, and aesthetics. (It is a mark of the cultural status of this material that most is held in the collections of the national museums, primarily the British Museum.) Celtic art is also connected with the technologies of modernity, which were developed in the nineteenth century when rivers had to be dredged to make them navigable for larger ships, and, more recently, in the shape of the metal detector. There is considerable continuity in the discussions of Celtic art, going back to Kemble et al. (1863), the first compendium of material discovered to that date. The beautiful plates, with their commentary by A. W. Franks, present the early discoveries, including the Witham shield and scabbard plate, various East Yorkshire burials with horse gear and brooches, the hoards from Polden Hill, Somerset, and Westhall, Suffolk, with highly enamelled horse gear, all strikingly illustrated. The discussion combines an interest in the Mediterranean origin of spiral motifs with an appreciation for the skill of the metalwork at the end of prehistory. Such themes were elaborated in full for the first time 25 years later by Arthur Evans in his Rhind lectures (the notes accompanying these are unpublished1). Unsurprisingly, given the interests of his father John Evans, he starts with the Macedonian origins of coins, the transmission of their iconography across Europe, latterly from northern France to Britain, but then the local development of types within these islands. Foreign influence and local appropriation continue as themes when he sees Hellenic and Etruscan influences coming together north of the Alps that eventually create something striking and original in Britain. Evans’s consideration is European in scope, but ends with British art, which was flourishing, unusual, and non-classical in idiom, but eventually ‘cut off by the roman eagle’. His list of key places expands on Kemble’s to include the Witham and Battersea Shields, the material from Polden Hill in Somerset, Stanwick in North Yorkshire, and the King’s, Queen’s, and Charioteer’s barrows from East Yorkshire, as well as the Marlborough

1

These are held in the Arthur Evans Papers in the Ashmolean Museum.

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bucket, various tankards, Glastonbury lake village finds, and ‘Caledonian’ art. With a few exceptions (Leeds 1933) most subsequent work has been written after the Second World War. In consequence it has come under the influence of Jacobsthal, whose 1944 publication of Continental material while a refugee in Britain from Nazi Germany has become a key statement (Jacobsthal 1944). Most subsequent writers have obeyed two urges: first to agree with Jacobsthal; secondly, to disagree with each other. It might seem difficult to do both, but it is possible because Jacobsthal wrote little that survives on the British material, our knowledge of his views of British Celtic art coming via De Navarro’s account (1952). Writers have varied in how much emphasis they place on European connections or on the British material as a local appropriation of broader styles. Fox (1958) derived his interest from local archaeology, first of the Cambridgeshire region, developing later a thesis linking geography and culture in highland and lowland Britain (Fox 1923, 1932), but more immediately from his study of Llyn Cerrig Bach (Fox 1946). Despite his British focus, Fox gives along the way a wonderfully succinct statement of views on the origins and transmission of Celtic art and La Tène culture: In the compounds of the rich Celtic chieftains on the upper and middle Rhine, then barbarian craftsmen and their apprentices gloated over art works of varied origin and use, unloaded from North Italian packman’s ponies and they wrought, as every creative group does, their own adaptations of form and pattern associated with some modification of technique, which together constitute the new style “Early Celtic art”: at first, no doubt, local, then regional extending thereafter in Europe as the Celtic tribes spread, east and west and south (Fox 1958: xxiii).

After this brief excursus on origins, Fox settles down to discuss the chronology and regional differences of Celtic art in Britain, concentrating much attention on where the metalwork was made and whether there were distinguishable workshops. Basic to his consideration was a grammar of ornament (Fig. 2.1) from which he judged change over time and regional variability. Fox’s work was museumbased, at the National Museum of Wales, and his footnotes and acknowledgements sketch sets of connections with scholars based in museums (C. Hawkes, E. T. Leeds, H. N. Savory) as well as universities (Hawkes, who moved from the British Museum to Oxford in 1946, and

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Fig. 2.1 Fox’s ‘Grammar of British Early Celtic Ornament: I’ (Fox 1958: Fig. 82). By permission of the National Museum of Wales

S. Piggott). These groups compared objects, writing to each other about new discoveries or current work on older finds, a network of people drawn together by objects from which discussion and publication emerged. In the more recent period three names stand out – Jope, Stead, and the Megaws – none of whom take very direct inspiration from Fox. The most detailed and complex statement is that of Jope (2000). His book has one of the longest histories in British archaeology and, indeed, academia as a whole. It was conceived in 1956 as a coauthored work with Jacobsthal, most of the text being written in the 1960s after Jacobsthal’s death in 1957, but Jope only finished writing finally in 1996, a few weeks before he died. The manuscript was then put into publication order (see Preface by Stead and the publisher’s note in Jope 2000: v–vi). Although conceived in partnership with Jacobsthal, there is little direct evidence of the older man’s influence. Jope did not, for instance, use Jacobsthal’s chronological scheme (on which, see below). Every person reading Jope is likely to pick out a different aspect of this huge and varied work. For us, a striking aspect is Jope’s desire to evoke the sensibility and ways of seeing, on the part of the metalworker

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and the viewer, created by Celtic art. The latter part of the book is concerned with the insular Celtic use of formal ornament, its thematic material, its syntax and the art of its composition. It explores some new concepts, some new ways of seeing this formal ornament, through the effects of implied lines of force, pressure, tension or vision in the tectonics of ornament, and its explanation of imagery, overt or hinted – concepts often springing from deep in the artist’s being and of potentially enduring consequence (Jope 2000: 2).

The book goes on to discuss ‘the qualities of mind and vision, of spatial sense, of visual memory’ that we find among artists at work in the British Isles (Jope 2000: 2). Jope’s enormous apparatus of chronology, of discussions of how items were made, and his painstaking analysis of ornament (a huge expansion on Fox’s ‘Grammar of Ornament’ – see Jope’s ‘Anatomy of Insular Early Celtic Ornament’ [2000: Vol.1: 333–42; Vol. 2: Plates I– XII]) were all for the broader purpose of understanding the role and impact of art objects (Fig. 2.2). Jope here diverges in a fundamental manner from Jacobsthal, whose key aim was to identify styles, their origins and developments, in a manner derived from Classical art history. At his best Jope is able to render the visual impact of objects in words as lavishly convoluted as the objects they describe. Part of the description of the Witham scabbard (Fig. 2.3), for example, runs The mouth-mount has a design embossed in bold relief, a swelling lobed shape dropped limply but gracefully across the scabbard and hanging with hunched back from a ribbed duct, growing from a luscious, unwinding foliate volute. The whole is intensely organic, visceral, its swelling shape held in restraining tensions as if by a membrane (Jope 2000: 28).

The intense desire of Jope to see for himself and to offer this vision to others results in a prose style sometimes compelling, sometimes incomprehensible. Spratling’s unpublished PhD thesis (Spratling 1972) provided a fresh overview of much new material and has been deservedly influential in many ways, despite the fact that it is unpublished. It has since been complemented by analyses of key bodies of material from excavations (Spratling 1979, 1981). His work concentrated on form and production techniques, as well as attempting to immerse the material in its archaeological context in a manner that prefigures our own.

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657 652

651

654

653

658

659

660

661

669

656 671

655

668 672 673

670

666 662

663

664

667

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Fig. 2.2 Aspects of Jope’s ‘Anatomy of Early Celtic Ornament’ (Jope 2000: Plate IV)

The best-selling work on Celtic art is one truer to the scheme that Jacobsthal put forward, deriving in part from the desire of a museum curator to organize and exhibit an enormous collection – that by Stead (1996). By adopting and extending Jacobsthal’s chronology, Stead came up with six styles or stages for the British material (I–VI).

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Fig. 2.3 Decoration on the Witham scabbard (Stead 2006: 217) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

The first three are Jacobsthal’s Early, Waldalgesheim, and Sword/ Plastic styles devised for the Continental material, but hard to recognize straightforwardly in Britain. Stages IV and V indicate developed insular styles, with VI denoting material produced under Roman influence (Stead 1996: Ch. 2). A number of important additions to the corpus derive from Stead’s own work – East Yorkshire burial finds, Snettisham, or the analyses of Mill Hill, Deal, or British swords (Stead 1991d, 1995, 2006). Stead’s knowledge of the British material and his acute observations are unrivalled, although his lack of broader conclusions is sometimes frustrating. Over many years, Ruth and Vincent Megaw have worked broadly across the European compass of Celtic art and theirs has been the

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most sustained attempt to place the British material in its larger context (Megaw and Megaw 2001). They define art as ‘elements of decoration beyond those necessary for functional utility though these elements represent a form of symbolic visual communication which is only partially accessible to us’ (Megaw and Megaw 2001: 9). Their ability to match attributes of style and form across time and space builds up a dense series of connections and genealogies, although their analysis of visual communication tends to be obscured by a layering of detail. In some ways Green (1996) takes a similar stance, emphasizing the broadly religious dimension of decorated metalwork. She was also the first writer to emphasize aspects of the social dimension of metalwork, such as gender. The most recent booklength treatment of Celtic art is that of Harding (2007), whose approach in many ways echoes that of the Megaws. In recent years new approaches to Celtic art have been appearing, utilizing theory concerning people, material culture, and aesthetics (Giles 2008; Hutcheson 2004; Joy 2008, 2010, and Macdonald 2007a). These approaches have more in common with our own, attempting to look at the role that fine metalwork played in people’s lives in the Iron Age, concentrating on the role of colour and its symbolism, the complex nature of mirror decorations, and the importance of horses to the cultural forms of the Late Iron Age. Although there is considerable variety of approaches to Celtic art, the pantheon of major works considered is limited and consistent. Appendix 1 shows the artefacts illustrated in some of the main works on Celtic art – we have missed Jope (2000) out of consideration as he has so many illustrations. These number just over a hundred (out of the 2,500+ items in our database), and about twenty of these are regularly used in identifying styles and constructing chronologies. The items included by the various authors reflect their own particular biographies and geographical areas of interest, but also show considerable degrees of overlap. In these groupings there is both consistency and contradiction. Not only do different authors group artefacts variously, the same author can place one item in more than one group. A number of artefacts are regularly placed early – the Cerrigydrudion crown (Fig. 2.4), the Wisbech scabbard, the Standlake scabbard, or the Newnham Croft bracelet. Many are placed in a middle group around the Torrs-Witham-Wandsworth chamfrein and shields, to which can variously be added scabbard styles of East Yorkshire (Kirkburn and Wetwang), that from Sutton, the Mill Hill,

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Fig. 2.4 The Cerrigydrudion ‘crown’ (detail), showing the distinctively early palmette motifs. Photo: By permission of the National Museum of Wales

Deal, ‘crown’, and (sometimes) the Battersea shield (Fig. 2.5) and Llyn Cerrig Bach plaque. These last two can also sometimes be put in a late group with mirrors, (some of) the Snettisham torcs, and the Waterloo helmet. Much less controversial is a very late group, under Roman influence, chiefly composed of colourful horse fittings, such as Polden Hill or Seven Sisters. In terms of motifs, palmettes and lotuses – derivative Greek ornaments – are seen as early, together with wave tendrils, such as those on the lower plate of the Standlake scabbard, and some curvilinear forms, such as those on the Newnham Croft bracelet. Trumpet voids are important in the middle and late groups, and these are composed ‘of three lines, one compound curve (concave/convex) and two simple curves (one concave, the other convex)’ (Stead 1996: 34) – in Stead’s view this could have developed from lobe and cusp designs, which derived from half-palmettes (Stead 1996: 34). Repoussé and engraved decoration are found in this middle group, quite often together, as on the Witham shield or two shields from Wandsworth. The late mirror style has complex tendrils, trumpet voids, and varied forms of symmetry.

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Fig. 2.5 The Battersea shield (Stead 1985a, Plate 13) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

A SUMMARY OF OUR APPROACH We are attempting to develop an object-centred archaeology. Studying metalwork (primarily bronze, iron, silver, and gold) in the Iron Age and Early Roman period in Britain, we have been drawn to a body of material marvellous then and marvellous now. The complexity of form, decoration, and the use of colour attracts our senses,

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mainly through vision these days (when few people other than museum professionals get to handle the material). Objects that stood out from the mass require us to think about why and how this might be so through the nature of their difference, their links to each other and to human and animal bodies, as well as how far they formed a class. In pursuing such questions we are working outwards from the things themselves. Our key questions concern the unfolding of relations between people and objects across the world, so that we can move out from single deposits, to repeated patterns of deposit and towards the nature of these connections. Consequently the term object-centred, which might sound static, takes on a profoundly temporal aspect. We can define a number of temporal scales, starting with the longest. We have already discussed the perspective provided by the really long duration from the Bronze Age through to the Early Medieval period in Britain, which allows us to see that Celtic art is the first set of metalwork to receive complex surface decoration to complement complexity of form. Complexity is created through inscribing the surface with curvilinear pattern, the use of colour through coral and glass, attention to altered textures through hatching, as well as creating three-dimensional forms, such as horse gear or torcs, which cannot be seen all at once. Within Celtic art itself there is a shift from earlier asymmetrical decorations down to around 20 BC, to an emphasis, a century later, on symmetry and colour. Overall, the emphasis on decoration is found albeit in changed ways throughout the Romano-British period and into the Anglo-Saxon world. Celtic art represents a profound shift within Britain towards decorated metalwork, which we have characterized as a move from quantity to quality. Celtic art partakes of long-term trends within depositions that derive from the Bronze Age, so that swords and shields are deposited in eastern-flowing rivers in the same places as earlier Bronze Age metal. The locations of land deposition also need looking at in more detail to see whether continuities emerge there too. Within individual sites such as cemeteries there is a suggestion that early graves were furnished with rich goods, including decorated metalwork, perhaps operating as founding graves key to the subsequent development of a cemetery. We are also interested in whether there is a structure to production. Metalwork from the Bronze Age onwards has been produced on small settlements with a house or two, but also in larger

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sites such as the ring works. Such a spread of production carries on in the Iron Age with hillforts now as the largest sites for the early period, and there is some suggestion that particular types are produced in hillforts as compared to smaller settlements, although the evidence is still sparse. At a more detailed timescale individual artefacts have their own histories or biographies, which we shall explore for swords and torcs where they are most perceptible, but may also have existed in other classes of item too. And at the smallest timescale was the appreciation of individual sets of decoration on objects in which the eye is kept moving by sinuous curves and continuous links between what might otherwise be separate motifs. Many objects are also three-dimensional, so that torcs or horse gear cannot be seen all at once, with the fullness of form only unfolding over time. Perception as a consequence is a process rather than an event, with a changing and unstable aspect to it, making fixed interpretations harder to sustain. This is more true of artefacts prior to 20 BC than those made after AD 40 in more symmetrical styles, so that ambiguity may have diminished in this later period, giving the art a different cultural role. Ars longa vita brevis, as Hippocratus wrote. We wish to examine changes in Celtic art at a variety of scales in relation to the human lifespan, many of which go way beyond that of a single generation. Material things are part of a long-term flow of life, creating a stability and continuity to human experience without ever fixing or directing it. The perceptual impression left by the sinuous decoration on a scabbard or mirror came out of longer-term histories that attuned human activities and perception in various ways, giving them particular power and value. The unstable world of the pre-Roman period produced an art of negotiation and ambiguity, replaced by something rather different after the coming of Rome. We wish to chart the links between life and art in the Iron Age and Romano-British periods as far as we are now able, and so to uncover something of Iron Age ontologies. In order to set the scene a little more we need to consider our working methods and our attempt to chart the full range of decorated metalwork from the later Iron Age, as far as that is possible at present, and it is to this we turn in the next chapter.

3 The Database and Our Methodology

As we discussed in the previous chapter, right from the very start we have tried to ensure that our approach is an avowedly objectcentred one. In order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of those objects that have come to be known as Celtic art, the first task of the project as a whole was to construct a database on which to base that understanding – to find out what objects we were actually talking about, how many of them there were, what they were made from, and where they had been found. Previously, details of this rich body of material remained widely scattered within a variety of published and unpublished sources (see below). In constructing a full catalogue of Celtic art in Britain, we sought to provide a solid empirical foundation on which to build our own interpretations. Additionally, we also sought to provide a readily available digital resource for others to use in future research.1 In the following section, we outline the basic elements of the process through which the database was constructed and highlight a few of the most interesting patterns that emerged (see Garrow 2008 for a more detailed discussion).

1

Since December 2008, the Celtic art database described in this section has been available to download via the British Museum website: http://www.britishmuseum. org/research/research_projects/project_archive/technologies_of_enchantment/the_ celtic_art_database.aspx. The database was also deposited with the Archaeology Data Service: http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/

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DECIDING WHAT TO INCLUDE As discussed in Chapter Two, Celtic art is far from an easy set of material to define; while the central core of the corpus is wellestablished, towards the edges things become rather less clear. It is, in fact, notable how few definitions of Celtic art have been attempted in the past, even within key texts on the subject. Where definitions have been given, these have generally been left rather vague. Megaw and Megaw, for example, define ‘art’ as ‘elaboration that goes beyond what is required for simple function’, leaving the ‘Celtic’ part intact despite an awareness of the issues surrounding it (2001: 7–8). Similarly, Fox required the presence of ‘ornamental features’ in distinguishing Celtic ‘art’ from ‘craft’ (1958: xxvii). To borrow Gosden and Head’s point made in relation to ‘landscape’ (1994), Celtic art has proved to be a ‘usefully ambiguous concept’. The fact that Celtic ‘art’ can be both two- and three-dimensional has added to this vagueness, ensuring further flexibility of definition. The inclusion of three-dimensional sculptural forms as ‘art’, along with two-dimensional patterned decoration, makes it extremely difficult to know where to draw the line. In these terms, a plain sword (for example) can be considered just as much a work of ‘art’ as a highly decorated one. Reflecting this vagueness, in previous studies numerous undecorated items have been included as Celtic ‘art’ alongside the well-known pieces. In Jope’s book (2000), for example, we find plain tankards, undecorated ‘horn caps’, simple bronze bowls, and unornamented bracelets. Similarly, in Spratling’s thesis (1972), alongside elaborately decorated flat-ring terrets we find ‘simple’ styles; and in MacGregor’s catalogue (1976) there are plain bracelets to match the heavily decorated massive armlets. It is probably fair to say that these undecorated items would be unlikely to be considered Celtic art in the true spirit of the term if viewed in isolation. In order to negotiate these tricky issues of definition, we decided that the database should in the first instance be inclusive rather than exclusive. We therefore incorporated every object type that had featured in previous catalogues of Celtic art, or would normally have been included as such. The database thus occupies the middle ground. It does not include ‘Later Iron Age/Early Romano-British metalwork’ in its entirety, but nor does it focus only on ‘artefacts adorned with curvilinear motifs’. From such a position of inclusivity, it was anticipated that questions such as which objects actually were

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decorated in the classic ‘swirly’ Celtic art style, and which were not, could most effectively be answered. It is also important to point out which items were not included in the database. Due to the project’s relatively restricted geographical focus, objects found in England, Scotland, and Wales were included, but those from Ireland were not. The 38,000 or so Celtic coins known in Britain already have an up-to-date catalogue in the form of the Celtic Coin Index,2 and so these were not included either. Nor were brooches and pins, which might also have been included as Celtic art in the broadest sense of the term; it would simply have been extremely difficult to compile a comparable dataset for these. Finally, it should also be noted that the database focuses exclusively on metalwork; while motifs that could be described as Celtic art are occasionally found on pottery, bone, and other materials, these were not included. In highlighting these omissions, it is very important to stress that, while these things may have been left out of the database, they are by no means absent from our wider investigation; coins, brooches, and non-metallic objects are brought into discussions throughout this book.

CONSTRUCTING THE DATABASE The sources used to compile the database were diverse. We started with the three best-known corpora of Celtic art in Britain: Jope’s relatively recently published, but not as recently compiled, Early Celtic Art of the British Isles (2000), MacGregor’s Early Celtic Art in North Britain (1976), and Spratling’s unpublished PhD thesis Southern British Decorated Bronzes of the Late Pre-Roman Iron Age (1972). Each of these works contains an extensive catalogue of objects. Both Spratling and MacGregor attempted to make their catalogues as inclusive as possible, but Jope did not, as he was concerned primarily with giving an impression of the range of material that comprised the Celtic art ‘style’. In combination, the lists within these three studies provided an extremely strong foundation for our database. We did,

2

Available online at http://finds.org.uk/CCI/

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however, draw upon a wide range of further sources, including papers and books (e.g. Clarke 1954, Hutcheson 2004, Stead 2006), the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) database, and museum records (see Garrow 2008, 36–7 for a full list). Information about each object was recorded as a separate row within an Excel spreadsheet. Ultimately, a maximum of 54 separate categories of information about an individual artefact were recorded. Broadly speaking, these fell into four basic categories: 

description (what the decoration was like, what materials it was made from, etc.)  location (what kind of site it was found on, which county it was found in, etc.)  sources/references (where we found out about the object, where it is currently located, etc.)  date (see below) The first three descriptive fields were relatively straightforward to ascribe, but usually a considerable degree of extra research was required in order to establish an object’s date. In the past, Celtic art has generally been dated stylistically (e.g. Fox 1958; Stead 1985a). However, given the vagaries of dates associated with the different Celtic art styles (see Garrow et al. 2010), we were keen to add a further layer of contextual dating information. The context of each item within the database was therefore assessed for potential ‘datability’. Every object thought to have been found in a context with datable associated finds was investigated in further detail within the original published source (usually a site report). Where possible, the dates of those associated materials – usually pottery, coins, or brooches – were established. The breadth of the date ranges assigned by this means varied considerably; objects found with Roman coins, for example, can often be dated to within a few years, but those found with pottery were sometimes only datable to a period of two or three centuries. As a result of this work, it proved possible to add a date range based on clear archaeological associations (including radiocarbon dates, which were included where available) for 20 per cent of the objects within the database. Through this method, we were of course primarily dating the deposition rather than manufacture of these items – an important distinction (see also below).

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In total, 2,580 objects were recorded within the database. Fig. 3.1 provides a breakdown of numbers by object type. It shows very clearly that items of horse harness are extremely numerous, with terrets, bridle bits, linch pins, and ‘general’ horse gear (harness junctions, strap mounts, etc.) filling four of the top seven places. Alongside these, swords and torcs/collars are also found in large numbers. The other items named specifically were: arm rings/armlets, daggers, shields, ‘horn caps’, mirrors, spoons, tankards, bowls/cauldrons/ buckets, ornamental strips, and animal/human forms. The distribution of all findspots included within the database is shown in Fig. 3.2. Perhaps the most striking aspect of this image is that Celtic art objects are found right across Britain, from the Isles of Scilly in the south-west to Shetland in the north-east. Within this widespread overall distribution, however, there are nevertheless places that are particularly dense in finds, as well as distinct ‘blank’ areas. The highest density of findspots, in East Anglia, is very clearly visible. This regional hotspot might also be seen as the particularly pronounced peak of a generally denser, south-easterly distribution that runs in a rough crescent from Somerset through the Midlands to East Yorkshire. In total, 1,679 (65 per cent) of the objects within the database could be attributed to an archaeological context (here we use ‘context’ in a 600

No. of objects

500 400 300 200 100 0 t r r r it d n ret al) ap ror on p d d pi lla gge or iel e b r ar cke tri orm the r c o ir Te ene rn- M Sp ank /bu tal s n f O a Sw Sh ors inch D a o T (g H H L on en um ar dr m ul rna al/h ge a /c O nim se r w o A Bo H

t

le

rm

a g/

m Ar

rin

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To

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Fig. 3.1 Quantities of different object types within the database (total no. 2,580)

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Fig. 3.2 Overall distribution of findspots within the database (total no. 2,530)

fairly broad sense, to refer to a ‘hillfort’, for example); the others were either stray or entirely unprovenanced finds. Fig. 3.3 shows the different contexts in which Celtic art objects have been found. The category which stands out most is that of ‘dry land hoard’, whilst ‘inhumations’ and ‘hillforts’ are also very noticeable (these three depositional contexts are explored in substantial detail in Chapters Six to Eight).

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40

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d

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Fig. 3.3 Percentage of artefacts within each context (total no. 1,679)

Biases to Consider Before moving on to discuss patterns any further, it is vital to acknowledge some of the biases that will inevitably have affected the material we are describing. First and foremost, we are dealing only with those objects that were deposited in an archaeologically visible way. In an earlier paper, Gosden and Hill (2008) discussed the representation of Celtic art within the archaeological record compared to the quantities that may actually have been in use. Having considered the numbers which must originally have existed, even in conservative estimates, they ended by saying that ‘one conclusion seems inescapable: we have archaeological evidence of only a tiny fraction of the Celtic art that would originally have been in circulation’ (2008: 6): around 600 of potentially 250,000 terret rings, for example, and only 278 out of perhaps 30,000 swords. As already mentioned, we are also dealing with patterns relating to the deposition of objects, not necessarily their use: we have lots of torcs from Norfolk because people deposited lots of torcs there. Similarly, recovery biases in the present will also have affected the patterns observed, and so areas that have traditionally seen high levels of metal-detector activity (such as East Anglia) inevitably appear denser in terms of metal finds. The process of distinguishing biases of recovery or deposition from ‘real’ patterns of use is undeniably a very difficult one. In some circumstances and to some extent, it is possible to assess how much they will have affected

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Fig. 3.4 Distribution of Iron Age brooches (black squares) in relation to all objects within the database (grey squares). This plot incorporates only those brooches found as a result of the PAS, and so their distribution does not extend into Scotland

archaeological representation (see Garrow 2008: 22–24, and 2010). However, it is also vital not to get too bogged down by this issue. In relation to Celtic art specifically, we have already seen that what at first seem like ‘one-off’ or ‘unusual’ contexts (such as hoards and burials) were in fact the norm in terms of the deposition of this material. Given that we are, inevitably, dealing primarily with those artefacts which ultimately came to be deposited, it is vital that we come to terms properly with these deposits, rather than worrying

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Fig. 3.5 Distribution of Iron Age coins (black dots) in relation to all objects within the database (grey squares). Coin distribution kindly provided by Ian Leins in conjunction with the Celtic Coin Index

about whether or not they reflect the ‘reality’ of the past. In archaeology, it is only ever possible to make interpretations on the basis of the evidence that you have.

The Spatial Distribution of Objects We have already observed that Celtic art objects in general are found right across the British Isles. Once we focus in on particular artefact

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types, subtle differences do emerge. Many types (for example, swords and tankards) are also found right across Britain. However, a few are not, such as massive armlets, whose northern distribution has been recognized for some time. It is interesting to note that, overall, the distribution of material within the database also matches that of brooches (as recorded by the PAS) and coins (restricted predominantly to the south-east) fairly closely (Figs. 3.4 and 3.5). This general patterning suggests that the full spectrum of decorated metalwork was treated in similar ways, at least as far as analysis at this coarse scale can tell us. Interestingly, within the densest parts of the distribution plot, linear elements are discernible, especially for Celtic coins, which are the most numerous. These linear distributions appear to relate closely to topography, mostly being situated along the interfaces between lowlands and uplands, and so it is possible that they actually reflect general settlement patterns as a whole. Despite the biases of deposition discussed above, at this very crude level we are perhaps seeing a reflection simply of where people were. Shifting our scale of analysis again, it is possible to discern significant variability between artefact types in terms of the contexts in which they were deposited. Some items – such as horse gear – have a context profile that is similar in character to the database as a whole; they were deposited in all kinds of places in all sorts of different ways (Fig. 3.6). Other objects, however, are found only in very specific contexts. The vast majority of arm rings, for example, have been found in inhumations (Fig. 3.7). By contrast, massive armlets – which, being worn on a similar part of the body, might have been expected to turn up in similar locations – are never found in burials, themselves being recovered almost exclusively from dry land hoards (Fig. 3.8). This marked discrepancy suggests, first of all, that the ways in which we categorize material culture in the present do not necessarily intersect with those of the past in a straightforward way; and, secondly, that in the past there may have been very clear understandings as to where it was appropriate for objects to end up (as discussed in Chapter One). It is also possible to discern an element of regionality in the distribution of depositional contexts across Britain. Whilst dry land hoards are distributed across the study area and bog/fen finds are found in most places where those contexts exist, river finds are much more closely restricted (essentially to the Thames, the Witham, and around the Fenland region). This suggests that certain practices, associated with certain depositional contexts, were also regionally restricted.

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160 140 No. of finds

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Fig. 3.6 Amounts of all horse gear within each context (total no. 400) 80 70 60 50 % 40 30 20 10 0

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t t n p n g le m er or illa io io en no th am mp du /v illf em at at O /c e an ppi nt m t m r T tt l r e c o O hu Cre h/ se em n f In oc ttl B a e R m Br / S o A R B LI R t

d

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Fig. 3.7 Percentage of arm rings within each context (total no. 21)

The Temporal Distribution of Objects In order to facilitate the comparison of artefact distributions and quantities through time, it was necessary to subdivide our period of interest into a series of smaller phases. In order to characterize change over that period most effectively, it was decided that these should not simply be chronological blocks of equal length, but phases split into historically relevant slices that fit approximately with other dating schemes (Table 3.1).

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80 70 60 50 % 40 30 20 10 0

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Fig. 3.8 Percentage of massive armlets within each context (total no. 18)

Within our chronological analysis, we incorporated what was essentially a two-tier dating system for the artefacts. The first, most reliable tier was that described above for objects recovered within clearly datable contexts. The second, less reliable tier incorporated other items to which we attributed a date slightly more speculatively.3 In this case, essentially, all of those finds whose date could be ascertained via other contextually dated examples, or whose approximate date is generally agreed upon by all, were included (see Garrow 2008 for a fuller discussion). In total, 1,692 of the objects within the database (66 per cent) were phased in this way. A distinction was maintained between the two tiers within all analyses in order to ensure transparency in relation to the conclusions drawn. Figure 3.9 shows the number of dated objects per phase. In some ways, the most striking attribute of the graph is the size of the AD 40– 65 and AD 65–100 columns: significant amounts of ‘Celtic’ art were actually deposited within post-conquest ‘Roman’ Britain. It is important to point out that these relative quantities are skewed to some extent because the periods being compared are of uneven lengths. In order to counteract this bias, the overall number of objects within each phase was divided by the number of years the phase lasted, to give a standardized figure of ‘number of objects deposited per year’ 3

It is important to acknowledge the vital assistance of J. D. Hill in achieving this difficult task.

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Table 3.1. Chronological subdivisions used (note that calendar dates and correspondences with other schemes are approximate; see Haselgrove 1993 for details of coin phasing) Phase

Period

Dates

Correspondence with other dating schemes

1 2 3

Middle Iron Age Late Iron Age Pre-Conquest

c.300–100/80 BC c.80–20 BC c.20 BC–AD 40

4

Conquest period

c.AD 40–65/70

5 6

Late 1st century AD 2nd century AD +

c.AD 65/70–90/100 c.AD 100–

La Tène B, C, & D1 La Tène D2; Haselgrove coin Ph. 2 Augustan/Julio-Claudian; Haselgrove coin Ph. 3 Conquest of south Britain to start of Flavian period Flavian period n/a

(Fig. 3.10). In fact, this calibrated version makes the pattern significantly more pronounced, with the value for AD 40–65 far outnumbering any of the other phases, and with the period for AD 65–100 coming second. As discussed, we are of course talking about the deposition rather than the use of these objects. In this light, however, it is important to point out that there is ample evidence to suggest that many of these

500 450 400

No. of finds

350 300 250 200 150 100 50

Speculatively dated

10 0+

00 65 AD

AD

–1

AD

–6 AD

40

20

BC

–4

5

AD

0

BC

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Fig. 3.9 Numbers of objects deposited per phase (total no. 1,491)

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objects were also made during the mid-late first century AD (see, for example, Davis and Gwilt 2008, Hunter 2008). We can therefore be confident that we are not simply talking about ‘Celtic’ objects manufactured during the Iron Age being deposited later on, perhaps in response to the new ‘Roman’ cultural discourse and imperial rule. It seems that rather more complex issues of identity and material sociality were being worked through (see below). Given the chronological patterns identified, it is interesting to consider the geographical distributions of objects through time as well. Fig. 3.11a–f shows the locations of all dated objects within each of the six phases. A clear, essentially three-stage trend is visible: prior to the beginning of the first century BC, objects are relatively well-dispersed across Britain, stretching from western Cornwall to northern Scotland. However, from 80 BC until after the Conquest period (AD 65), the distribution is limited primarily to the south and east of England; the almost total absence of finds from the north at this time is striking. Throughout the latter part of the first century AD and beyond, however, the picture changes dramatically. The distribution spreads northwards again, especially after AD 100 when the majority of objects are found in northern England and southern Scotland.

Phase 1 (pre-c. 80 BC)

Fig. 3.11 Distribution of all datable finds by phase

Phase 2 (c. 80–20 BC)

Phase 3 (c. 20 BC–AD 40)

Phase 4 (c. AD 40–65)

Fig. 3.11 Continued

Phase 5 (c. AD 65–100)

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In light of these shifts in terms of the geographical locations of material, it is also interesting to assess their changing contextual locations4 over time (Fig. 3.12a, b; note that this analysis only includes contextually dated objects, since those within the second dating tier were not generally attributable to contexts). Figure 3.12 shows that objects deposited prior to the first century BC have generally been recovered from hillforts and settlements in central southern England, and the East Yorkshire square barrow cemeteries, with occasional outlying finds. For the period 80–20 BC, the distribution in central southern England is much the same due to the overlap of many finds from Phase 1. However, most East Yorkshire burial findspots disappear, while numerous burial finds in south-east England appear, reflecting the uptake of the ‘Aylesford-Welwyn’ burial rite and a number of ‘warrior’ burials. During the pre-Conquest and Conquest phases (20 BC–AD 65), objects are found in southern and south-eastern England in relatively small numbers but in a wide variety of contexts (settlements, villas, hillforts, oppida, temples, hoards, burials). During the latter part of the first century AD and into the second century AD, the picture changes significantly. As discussed, there is a dramatic shift northwards in the distribution of artefacts (many of these being found in Roman forts and hoards), and far fewer objects in the south. Clearly, there are complex processes at work here that cannot easily be understood through distribution plots alone. Nevertheless, broad patterns through time such as these do raise important questions as to how we should understand Celtic art objects. The significant shifts in the depositional contexts and regions with which this material was associated may suggest that the meanings and uses of what has often been seen as an essentially coherent, if gradually developing, art ‘style’ may well have changed dramatically over the course of these centuries. The broad three-stage development of the distribution map implies that, initially, these objects were taken up and used in a disparate and varied set of circumstances. Their prevalence in the south-east during the first century BC and early first century AD, particularly in burials and hoards, may suggest that, at some level, those objects were implicated in the complex and dramatic processes of political and economic transformation which occurred in this Eckhardt (e.g. 2008) used the term ‘social distribution’ in relation to her comparable analyses of finds by site type. 4

(a)

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Fig. 3.12 Distributions of contextually dated artefacts by phase. Note that when artefacts were assigned to two phases they are shown on both maps; artefacts assigned to more than two phases are not depicted

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region at that time. These distribution plots suggest that Celtic art perhaps became more exclusive in this period. Equally, it is interesting that much of the datable material actually appears to have been deposited during the late first century AD and beyond, well after the Roman invasion. The fact that these ‘Celtic’ objects appear to have flourished at this time, often being deposited in staunchly ‘Roman’ contexts such as villas and military forts, suggests that the process of ‘Romanization’ was indeed far from being a unidirectional affair and that their ‘Celtic’ associations were far from straightforward.

DATING STYLISTIC CHANGE A key issue in examining Celtic art is to provide a model for the development of styles and decorations. All researchers would agree that there is no one agreed-upon grouping or chronological ordering (although asserting that theirs is the best available). All schemes differ but share a number of assumptions. Chief amongst these are the following four: 1. Styles have a birth, floruit, and death that could be described by a battleship curve, whereby a new style is rare, becomes increasingly common, and then gradually disappears. 2. Styles are successive with a new one following and replacing the old, with some limited overlap, as the birth of a new style may coincide with the senescence of an old one. 3. Styles are genealogical – a new one derives from an older one in a more or less linear sequence, as in Stead’s thought about the derivation of the trumpet void (Stead 1985b). 4. Underlying the previous three assumptions is a fourth – styles succeed each other through a process of innovation. Novelty is natural and a good thing, allowing individuals and groups to define themselves in new ways. We feel that each of these assumptions is questionable in the case of Celtic art. Styles can operate in this way and often have done in the Western world of the last few centuries when innovation has been valued for complex reasons of power and identity. We should not assume that all style works like this and many can be much more temporally complex, a current style deliberately referencing older

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ways of doing things, as well as pointing to the future. It seems likely that this is the case with Celtic art, which we feel has three main principles underlying its style: 1. Celtic art styles were accumulative – some motifs are earlier than others, but their lifespan is not described by a simple battleship curve. Rather, older motifs can be referenced in later works either deliberately or unconsciously. Celtic art becomes more complex as time goes by and new motifs are added to old. Otherwise it has no clear directional or successive character. 2. The most important motifs are the conjunctive ones – keeled volutes and roundels or trumpet voids are key and increase through time as they enable different design elements to be brought together in more complicated combinations. It may well be that mirror designs are amongst the latest and most complex, as they bring together a range of elements in new and challenging combinations. An interesting stylistic contrast to Celtic art is coinage in which imagery is both serial and undergoes a process of simplification (degradation in the older literature). The iconography of coinage does have a strong temporal direction, which within individual series takes design from complex to simple. 3. There is a shift away from asymmetry to symmetry, emphasizing also colour and surface. Some older motifs and techniques are reused but within a different sensibility. A key part of our work on Celtic art has been the first large-scale attempt to date this material, using radiocarbon determinations (Garrow et al. 2010). A number of conclusions can be made in terms of style and currency of artefact types, all of the conclusions being controversial but supportable through the dates we obtained. The item thought to be oldest in the set we dated, the Cerrigydrudion ‘crown’, indeed turned out to be so, falling in the beginning of the fourth century BC or even the end of the fifth. This makes Celtic art in Britain broadly contemporary with that on the Continent, falling in La Tène B. At the other end of the sequence are items ascribed by Stead (1996) to his Stage VI, which have styles influenced by Roman metalwork, displaying symmetry of decoration and bright colours in glass. These appear to start in the middle of the first century AD and carry on into the second (and possibly beyond). In between are stages III–V to which most instances of Celtic art in Britain are ascribed. Stage III items are rare in Britain – the ‘Grotesque’ torc from

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Snettisham being a rare instance that might echo the Continental Plastic style. Stage IV motifs include a loose form of Waldalgesheim tendrils, the half-palmette, and early instances of the trumpet void. This develops into Stage V when trumpet voids become common, often as the terminals of tendrils, keeled roundels, and volutes, as well as berried rosettes and trisceles. Stead thought that Stage II (Cerrigydrudion and other pieces) dated to the decades around 300 BC, Stages III and IV to the third century BC, going into the second, with Stage V starting before 200 BC, thus allowing for some overlap between Stages III and V. Stage V continues to the Roman Conquest (and perhaps beyond) (Stead 1996). On the basis of the dates we obtained it is impossible to separate Stages III–V chronologically and we have modelled various scenarios, ranging from a strict sequence of stages to greater or lesser degrees of overlap. We opted in the end for a model in which Stage II and Stage VI material was obviously earlier and later respectively than the majority, but that Stages III–V were indistinguishable from each other (Garrow et al. 2010: 110). This echoes a point made by Macdonald (2007a: 333) who feels that varying styles may be found in different regions, a point that goes back to Fox (1958). We have been able to discern few regional differences in the distribution of styles and motifs, although more work could be done. A further key point in our dating is a hiatus in Celtic art between c.20 BC and c.AD 40. We shall return to this below. A key contrast in terms of stylistic change is that between Celtic art generally and coinage. One of the bases of numismatics is the definition of series: families of linked imagery that have directional change in their styles, often from complex to simple (see Fig. 5.13). Celtic art does not appear to act like this, it being impossible to recognize series, and if there is a direction of change between the fourth and first centuries BC it is towards complexity rather than simplicity. The contrast might be attributed to sample size, so that if we had many more items of Celtic art some sort of serial movement might be discernible. However, even in the case of the moulds from Gussage All Saints, which number into the hundreds (see Chapter Eight), variety appears crucial without any clear set of family resemblances such as would be found in coins made in the same spot. Indeed, the disparity between numbers of coins and pieces of Celtic art reflects the original situation to some degree and not differences in deposition: Celtic art was always rarer. Coins were produced en masse

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with large numbers of similar items changing in a relatively regular manner, unlike Celtic art in which smaller numbers of objects exhibit considerable variety. The diminution of Celtic art after 50 BC may be due to a move from quality to quantity; to a profound change in form and decoration towards repetition and serial change. Such alterations are found not just in coinage, but also in fibulae and pottery, indicating a shift in the relationship between people and things in the century before the Claudian invasion. This is a larger issue to which we will return in Chapter Nine. For now we want to concentrate a little more on the decoration of Celtic art, focusing especially on how complexity was achieved and played with over time. First of all a general point needs emphasizing. When we take major classes of decorated objects – terrets, linch pins, shields, swords, torcs, or mirrors – there is no evidence of serial imagery and change. Decorations are not closely correlated with form, so that raised motifs or engraved tendrils are found across linch pins, scabbards, and the Deal ‘crown’. Looked at over time, continuity and change can be detected. Let us compare and contrast the decoration on three spectacular items: the Cerrigydrudion ‘crown’, the Battersea shield, and the Bugthorpe scabbard. The piece from Cerrigydrudion (see Fig. 2.4) is earliest in time as we have noted, and it is harder to separate the other two temporally. The Cerrigydrudion ‘crown’ is seen to be early because its decoration has floral attributes that can be traced ultimately back to Greece. The ‘crown’ is fragmentary, being made up of a large and small section of the flange and two small fragments of the middle raised piece, which might have covered the head. On the main surviving section of the flange are two opposed leaf forms – ‘acanthus half-palmettes’ (Jope 2000: 23) from which emanate fat-bodied S-forms linking first to rounded palmettes facing inwards to the centre and then thinner versions facing outwards. The acanthus and palmettes are marked out by curved lines on their interiors. The background to the whole design is infilled with irregular hatching. On the side of the flange least well preserved a subtly different decoration seems to have occurred, one that lacks the palmettes and acanthus – instead the fat scrolls join with lobed or semicircular motifs. This design had aspects of later works in its use of hatching to create a background (which was to become more regular over time) and in the deliberate asymmetry of the decoration, which might be due to the distinction between the front and back of the ‘crown’. In

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other ways it differs from them. Not least in the lack of flow of the overall construction, in which the eye is drawn to the floral elements, less beguiled by the flat-S bodies that join them. Flow in articulation and conjunction is key to later pieces of British Celtic. Flow is due in turn to a small number of motifs we can label ‘conjunctive’. Prime amongst these are keeled roundels and volutes, as defined by Jope – circular forms that also sit within flowing lines, helping to continue these rather than terminate them. Key examples derive from the roundels on the Battersea shield (see Fig. 2.5). This shield is a complex piece, being made up of four thin sheets of bronze, each a quarter of the facing of a shield that was probably made of wood or leather. Down the central spine of the shield are three roundels, a larger one in the very middle. On the back is a handle. The decoration on the roundels is in repoussé, pushed out from the back, some of which are inlaid with red glass. The designs can either be seen as a series of circles within circles, or as a series of joined S-curves. The decoration is almost symmetrical around the long axis but not quite, due to differences in infillings. A combination of circles and triangular motifs help keep the design moving in a seamless manner. On either side of the main boss in the central roundel are two circles infilled with red glass. These are held in cusps towards the centre of the boss within a broader kidney-shaped design deriving from cusped roundels projecting into the centre of the kidney. Above and below the central boss are large circular designs holding smaller circles within, these inlaid in glass. The articulation of the larger circles with each other, as well as with the overall circle of the roundel, is by means of triangular forms left and right, above and below. The result of all these combined motifs is a set of continuously flowing lines, defining circles, and semicircles, forming either a harmonious whole or a set of detailed shapes, depending on the focus of the eye. The roundel is supported by two shapes sometimes seen as antlered faces. The mobility and continuous nature of the lines gives this a very different feel and impact to the Cerrigydrudion design. East Yorkshire has produced a series of scabbards with sinuous tendril-like decoration that shares features in common with Irish scabbards. One of the most complex is that from Bugthorpe (Stead 2006, no. 176), which accompanied a burial. Of the three decorations looked at here, this has the most ambiguity between what is background and what is foreground. Long tendril decorations run down from top to bottom, below a circular device enclosing two rivets. The

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top of the decoration starts part-formed by the side of a separate strand of decoration. The complex S-shaped tendrils form a series of trumpet voids, more or less fully enclosed, with open circles also present in the hatching of the tendrils. Some tendrils have side members becoming more complex just below half-way down, before simplifying again into a single tendril. The work does not flow as easily as that on the Battersea shield, being characterized by complex doubling back of decorative forms. Once again the eye can either try to capture something of the whole, or follow the weaves, curves, and voids of details of the decoration. The heart-shaped chape is characterized by lobe and tendril decoration against a hatched background, somewhat reminiscent of the decoration on torcs. The lipped appearance of the distal end looks somewhat fishy, especially when viewed from side on. These three sets of decoration demonstrate something of the variety of Celtic art and its changes, certainly from the Cerrigydrudion ‘crown’ to the latter two pieces that might be broadly contemporary. Each have continuous forms of decoration (at least within the Battersea roundels), which keep the eye moving and attention focused on changes of detail and forms of articulation. The interaction between S-shapes and circles is a marked feature of the Bugthorpe scabbard and Battersea shield, as it is in many pieces. In the earlier Cerrigydrudion piece the S-shapes are found, but circles are absent, so that a fuller articulation is limited. The history of work on Celtic art has been a surprisingly stable one, with a concentration on chronology on the one hand and the tracing of similarities in motifs to map influences and possible workshops on the other. Iconic objects known from the nineteenth century form the core of the corpus, supplemented episodically by new finds, such as Cerrigydrudion, Llyn Cerrig Bach, material from East Yorkshire graves, and Snettisham. In the process some of the analytical possibilities of the corpus have not been taken up, which include embedding artefacts back into their archaeological contexts, looking at the changing relationships of metalwork as a whole over time, and thinking through the sensual and emotional impacts that Celtic art might have had.

CONCLUDI NG DISCUSSION Some key points stand out from our discussion so far. We have seen that Celtic art objects are found right across Britain (although not

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necessarily in every area throughout the whole of the period with which we are concerned). Certain regions have produced significantly higher numbers of finds, East Anglia being the most obvious example. Whether or not this is due to the fact that objects were present in the past in higher numbers there, or simply deposited in greater numbers, is a key question that nevertheless proves very difficult indeed to answer. In many cases, it was probably a mixture of both. In terms of the object types within our database of Celtic art, horse gear, swords, and torcs dominate (numerically at least). The latter two categories would probably have been expected by most to do so, the former perhaps less so, especially according to traditional narratives of Celtic art (see, for example, Megaw and Megaw 2001 and Harding 2007, where horse gear is mentioned only occasionally). It has also become clear from our analysis that the form of an object often determined where it would ultimately end up. Related to this latter point, we have also seen that the vast majority of objects were deposited in what you might call ‘unusual’ circumstances – burials and hoards, rather than post-holes and enclosure ditches. This reinforces the fact that we are, here, dealing predominantly with patterns of deposition not use. For this very reason, it is important to direct our attention towards understanding those ‘unusual’ deposits, rather than worry too much about the fact that they are ‘unusual’ (see Chapters Six to Eight especially). We have also been able to detect a series of important changes over time. In the earliest centuries of their use, Celtic art objects were relatively widely used across Britain, their appearance in different contexts in different places suggesting that they came to have distinct meanings and associations. Both the distribution and numbers of Celtic art objects decreased significantly during the first century BC, with items primarily being found in burials in the south and east of England. It is possible that, at this time, this material became more exclusive or elite. The mid–late first century AD represented a significant period not only for the deposition of Celtic art but also, importantly, for its manufacture. Its distribution, especially in the late first century AD and beyond, is in stereotypically ‘Roman’ contexts. This material does not represent a straightforward ‘Celtic’ or Iron Age phenomenon. Ultimately, we return to these long-term trends and broader meanings in Chapter Nine within our concluding discussion. As

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we have already said, our aim in constructing the database was to provide a firm empirical foundation on which to build the whole of our investigation of Celtic art. We hope that, in the more focused chapters that follow, the key role it has played in doing so will be equally clear.

4 Making Materials

Analyses of Celtic art are exercises in pattern recognition, primarily of the art itself. Here we are interested in identifying broader sets of patterns of making and deposition that lay behind the art. First we will consider the possibility that sheet and cast metal were made in different sets of sites, before looking at whether they were then deposited differently too. Our key aim is to understand the logics of practice in making, using, and depositing, which might indicate an ontology different from our own, combining a need for technical expertise with responsiveness to broader spiritual forces. Decoration followed form on Celtic art, and form was shaped by production techniques. Wrought items, which included all iron and bronze sheet produced by beating, were given flat surfaces of various shapes and sizes that could then have metal removed through engraving or be shaped through the use of repoussé. Scabbards, mirrors, buckets, and shields had varying shapes of surface, which in the first two cases were often engraved and in the latter two pushed out from the back to form raised elements against a broader flat surface (Fig. 4.1). Casting produced more three-dimensional items, primarily horse and chariot gear of various kinds (Fig. 4.2), as well as fibulae (some of which were also wrought). In such cases most of the decoration was cast-on and many had no additional decoration beyond their shape. The distinction between artefacts exhibiting surfaces and those cast to be more three-dimensional is a usefully heuristic rather than an absolute one. It also misses out items made of wire, primarily gold torcs, which generally had cast-on terminals too, and also coins, most of which were produced through punching, although potins were cast. It would not be worth labouring the distinction between the beaten and the cast if it were not for the

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Fig. 4.1 ‘ Two-dimensional’ decoration on the mirror from Trelan Bahow, St Keverne # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

Fig. 4.2 ‘Three-dimensional’ horse gear from Stanwick/Melsonby # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

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probability that they were produced on different sets of sites and deposited in contrasting contexts – beaten artefacts being deposited in water as well as on land, whereas cast items were almost exclusively buried on land. If these distinctions can be demonstrated we can then make a link between production, form, decoration, and deposition, allowing us considerable insights into the nature of Iron Age ontologies and the sets of relationships in which metallurgy may have been embedded. The land/water and cast/beaten differences seem most valid before the middle of the first century BC when the structures of production and possibly deposition change, with the forms and decorations characteristic of the early phase of Celtic art dying away. As a sub-theme of this chapter we are also interested in the relationship between iron and bronze, questioning whether they both existed within the same categories for Iron Age peoples, even though today we class them both as metals. We will start with the nature of production of bronze and iron, which is poorly known at best, before moving onto issues of deposition.

MAKING IRON Iron is less singular than it sounds. The sources of iron ore come in many shapes and locations, sometimes being linked with copper ores, but also deriving from bog iron, sands within the Tertiary basins of Hampshire and the lower Thames, as iron sulphide modules on chalk, or carboniferous iron ores, or the Jurassic ores of the Midlands (Salter and Ehrenreich, 1984: 147–9 – an account based on southern England). Ores could be found on the surface, such as the iron sulphide nodules from the chalk found at Danebury and Hambledon Hill (ibid: 147), recovered from wetlands, dug for by pits and shafts (this last was probably uncommon prior to the Romano-British period), or created as a by-product of smelting copper. The growth of ironworking through the first millennium BC would have given the landscape new sets of values and significances. Reciprocally this might have meant that not all iron was viewed as being the same, as it maintained values deriving from its origins. At present, lacking much information, we can only wonder whether bog iron was regularly incorporated into items that ended up in water (or whether the reverse was true – an origin in water led to deposit on land). For

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millennia highland areas of the west and north were sources of stone and metal, sometimes picked out by their bright surface colours. Iron threw a new set of values across much of Britain, with the iron ores presenting themselves in more subtle and hidden ways. With the Iron Age a new social geology emerged. The transformation from ore to object was achieved through two main processes, smelting and smithing. As usual with metalworking, traces of these processes are few and relatively little thought has been given to where smelting occurs, except for pursuing an argument for efficiency, where smelting takes place near ore sources. Smelting was not a single process, pursued in a rote manner, but one that varied hugely depending on whether a bowl furnace or a shaft furnace was used, how the ore and fuel (mainly charcoal) was arranged within the furnace, the degree to which the furnace needed to be destroyed to remove the bloom, and so on. The iron produced was incredibly varied, even that resulting from a single smelt (see Tylecote 1986, which still has the best overall account of Iron Age ironworking). Smelting was a highly consumptive process, requiring a large amount of ore and fuel to produce a relatively small amount of usable iron. Salter and Ehrenreich (1984: Fig. 10.1) estimate that some 20 kg of ore and 90 kg of fuel would have been needed to produce 1 kg weight of finished artefact, although this would depend greatly on the nature of the ore. The consumption of dried wood and charcoal would have been considerable, so that some 640 kg of wood was required for the smelt mentioned above, and over 20 kg of clay. Ironworking involved various transformations – living wood to dried wood, wood to charcoal, plastic clay to a baked, solid version, at the same time as taking something resembling rock and turning it into a metal. It is becoming increasingly apparent that Iron Age people were sensitive to materials and their sources – at Segsbury Camp chalk from lower down the geological sequence was incorporated into a late rebuilding of the rampart (Lock et al. 2005: 104), and ‘foreign’ stone was also found at nearby Rams Hill in its Bronze Age phase (Bradley and Ellison 1975). For the Central Welsh Marches Wigley (2002) has suggested links between material making up hillfort ramparts and that used to temper pots. Iron in its various forms might well have found a place in the use of stone and metals to signal and play with connections between places, creating complex social maps. Smelting iron was not easy, as it needed high temperatures and continual responsiveness to the nature of ores, charcoal, and furnaces.

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Smithing was also difficult, requiring cycles of heating the metal to over 1100˚C, working while hot, cooling, and reheating. The best Iron Age iron was made through carburization, quenching, and tempering. Iron is converted to steel through the addition of carbon, which is carried out when the metal is covered by carbon and heated to over 900˚C for several hours, requiring labour on the bellows and charcoal. Quenching brings on a rapid reduction of temperature through immersion in water or oil. This makes iron hard but brittle. Brittleness can be reduced through gentle heating to between 200˚C and 300˚C, a process known now as tempering. The temperature of the metal can be judged by the colour on heating, but considerable skill and experience is needed for this (Hodges 1989: 84). Forging was sometimes carried out in places where smelting occurred, but seems more regularly to have happened in settlements, often in the company of bronzeworking – Gussage All Saints had both for instance, although more attention has been paid to the bronzeworking there (Wainwright 1979; see also Chapter Eight). There are interesting and somewhat contradictory links between bronze and ironworking. There are hints that the processes special to ironworking, like carburization, quenching, and tempering, were found earlier in iron tool production than in the making of swords (Fell 1997; Lang 2006). Iron is most useful when carburized, quenched, and tempered, and we might expect these processes to be carried out most assiduously on prestigious items such as swords, but this does not seem to be the case and in fact older bronzeworking techniques are more in evidence when making swords. There have been attempts to identify a hierarchy of blacksmiths within Iron Age Britain, ranging between the highly skilled and the local worker, with the former knowledgeable about high-carbon steel, quenching, and tempering (Ehrenreich 1985). It is also felt that those making swords, key prestige items, would have been the most skilled. Sharples (2010: 138) sees the growth of specialist iron-production centres in places like the Weald, the Forest of Dean, Northamptonshire, and possibly the south-west after around 300 BC. Iron, in the form of currency bars and billets, may have been imported into sites in Wessex (and probably elsewhere) for smithing into a range of tools and implements. One key type of artefact that often combined iron and bronze is the sword/scabbard, and it is worth examining in a little more detail at the making of swords as we will look at their use in the next chapter.

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The most detailed published analysis of making swords is that by Lang (2006) in Stead’s (2006) magnum opus on the British Iron Age sword. Lang was partly interested in the relationship between the earlier bronze and later iron swords. Lang’s study does not find much evidence of carburization, quenching, and tempering in sword making until the Late Iron Age. Earlier swords were made using ‘the forming techniques inherited from the bronze smiths’ (Lang 2006: 110). Swords are the only items that regularly incorporate both iron and bronze (the latter in scabbards, with bronze scabbards becoming more common through time). There is no doubt swords were skilled productions, but at least at first, their makers might not have explored the characteristics of iron as fully as they did in what to us are more mundane productions, such as chisels or saws. More work needs to be carried out on a range of iron objects to look at techniques of making in detail. There might have been a number of reasons why iron swords made less use of the characteristics of that metal than iron tools. Swords were ancient by the fourth century BC and for most of their prior history they were made of bronze, with Early Iron Age Gündlingen swords interesting as they were sometimes produced only in bronze and sometimes only in iron. It might be that the history of the sword as a type was of continuing importance and this had an influence on techniques of making, which were modified to make an iron blade, but did not want to stray too far from bronze antecedents. It might also be, as either an alternative or additional factor, that the metal from which swords were made was important. Lang’s analyses show that many swords were made from strips or rods of metal laid parallel to each other and welded together through hammering. These strips may have come from different sources in a good number of cases (Lang 2006: 110), although this is hard to determine due to the inhomogeneity of iron even from a single source. There are functional advantages to making a sword from different metals, especially if these have different properties of hardness and strength. In the fourthand third-century BC swords there is little evidence that metal strips were arranged to make best use of their functional properties, in other words, having the hardest strips along the cutting edges. This opens up the possibility that other factors were at work, such as the associations of the places or people from which ore or raw metal derived. Much more work needs to be done and old data revisited, but it is possible that two basic assumptions made nowadays about

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ironworking – that there was a skills hierarchy amongst smiths and that the greatest display of skill (as judged in our terms) would have been employed on the most prestigious objects, such as swords – may not be straightforwardly true. Lang’s data on swords are very interesting and provoke thought in a number of directions.

MAKING BRONZE There is considerable scattered evidence for bronze production in Britain, which has never been properly synthesized and pulled together. We are not able to do that here, but can direct attention to some of the trends as they are presently apparent. As we have seen, before the early modern period when cast iron started being made, iron was only produced regularly in wrought form. By contrast, bronze (and gold or silver) could either be cast or beaten. Producing large sizes of beaten bronze or gold requires a virtuoso performance from the smith, as extreme examples such as the bronze couch in the Hochdorf grave show (Biel 1985). In Britain rather more modest sheet-metal items were produced, the most common probably being cauldrons in both bronze and iron, but including also bronze shield facings and later buckets, tankards, and mirrors. Northover (1995: 286) feels that the quality of beaten bronze improves once iron becomes common, as the skills needed to work the latter metal transferred across to bronze. It is Northover (1995: 290) who has argued for a distinction between metalworking on hillforts, such as Danebury, Maiden Castle, and South Cadbury, where sheet-bronze items were being made, or at least recycled, and casting that seems mainly to occur on smaller settlements, the best evidence of which comes from Gussage All Saints, but less well-known evidence from Beckford, Hereford, Weelsby Avenue, Grimsby, and Gravelly Guy, Oxfordshire (ibid). Lost-wax casting only becomes common with the advent of Celtic art and allows a great range, quality, and quantity of material to be made – Gussage All Saints produced 7,174 mould fragments from Pit 209, plus 26 from elsewhere on the site, which might have represented the production of around 50 sets of chariot fittings (see Chapter Eight). As Sharples (2010: 145–6) writes, we should be somewhat sceptical about the distinction between production on hillforts and smaller sites, as it rests on somewhat slender evidence. We have almost no

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direct evidence for the production of key classes of material, such as scabbards or torcs. However, overall, given the evidence presently available the distinctions between beaten bronze from hillforts and cast material from smaller settlements appears valid. It follows that varying aspects of Celtic art may have been produced under different conditions and sets of relations. A considerable majority of the items in our Celtic art database are cast, although the sheet-metal and wire constructions of shields, mirrors, and torcs stand out in our minds as they are often spectacular pieces. Cast metals can be taken from a solid state to a liquid before returning to a solid form. This contrasts with iron, which (as noted earlier) was only ever worked as a solid, through percussion, making it in some ways more like stone than metal. Despite the possible overlap in techniques of working between beaten bronze and iron, we wonder whether both occupied the same category for Iron Age people, especially given the fact that iron rusts, returning it to a state like that of the soil, whereas gold, silver, and bronze resist decay to greater degrees. Two phases exist in Iron Age bronzeworking, although neither is especially well dated or understood – the earlier one probably runs from around 400 BC to the first century BC, and the later one for the century prior to the Claudian invasion. A number of people (Northover 1982, 1984, Dungworth 1995, 1997) have drawn attention to the leaded bronzes found between the Late Bronze Age and earliest Iron Age (the Ewart Park and Llyn Fawr periods) and the Middle Iron Age when tin bronzes become the norm. There is no evidence of recycling earlier metals into later ones, emphasizing the point we have made previously about metallurgy reaching a low ebb after the end of the Bronze Age. As Dungworth (1995: 89) has pointed out, there is no metallurgical reason for the shift from leaded to tin bronze and in fact the former might be slightly better for casting. This reflects a shift in source use, alloying practice, or both. Quite where the sources of the ores in either period were is a subject of some controversy, although it is true to say that the leaded bronzes of the Late Bronze Age are shared with northern France, so possibly some continental input is possible then (Northover 1982). Northern Britain used a slightly different mix of sources in the Iron Age from the south of the country, given the differences in the trace elements of cobalt and nickel (Dungworth 1995: 80). Furthermore, in northern Britain beaten bronze has slightly lower tin levels than that which was cast, making it easier to

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work, indicating a good understanding on the part of the smiths of the link between alloy type and the nature of working (Dungworth 1995: 72). Howard (1983), in an unpublished thesis on so-called refractory materials (the clays and fillers used for making crucibles, moulds, tuyeres, and furnaces), points out the considerable technical constraints on the choice of materials for moulds and crucibles, as they must be able to withstand great heat, to expand and contract uniformly, cope with pressure and the chemical effects of the metals, charcoal, etc., with which they come into contact (Howard 1983: 141). In the Early Iron Age sand-tempered moulds were generally used and their similarity across sites as widely separated as Gussage, Dorset, and Weelsby Avenue, Grimsby, might indicate contact between smiths and possible itinerancy. Iron Age crucibles were fashioned from a variety of fabrics. In the Bronze Age different pastes were used depending on the functional requirements of moulds or crucibles. Howard (1983: 538) reiterates Northover’s point about the possible concentration of sheet metalworking in hillforts and casting in smaller settlements, adding that there might have been specialist casters and sheet metalworkers, given the different skills needed. Howard’s work emphasizes the range of materials and abilities needed to engage in metalwork, where the success of the work relies in part on making the correct moulds, furnaces, and crucibles, themselves skilled products. The Late Iron Age reveals a much more varied world of metals. Brass is a metal introduced from the Roman world, the addition of zinc to copper creating a colour closer to gold than found in bronze. Brass first appears in Britain, as far as we know, in the last decade BC. The fullest published set of metallurgical analyses from this period are of fibulae (Bayley and Butcher 2004). Iron Age brooches are made of bronze (with very occasional silver or gold varieties), but from the very Late Iron Age brass becomes more common, deriving probably from sources such as Roman coinage. This is part of major influxes of Roman metal connected with coinage in the form of gold, silver, and then brass. It is estimated that Cunobelin’s coinage (between c.AD 10–40) required around 5000 kg of refined Roman gold, much purer in composition than earlier British varieties. Brass becomes the most common metal for Roman brooches (Bayley and Butcher 2004: 15) with forms like Aucissa, Hod Hill, and Langton Down, and one-piece Colchester brooches commonly made in brass,

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but from around the Claudian period onwards leaded bronze becomes more prevalent, its more ductile properties suitable for casting separate spring assemblies of the mass of Colchesterderivative brooches. The Flavian period (AD 69–96) sees the collapse of imported brooches, with the greatest variety of both form and metal composition. It is within this period that plate brooches, with a flat surface suitable for enamelled decoration, were first made. The distribution of production also changes. Not only have most hillforts been given up by this time, there is less obvious working on smaller sites, with oppida such as Silchester producing horse gear and pennanular brooches (Fulford and Timby 2000: 407), Hengistbury, a trading site making a great range of metalwork, including coins (Northover 1987), and the wetland sites of Glastonbury and Meare in Somerset (Coles and Minnitt 1995). Production is either at central sites or peripheral ones. There is also an indication of links between the cremation or burial of the dead and metalworking, so that at Silchester a considerable amount of metalworking debris was found in the grave of a young man; at Verulamium metalworking in the valley may have been within rectangular structures (Haselgrove and Millett 1997: 285–6), including the major enclosure beneath the later forum-basilica (Niblett 2001: 42); it is also found at Fison Way, Thetford, (Gregory 1992), which is seen as a major religious centre; and metalworking may be linked with cremation cemeteries in places like South Cadbury (Barrett, Freeman, and Woodward 2000). The position and significance of Late Iron Age metalworking needs more work, as does its potential link with both cremation and burial. At the same time as copper alloys diversify and undergo a period of rapid change, and production shifts its locations, the nature of Celtic art also changes, after a hiatus, moving from the asymmetrical decorations of the early period to often more symmetrical colourful motifs from the middle of the first century AD onwards. Analyses and syntheses of iron and bronze production are lacking generally. The evidence is scattered but now exists in considerable amounts, potentially informing us not just of the processes and materials used, but also of the changing place of making metals within Iron Age and early Romano-British society. We have put forward the possibility that between 400 and 50 BC cast and beaten items were made in smaller settlements and hillforts respectively. We need now to follow the possibility that these differences were also echoed in favoured contexts for deposition.

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MAKING DEPOSITS: THE BEATEN AND THE CAST We will consider the question of deposition on the basis of the 1,652 artefacts in the database for which provenance is known; more detailed considerations are provided in Chapters Six to Eight. Looking at Table 4.1, we can see the distribution of artefacts in various classes that occur in various depositional contexts. The trends are striking (Figs. 4.3 and 4.4). Cast objects such as animal/human figurines, armlets, various forms of horse and chariot gear, and various forms of torcs and collars (many of these are of wire construction, but often with some cast elements) are predominantly found on land, with very occasional occurrences in water. Some of the deposits in water are unusual, such as Llyn Cerrig Bach; torcs are heavily influenced by the Snettisham finds, but elsewhere torcs are also found on land where their provenance is known. Overall, the three best-represented contexts (hoards, hillforts, and burials) are on land, showing that, in contradiction to what is generally thought, the deposition of Celtic art objects in water is rare. The vast majority of daggers are found in water, a third of all swords and scabbards, and a fifth of shields. However, another fifth of shields are found in hillforts and a quarter in hoards (these being predominantly miniature shields). In general these figures bear out the idea that cast material is found almost only on land, whereas beaten objects can be found on land and in water. Quite why this might be so we can only speculate. Water offers a range of surface textures, from still and flat to agitated to various degrees, perhaps paralleling the different qualities of surface found on the objects themselves, from plain to repoussé. We also Table 4.1. The links between material, techniques, and depositional context Wrought

Sheet

All iron work Scabbards/sheaths

Shields Cauldrons Bowls Buckets Plaques Chamfreins Ornamental strip Helmets/casques

Cast

Wire

Mirrors Fibulae Torcs Torcs Coins Tankards Horse gear Arm rings Chapes Spoons Collars

Depositional Context LAND AND WATER

Struck

LAND

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300 250 200 150 100 50 0

Water

Land

Fig. 4.3 The depositional contexts of cast objects

160

No. of objects

140 120 100 80 60 40 20

g do Fi re

Ta nk ar d

Sw or d

ld

Sp oo n

ls en ta

Sh ie

tri

p

or irr M

O rn am

er gg Da

Bo wl

/b uc ke t

0

Water

Land

Fig. 4.4 The depositional contexts of beaten objects

wonder whether material that is cast and hence put into a liquid state is not then destined for water, which is (almost) permanently liquid. If we look at the various materials being deposited, we can see that bronze items of Celtic art are overwhelmingly found on land, but with small amounts entering water, mainly in the form of beaten objects

No. of objects

Making Materials 450 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0

r

n

a

ive

g Bo

L

pe

ca

s nd

l t t a p le er ia og or en um /vill th am mp Bur illf id m nn t c O / e p e a n l t T p e tt cr or O h/ se em n f oc ttl B a r e R B S om A/ R B LI R t

d

en

ar

/fe

se

e/ ak

R

ho

m

e ttl

H

se

IA

99

La

Fig. 4.5 The depositional contexts of copper alloy objects

(Fig. 4.5). Iron Celtic art is mainly disposed of on land, but with substantial amounts being thrown into water (Fig. 4.6). We have argued that there may be some structure to production, with cast bronze created on smaller sites and beaten objects made in hillforts. The cast/beaten distinction is echoed in deposition. Fine metalwork and landscapes are connected, each giving the other saliency and value. It is quite likely that aspects of the landscape had their own values and significances, both human and cosmological, and that these values derived both from the nature of the landscape itself and the actions, such as production and deposition, carried out in various places. Metalwork was about power, and this is not just the power that one set of people had over another, but also 70

No. of objects

60 50 40 30 20 10 0

r ive L

L

e

ap

sc

d an

ho

IA

l t t e p g m er or illa pl ria m en no th du illf m m t/v ca O Bu e / pi an n t r T tt le p r e c O fo h/ se em oc ttl B an e R m Br / S o A R B LI R

en

ar

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g Bo

t

d

n

a

se

e/ ak

R

m

se

e ttl

H

Fig. 4.6 The depositional contexts of iron objects

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that concerned relations with broader forces of the universe. We have seen that beaten and cast artefacts were thrown away in a patterned manner and wondered too whether there might be a link between various motifs and depositional contexts.

MAKING DECORATION Production influenced form. Form influenced decoration. We have made a distinction between three-dimensional cast items and more two-dimensional beaten ones (Table 4.2). Scabbards, mirrors, buckets, and shields offered flat surfaces for decoration. Cast items, whether terrets, torcs, or fibulae, were decorative partly by virtue of their threedimensional nature and much of their decoration was cast-on, whereas objects with larger surfaces have engraved, repoussé, or inset decoration. We will look first to see whether there are any connections between forms and the types of motifs applied to them, before considering any links between decoration and deposition. Table 4.2. The links between surface, form, decoration, and depositional context Form

Surface

Cast

Wire

Wrought

Techniques

Casting

Drawing

Hammering

Decorative techniques

Casting on, tracing, glass

Filigree

Repoussé, tracing, engraving, glass

Motifs

Tendrils, pellets, berried rosettes, human/animal figures, hatching, trumpet voids, rare keeling, cusping

Deposition Bodily engagement

LAND Passive, personal space, detailed visual impression

Sheet

Struck Striking

Palmettes, tendrils, s-forms, trumpet voids, cusps, keeled volutes, hatching WATER AND LAND Active, peri-personal space, distant and detailed visual impression

Table 4.3. The links between motif and form Berried Rosettes Arm ring/armlet Torc/collar Sword Shield Horse bit Linch pin Terret Horse gear (general) Mirror Tankard Other

Birds’ heads

3 2

2

2 3 1 1 11 4 6 1 5

Triskeles

1 3 2

Fat S

Hatching

1 6

2 4 8 4

1 2 3

1 12 2

4

Cusp-held roundels

5 5 3 1 7 2 8 1 6

Wave tendrils

Keeled roundel

3-D

2 1 7 4 2 1 1 2 4

1 6 8 7 3 2 12 7 9 1 7

2 6 7 7 3

6

12 1 2 9

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% of all surface-decorated objects

To do this we took a subset of Jope’s categories of motifs (see Jope 2000, vol. 1: 379–85, Glossary) and a series of 92 well-known pieces of Celtic art to carry out an analysis of the links between motif and form (Table 4.3), as well as how common various motifs are (see Appendix 2 for a list of all of these). The artefacts were chosen as being representative of types, periods, and regions, as were the motif types. Other selections could have been made and we use the analysis as a preliminary indication of trends in the occurrence of motifs and their connections to artefact type, rather than as a definitive statement. Figure 4.7 shows the percentage representation of items with surface decoration within the database. These are relatively small in overall numbers, but show a wide variety of types, proliferating in the Late Iron Age. Five motif types are most common: keeled roundels/ volutes; hatching; three-dimensional decoration; cusp-held roundels and wave lines/tendrils (Fig. 4.8). Each of these is also found across a good number of artefact classes. Three-dimensional decoration is a special case, deriving from either casting or repoussé work, and is not so much a motif type as a mode of creating form and decoration in interaction with each other. It is surprisingly common in the British corpus. Keeled roundels, cusp-held roundels, and wave lines are means of creating complex and conjoined patterns; hatching provides foreground and background contrasts and is obviously common on mirrors, but also torcs, swords, and (hide-shaped) shields. Some motifs surprise by their rarity – berried rosettes, flat S-bodies, and trisceles, whereas birds’ heads (a subjective category at best) were well

30 25 20 15 10 5 0

l s s s n e p d n e n ld ts el ip er et or ca Bow squ m lm Hor ca hie irr str th aqu nd ield hea poo ord ard k n u O Pl M tal s h w a led He r r S o S ea S an o C el R T H ture Be en Sp m am ia a n n i E rn M O an

Fig. 4.7 Relative contribution of each object type to the total of all ‘2-D’ surface-decorated objects in the database

No. of objects with each motif

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35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

s

te

ed

rri

Be

es

ad

et

s ro

s

rd

Bi

e ’h

i Tr

el sk

d

e di

t Fa

-

bo

S

de

H

ld

he

sp

u

C

ril

l

ng

hi

c at

al

r

eav W

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ol /v el

d

m

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3-

e

ut

on

nd

n ou

un

d

ro

le

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Fig. 4.8 Numbers of ‘2-D’ surface-decorated objects with each motif type

represented. It is interesting that in both beaten and cast artefacts similar motifs were well represented. In the case of objects with surface decoration, keeled roundels and cusp-held roundels are both common and these are arresting motifs in their own right, but are also conjunctive in that they can help link lines and circles into flowing and potentially endless forms, which are never quite the same twice. On the best of engraved scabbard decoration, such as that from Sutton Reach, Nottinghamshire, or the most delicate of repoussé, as found on the Battersea shield, there is an effortless motion that keeps the eye interested and moving (see previous chapter) (Fig. 4.9). When looking at these decorations in detail the eye moves and the mobile nature of perception leads to no fixed conclusions or final interpretation. We will return to this point below. The addition of surface texture through hatching is common to mirrors and scabbards, giving these a sense of tactility, as well as an appeal to the eye. Berried rosettes are rare, being a motif deriving from casting-on, as are trisceles. Their rarity is slightly more surprising, as these are often seen as a key element of the British decorative corpus. As an initial proposition, we can say that curvilinear engraved motifs and repoussé lead and direct the eye, hatching and punching add contrast and a tactile sense through altering texture, and three-dimensional decoration appeals through its form, which is partly an appeal to the eye and partly to the hand.

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Fig. 4.9 Flowing repoussé decoration on the Battersea shield (Stead 1985a: Plate 6) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

The range of cast items that are interesting by virtue of their form rather than decoration is smaller (Fig. 4.10), but each type is very numerous (with the exception of arm rings). Interestingly, a similar frequency of motifs is found on the cast objects as on the beaten ones, with wave tendrils, keeled roundels, cusp-held roundels, and threedimensional motifs all predominant (Fig. 4.11). Subjectively speaking (and here the numerical analysis must give way to a more impressionistic sense), we feel these motifs are combined in a less flowing and continuous manner on three-dimensional items, certainly than on mirrors, scabbards, and shields that stand out in their complexity and continuity. What three-dimensional objects bring, almost by definition, is that decoration is often not all visible at once. With a complex repoussé or cast decoration on a torc terminal, the flow of the motifs takes them out of sight of viewers standing at one angle, so that either they must move or they must rotate the object in order to get a greater sense of the whole. There is a degree of anticipation and memory in looking at three-dimensional decoration, which echoes that when listening to music, where new phrases or passages are

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45 40 % of all 3-D objects

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Arm ring

Horse bit

Linch pin

Horse gear (general)

Terret

Torc/collar

Fig. 4.10 Relative contribution of each object type to the total of all ‘3-D’ objects in the database

No. of objects with each motif

anticipated in the hearing of the present moment of perception. Using a different means this achieves the same end as the most complex surface decoration, rendering it hard to provide a full and adequate sense of the whole or a stable interpretation of it. Crucially, we looked to see whether there were any correlations between the manners in which items were decorated and the contexts in which they were deposited. However, no clear correlations appeared between types of motifs and depositional context. 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 tte

d

rie

r Be

es

d

ea

se

ro

Bi

rd

h s’

l ke

is Tr

ed

t Fa

-b

i od

S

el

ng

hi

c at

H

d

el

h p-

us

C

al

ril

nd

e

lin

eav W

Fig. 4.11 Numbers of ‘3-D’ objects with each motif type

ol l/v

i ns

te

de

e

m

di

3-

un

d

le

e ke

e

ut

on

nd

u ro

ro

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Lastly, we also tried to judge visual impact (1 denotes least and 3 greatest impact), which is of course fraught with ethnocentric judgement and bias. Complexity was the basis for our categories, with the most intricate being engraved designs or forms of repoussé that challenged the perceptual skills of all who encountered them. We are aware of the difficulties of such judgements, but felt that in a book looking at the enchanting properties of artefacts we needed to try to judge perceptual impact in some way. Shields and mirrors were the most common artefact types in category 3 (greatest impact), together with torcs, swords, and others (ranging from the Cerrigydrudion ‘crown’ through the Llyn Cerrig Bach plaque, the Torrs chamfrein, and the Waterloo helmet). No forms of horse gear were ranked as ‘3’, many receiving ‘2’ (the most common category overall). Roughly the same numbers of artefacts were ranked ‘1’ and ‘3’, giving the distribution of scores a strong normal distribution. The more unusual the object, the greater chance it had of being judged high impact, adding to the impression of the variety, indeed idiosyncrasy, of Celtic art. In both cases objects with the highest impact were found in the same contexts as the most commonly occurring motifs – that is, rivers and burials for surface-decorated items and hoards for the threedimensional ones. Overall, surface-decorated objects are more high impact than three-dimensional ones (Figs. 4.12 and 4.13). Looking at the nature and occurrence of motifs, clear patterns in the depositional contexts did not stand out. Similar motifs are found on both cast and beaten artefacts, but they might be deployed in a more complex and striking manner in surface-decorated items than on three-dimensional ones. In the latter class most of the very striking items were torcs, with horse and chariot gear of all kinds much less so. The only context in which the most striking three-dimensional objects were found was hoards. Only low-impact three-dimensional objects ended up in rivers. By contrast, high-impact two-dimensional objects, such as shields and swords, were thrown into rivers. An important contrast has come out of this work. Form was closely linked to where items were both made and thrown away, yet motifs do not seem to have had such links, but are equally represented across various depositional contexts. To sum up drastically, form divided and decorations linked.

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6 5 4 n /fe

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Bu

t or illf

No. of objects

7

2 d

r oa

H

H

1

ke

La

0

tt

RB

se

r ive

A/

LI

R

y ra

St

Impact 1

Impact 2

lla

Vi

Impact 3

n fe

g/

Bo

14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

l

ria

Bu

d

ar

Ho

No. of objects

Fig. 4.12 The distribution of ‘2-D’ surface-decorated objects in the three impact classes across depositional contexts

r ve

Ri

p

m

an

m Ro

Impact 1

ca

y ra

St

Impact 2

Impact 3

Fig. 4.13 The distribution of ‘3-D’ objects in the three impact classes across depositional contexts

CONCLUDI NG DISCUSSION Social or cosmological rules lay behind the patterning of where things were made and thrown away. Not too much is known about where and how both iron and bronze were made, but we have summarized the evidence to show the links and contrasts between the two metals. Iron and bronze were often made on the same sites,

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but the widespread distribution of iron sources meant that ironworking might have been a more localized activity than bronzeworking, which required metal supplies from further away, whether from within Britain or beyond. Bronzeworking showed some division of labour between smaller sites where casting was common and hillforts where beaten metal was made. The contrast between the beaten and cast shows up also in the manner in which artefacts were deposited, with relatively little cast material being thrown into water. We looked to see whether cast and beaten items had different motifs, but no clear contrast emerged here, so that motifs helped link watery contexts with those on land, which were otherwise differentiated through contrasting forms of deposit. Where items were both made and thrown away seems to have been influenced by non-utilitarian considerations and ones that were not straightforwardly to do with social relations, although metals might well have been involved with these at a more complicated level. Instead the major influence may well have been sets of more cosmological powers and social rules, indicating hillforts as the best place to make sheet metal and smaller settlements as correct for casting. Further work will undoubtedly nuance these conclusions. In any case, by the Late Iron Age the geography of production changed, as did the forms being made and probably the contexts in which materials were deposited. As we shall discuss in the final chapter, the apparent centres of Late Iron Age power, such as ‘oppida’ (the quotes indicating the trickiness of this term) and temples, did not receive very much Celtic art other than animal or human figurines, bowls, and ornamental plaques. Three sets of artefact types stand out: torcs, scabbards, and shields. Terrets are the most common artefact and thus attract a range of decorative techniques, but these are mainly a combination of knobs, ribs, and enamel inlays. Mirror decoration strikes the eye, but its sheer profusion derives from relatively few motifs, mainly wave lines, cusp-held roundels, and keeled roundels. We will be looking at torcs and scabbards in detail in the next chapter, but it is worth making a few remarks on shields in passing. In the corpus of Celtic art, shields are the items most obviously varying in size, some being so small as to be of little use in shielding from physical harm and some existing in miniature form. Shields were made in a considerable variety of forms, a fact emphasized by a recent identification of hide-shaped shields by Stead (1991d), which were initially identified in miniature

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form in the Salisbury hoard and subsequently recognized in larger forms, for example at Mill Hill, Deal (see Chapter Seven). Jope (2000: Plate 99) illustrates miniature shields from Worth (Kent), Hod Hill (Dorset), Frilford (Oxfordshire), and Salisbury (Wiltshire), along with a diminutive axe from Arras (Yorkshire) and a sword found with the Frilford shield. Even the larger shields are often small, notably the most famous of all, the Battersea shield at 78 cm (31 in) long and 33 cm (13 in) wide, with that from Witham being only a little longer. These shields would not have provided much adequate physical protection, raising the possibility that all such shields were apotropaic, protecting people against a range of malign forces only some of which were human (see also Giles 2008). Powerful objects condensed relations and were part of the broader energy flows of the world, flows that took the forms variously of human, plant, animal, and spiritual energies. The decoration on shields had a spatial layout, but also had a set of historical links to older sets of decoration. On the basis of the first systematic suite of radiocarbon dates focusing on Celtic art, we came up with the idea that rather than exhibiting fully successive styles, as Jacobsthal (1944) and Stead (1996) have put forward, Celtic art accumulated stylistic motifs and combinations over time (Garrow et al. 2010). Older sets of palmette and then wave-line decorations came into being, to be joined by newly introduced or newly derived designs such as conjunctive wave lines based on keeled volutes and roundels (Jope 2000: 199). Some of the earlier vegetal motifs or simple wavy, sinuous lines decreased, to be replaced by more conjunctive and flowing combinations of lines, circles, and vegetal ornament. The effect of older designs coexisting with newer ones meant that designs themselves could reference and make present distant times, not being purely dominated by a desire for innovation and novelty. The new and the old coexisted in an intermingled manner, which while it eschewed repetition, allowed for citation and presencing of older constructions within the ever-changing nature of decorative constructions. Much of the art had its own internal temporality; when looking at the Desborough mirror (see Fig. 1.8), the Bugthorpe scabbard, or the Battersea shield, the viewer’s eye is drawn into the details of the decoration, following the line and balancing symmetry with difference. Complex designs of these types could not be appreciated all at once, but in a mobile manner, making appreciation a process, not an

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event. Such appreciation is the visual equivalent of listening to music, where the previous phrase or form has an impact on present apprehension and carries within it an anticipation of what is to come, as noted earlier. The more skilled and practiced the viewer, the more depth and complication was possible – a deep viewing being more replete with significance and impact. Celtic art unfolded for the viewer, having a performative aspect to it, akin to story or song. It was not an art that closed down interpretation, but rather opened up possible significances and appreciation. It was (and is) a transformative medium, with shapes shifting and altering with one viewing and at each subsequent encounter. The difference between form and surface had contrasting implications for viewing and for the combination of viewing and feeling the art. Even the most complex decoration on a surface could be appreciated as a whole, although the viewer might be drawn into the detail, losing a sense of the whole. For three-dimensional objects, primarily torcs, arm rings, terrets, and the most extravagant repoussé, such as the Wandsworth mask shield, a whole viewing was not possible. Torcs in particular had hidden faces from whichever angle they were viewed. Their textures were also varied by modelling of the surface or hatching. Different metals, such as iron, bronze, and gold, had different feels to the touch, so that a discerning appreciator of Celtic art would have known which material they encountered through touch alone. Most subtle tactile distinctions existed between bronze and gold, but weight would have been a key clue here. Today we mainly encounter Celtic art behind glass in a museum case or see its decoration laid out on the page in two dimensions. A fuller encounter with the art invokes broader and deeper reactions, particularly if as in the case of a torc the object became intimately known through wearing and use (see also Spratling 2008). The three-dimensional nature of artefacts enhanced issues of anticipation and retention, as the knowledgeable actor would have been able to project a more rounded sense of a torc from the surfaces immediately visible. Revelation and concealment were inherent in such objects, mirroring what happened when objects were deposited on land or in water, as acts of deposition always held within them the possibility of return. We tend to make a distinction between metalworkers’ hoards and the like intended for recovery, and ‘ritual’ deposits that were gifts to the gods and not destined for return. In either case items could be lost or come back into circulation,

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providing elements of uncertainty and anticipation. Time and space were intimately linked. A further, generally overlooked, aspect of the spatial nature of artefacts is scale. Artefacts represent condensations of relationships (see also Joy 2009: 549). Even a simple bronze or iron item may contain inherent within it the labour of a number of people involved in extracting and smelting ores, alloying or forging, casting or beating, as well as other materials, such as clay, charcoal, and wax, with their own sets of connections. A key aspect of the literature on gift exchange has been that items retain a connection to all through whose hands they have passed (Mauss 1929). This principle of inalienability, though controversial, has been taken up by Strathern (1988) and Gell (1998) in ideas of distributed objects and persons. On the one hand, the personhood of an individual is made up of all their acts and the items resulting from those acts, which are distributed through time and space. On the other hand, objects often pull together the actions and labour of more than one person. Artefacts can be seen as miniaturizations of chains of relations and of persons, allowing for complex evocations of these chains. Some items exist in a spectrum of sizes, some of which might be seen as miniatures of others, increasing the importance of size and scale. Making and using Celtic art required a series of engagements, only some of which make immediate sense to us. To engage in complex forms of metallurgy required an effective knowledge of copper, tin, iron, gold, enamel, bone, horn, and hide, as well as an understanding of high temperatures, and mechanical forces through heating, engraving, repoussé, or casting. The effectiveness of Iron Age metallurgy is not in doubt, but it was achieved without written formulae and forms of education, instruments for measuring temperature, or a formalization of knowledge into physics and chemistry. This was technology, but not as we know it. We have looked here at the making of things, but have strayed also into deposition. In the next chapter we will shift our focus to the use of these objects, but we shall also look briefly at how things were deposited.

5 Artefactual Times: Swords, Torcs, and Coins

In examining the making of Celtic art in the previous chapter we also considered space, looking at how aspects of production and deposition were distributed across particular sites and parts of the landscape. The ordering of production and deposition set up a complex set of spatial networks so that the deposition of swords in hillforts was likely to lead to them being broken up first in contrast to the whole swords thrown into rivers. In this chapter we are more concerned with time. An individual artefact represents a condensation of all the relations that brought it into being and formed its life history to date. A terret or a sword are specific points in space–time and are given their specificity by many links through time and over space. As has long been realized in archaeology, time unfolds over a variety of scales from the very long to the instantaneous. The making of the artefacts we call Celtic art are part of longer continuums of artefact production going back to the Bronze Age and forwards to the Medieval period and beyond. The specificity of later Iron Age production is revealed by the taking up of older types of swords or horse gear or neck ornaments, but creating them in quite new forms. From 400 BC onwards they unfold in changing ways, accumulating decorative motifs and shifting subtly in their forms. Deposition in the Iron Age sometimes occurred in places, such as the Thames within present-day London, which had already been used as a repository for stonework and metalwork for millennia. Any act of deposition in the Iron Age, potentially at least, carried with it links to ancient acts. At a more specific level, individual items had their own use, lives, or biographies, accumulating a set of associations special to them. A moment of production, use, or

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deposition stood out from the continuum, heightening sensations and fixing in people’s memories the character of time, place, and human relations. In this chapter we will work up and down temporal scales looking at swords, torcs, and coins. We are interested in the varied relationships that people had with artefacts. Our primary interest is in timescale and change. As we noted in Chapter One, changes to Celtic art can be contrasted with those of Bronze Age metalwork. Late Bronze Age metalwork forms alter in a regular manner so that new sets of assemblages emerge every century or so (Needham et al. 1998), providing good examples of typological change, as one set of types replaces another. With the reappearance of metalwork from 400 BC, change is more complex and impossible to fit into a straight typological sequence. With the advent of coins from around 200 BC typology makes a re-emergence, with series of coins changing in a small but regular manner over time. Such typological change is found also in fibulae which, from the first century BC onwards, are made in large amounts. These typological artefacts create a new relationship between people and metal artefacts, which, in the first century BC, brings an end to the idiosyncratic nature of change in Celtic art. Celtic art disappears for a few decades, to appear again in more typological form. Following this argument, we can see the fine metalwork of the first millennium BC as shifting from typological to idiosyncratic and back again to typological. Celtic art stands out as a set of quite different relationships between people and metalwork from periods before and after it. The timescales over which artefact types change is intermediate in duration between very long-term patterns of deposition, which see stone and metalwork deposited in the same places in rivers over millennia and the life histories of individual artefacts. Looking at short timescales we can see the lifespan of an individual thing, such as a sword or torc, as that period between making and deposition with various aspects of use in between. Some artefacts are made and quickly deposited. Others have much longer use, lives, and histories of their own. In the first millennium BC we might think of the average human lifespan as being about fifty years – this is probably slightly too long, but a usefully round number. A millennium is made up of twenty human lifespans by this measure. An average Late Bronze Age typological phase lasted two human lifespans, so that some individuals would have seen little change and others lived

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through one period of typological shift. By the very Late Iron Age coin types alter every twenty or thirty years in south and south-east England (Creighton 2000: Figure A.2), with coins changing faster than people lived. Both the nature of change (typological or not) and the speed of change altered the relationship between people and their things. An individual item existed against a broader background of change, enjoying an average lifespan in terms of type and duration or standing out as unusual. An individual human lived through an artefactual world of metalwork of relatively slow and regular change, more irregular and episodic change, or regular and rapid change, at different points in the first millennium. Each of these three relationships would have produced people of slightly different types, with their skills and senses of discrimination attuned in varying ways. We have chosen to concentrate on swords, torcs, and coins in this chapter as they bear some of the most striking instances of complex decoration and form known from the entire corpus of Celtic art. Swords (or rather scabbards) provide examples of mainly flat engraved decoration, as do coins, although in their case decoration is stamped or cast. Torcs are some of the most impressive three-dimensional items with a range of cast-on or repoussé decoration. Coins and torcs are linked by the common use of gold and silver for both, which may have allowed for experimentation with colour, varying from red gold to the light glistening impressions of silver. More contentiously we have linked the partial nature of decoration on coins and scabbards, which often bear decorations that look to us at least to be an element of a larger whole. Taken together these three classes of objects allow us to think about many key elements of the corpus of decoration, as well as important issues of change, with coins following a typological and sequential set of shifts in decoration, whereas changes to swords or torcs are less directional.

SWORDS Swords are about power. But the question is: What sort of power? The answer to this question must seem obvious – swords are about the power to kill, maim, or, at least, to intimidate. As instruments of

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violence they enhance the reach of the arm by nearly a metre, they require speed, coordination, and balance, all of which involves the whole body in both attack and defence (Malafouris 2008). As Giles (2008) has pointed out, swords may not always have been instruments of human violence, but could also have provided the bearer with protection against the malign forces of the cosmos. Our argument considers swords as temporal artefacts, in which the sword’s power derives in part from its ability to condense and materialize a series of temporal relationships, some spanning millennia, others a few years. We will start with the very long duration. In order to set the later Iron Age sword in context, let us consider the longer-term history of the sword from its Bronze Age beginnings. The earliest evidence shows a spread of early metal weapons across Europe and may go back to the period of shaft graves in the eighteenth and seventeenth centuries BC (the Greek Middle Helladic and Early Late Helladic periods), which have revealed solid-hilted swords with decoration. There are also the discoveries of axes and lances in the Carpathians (David 2002), early Minoan and Mycenaean swords and daggers (Kilian-Dirlmeier 1993), and early dirks and rapiers in Britain (Burgess and Gerloff 1981). Even more widespread was the distribution of long swords or rapiers of Mycenaean form, in the sixteenth and early fifteenth centuries BC. From this phase early flange-hilted swords were made in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries BC and spread rapidly across large areas of Europe. Forms and changes can be traced across Europe, the Mediterranean, and north of the Alps, whereby blades change from long, thin thrusting swords to longer and heavier cutting swords. Types of hilting also change from butt-plate hilts, suitable for the forces created by thrusting only, which push the blade onto the hilt, to flange-hilted and solid-hilted swords, where more substantial attachments can absorb the forces of a succession of cutting blows (Müller-Karpe 1961, Schauer 1971). While broad stylistic similarities existed for a millennium or more across Europe, that is, from the end of the Early Bronze Age to the end of the Early Iron Age, the ways in which swords were deposited varied considerably between the Mediterranean and the rest of Europe. The deposition of swords in Europe north of the Alps was into watery bogs, rivers, and dry land hoards, as well as graves. Depositional practice differed in the Mediterranean, where graves were the main destination for swords.

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Swords are part of an assemblage of material that comes and goes from the Late Bronze Age onwards. The Wilburton phase in Britain, starting around 1150 BC and ending around 1020 BC, reveals a combination of horse gear, vehicles (their exact type is unknown from the few vehicle fittings that have been found [O’Connor 1980: 150–2]), swords, and cauldrons, which are conventionally seen as evidence for a warrior and feasting culture. Labels like fighting and feasting are only the start of an explanation, so that we need to think in more detail how the material operated to influence people. One possible route to a deeper contextualization would be to compare and contrast the various periods at which this package of horses, vehicles, and weapons comes together, which in Britain is the Late Bronze Wilburton, the Early Iron Age of the eighth century BC, and again in the later Iron Age of the fourth century BC. Horse riding, wheeled vehicles, and then chariots come into being in sequence from previous millennia in Central Asia. Horse riding had probably started in the PonticCaspian steppe by 4200 BC, with wagons and carts (probably pulled by oxen) found from 3300 BC, while chariots, the first vehicles built for speed, were developed in the Sintashta group of the southern Urals by 2100 BC (Anthony 2007: 461–2). It took many millennia before horses became really important in Britain and it is only from the later Iron Age onwards that we find substantial numbers of domesticated horse bones. The chariot is similarly late to Britain by Eurasian standards, so that whereas Wilburton wagons were part of a broader urnfield tradition, speedy vehicles for display and fighting only come into being in Britain after 400 BC. The later Iron Age sword is part of much longer trends that feature swords linked with vehicles, horse gear, and horses. In fact, the later Iron Age is the last time that the package comes together in quite this way. Also, there is an odd historical recapitulation. The earlier Bronze Age reveals a shift from daggers to thrusting weapons, like rapiers, to slashing swords. This sequence happens again in Iron Age Britain, where earlier Iron Age daggers are succeeded by short swords in the fourth century BC, which become longer and less pointed from the later third century onwards (Stead 2006). This trend is especially marked in southern England, less so in the north where swords never achieve the length of their southern counterparts. There is evidence that swords were worn differently in the north and the south; in the former they were slung over the back and in the latter worn from a belt at the waist. Whether these different styles

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for carrying swords were the cause or consequence of their length is not known. The longer-term trends of which Iron Age swords were part also help to bring out their originality. Iron swords are found in Gündlingen and Mindelheim types, with the former also made in bronze in the Hallstatt C period. Bronze swords do not seem to have been made after 750 BC (O’Connor 2007: 74). During the later Iron Age sword blades were of iron, but scabbards were often made of a combination of bronze and iron, a combination that becomes more common as time goes on, although it may be that many had organic scabbards that do not survive. Handles had components of horn and wood, with the finest also decorated in enamel. Most important for our purposes, the bronze front-plates of scabbards, and more occasionally their iron counterparts, were sometimes decorated with a series of engraved and incised motifs representing some of the most complex examples of Celtic art known anywhere (Fig. 5.1). Of later Iron Age swords we cannot simply say that the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Swords came as parcels of related material, but by the later Iron Age they were complex assemblages of metalwork, a complexity that was increased by the application of decoration in a variety of forms. When looking at scabbards and the swords they contained we should be wary of emphasizing the finished object too much. We should also be aware that there is no reason for the various components to have come together in this way: the forms that swords came to take were not inevitable. Scabbards especially were processes in action, so that they could be taken apart, reassembled in different ways, worn, and repaired, or paired with new swords (see also Chapter Seven). They can almost be seen as a series of components, rather than as singular or static objects. The composite nature of scabbards introduces other dimensions of power. The combination of bronze and iron, with techniques of casting, beating, and forging, as well as wood and leather, drew in many skills of making, with multiple relationships needed to combine and work the various components. The decoration helped link scabbards and swords with other things bearing similar patterns and motifs. The long history of some scabbards and swords might have made them the focus of stories and histories in which they played a part.

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Fig. 5.1 Scabbard decoration on a sword from Wetwang Slack (Stead 2006: Fig. 88) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

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Later Iron Age Swords The later Iron Age sword in Britain is a set of variants on the so-called La Tène or Celtic sword (De Navarro 1952, Pleiner 1993). As we saw in Chapter Four, iron blades were forged from a number of iron plates, often with different degrees of hardness. Such techniques created blades with roughly parallel sides, which were arguably less elegant than some Late Bronze Age cast bronze blades with their leafshaped or carp’s-tongue tips. The tang of the iron blades allowed firm attachment of the handle, a necessary element in slashing swords, which exerted more strain on the handle than thrusting weapons. The key work on British scabbards and swords is that of Stead (2006), who builds on earlier work by Piggott (1950) and Spratling’s (1972) unpublished thesis. Stead describes some 274 swords in great detail, with mention of a number of others either recently discovered or less accessible for analysis (Table 5.1 gives details of relatively complete swords with good context). Stead’s work also develops a dialogue with Jope (2000), who understandably concentrates on decorative aspects of the corpus. Giles (2007a, 2007b, 2008) has considered aspects of violence and warfare in the Iron Age, with particular reference to the burials of East Yorkshire. She makes the point that violence may not have been solely directed at human adversaries, as there is little evidence for injuries inflicted by swords (Giles 2008: 67). Swords are distinguished from daggers by their length, so that Stead defines three classes of sword (with daggers being less than 300 mm), short swords (320–440 mm), medium swords (520–665 mm), and long swords (703–870 mm). The last class is only found in southern Britain, that is, in the area south of the Humber (Stead 2006: 5, Table 2). Many southern swords were found in rivers, principally the Thames, but also in a few burials and very occasionally in hoards. By contrast, northern swords came predominantly from burials, especially those of East Yorkshire, or other land contexts (Table 5.2). Stead defines six groups (A–F), with four from southern Britain and two from the north. These are distinguished by length of swords and scabbards (A and B are medium length, with C and D long swords), but also by variations in the types of swords and scabbards, types of chapes (the chape being found at the distal end of the scabbard and designed to hold the two scabbard plates

Table 5.1. The typology, history, and depositional contexts of relatively complete swords (information from Stead 2006). The numbers and letters in columns 3–8 are explained in Stead (2006). In column labelled ‘Dec-upper scabb.’: 1=dragon pair, 2=4-leaf motif, 3=circular motif, 4=other, 5=decoration on back. In column labelled ‘Chape’: 1=tendril within chape, 2=open work, 3=mixed decoration on chape Stead Name number

Scabb. Loop Chape Sword Stage Group Length Width Deposit Iron (mm) (mm) sword/ scabb

Cu alloy scabb

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

L L M L L

/

N N N L L L L

2a 2c 2c 2a

57 66

Witham Hammersmith London Fiskerton Wandsworth Fiskerton London Battersea London, Thames Hammersmith Hammersmith Orton Meadows Shepperton Standlake Witham Fovant Newbridge Battersea Orton Meadows Battersea Mill Hill, Deal

M N

2a 2c

67 68 79

L. Wittenham Hunsbury N. Grimston

N N P

10 11 31 34 35 36 53 54 55 56

1 1

a1 a1

M M M

1 1 1 1 1 1

M

1 1 7 1

i i i i i i i i i

574 575 566 c533 c598 c569 c535 580 c592

44 47 43 48 43 49 51 41 50

River River

III I

A A A A A A A B B

River River River ? River? River

/ // // // / // // // //

B B B

c580

40

I I

538

51

River River River

// / //

B B B B B B B

c570 c620 517+ 588 c610 c530 c532

42 45 45 36.5 35 32 39

River River River Land River River River

/ / / / // // /

/ / / /

B C

575 643

42 49

River Grave

// /

/ /

c622 c634 c740

c42 42 47

River H.fort Grave

/ / //

/ /

III

i a2

i

a2 a2

i i i i i i i

b

IV II IV

b

ii i

V

b b c var.

i ii iii

IV/V C C C

Decupper scabb.

Decwhole scabb.

Chape Enamel Damage

1, 5 / 1 2

/ / /? /

4 4 4 1?

2 repairs 2 1

/ & worn /

? 1? 3 3

3 2

Fittings Not a pair, wear Fittings 2 repairs

80

Springfield

P

d2

iii

C

81 82 85

Llyn Cerrig Llyn Cerrig Henley

P/M P/M R

2d 2d 2b

c1

ii/iii ii/iii iii

C C C

86 87

L. Wittenham Bryher

R R

3b 3b

c1 c1

iii iii

C D

88

Meare Heath

R

3a

c1

89 90

R R

2b

c1 c2

iii

R R S

3a 3a 4b

c2 d1 d2

98 99 101 102 103 104 110 112 116 172

Hunsbury Amerden Lock Lakenheath Thames Orton Meadows Abingdon Northchurch Isleham Bardney Congham Battersea Essendon Essendon Owslebury Kirkburn

S S S S S S T T V Wa

4b 4b 4c 4c 4c 4c 4a 4b 4a 5

173

Wetwang

Wa

5

91 92 97

V (IV)

c530

c43

Hoard

//

c715

48

Water Water River

// // /

/

4, 5

2

703 c825

c57 c48

River Grave

/ /

/ /

3 (back) 1 (back)

/

3 1?,2 back 4

3 (back) ?

V

D

V V

D D

c830

c40

H.fort River

/

/ /

3 4, 5

iii iii iv

D D D

c42 48

? River River

/ / /

/ / /

4, 5

c870 825

d2

iv

c790

44

e e e e

iv iv

c709 c788

c39 c40-5

/ / / /

/ / / / / / / /?

c835 590

c60 40

River ? River? River Peat? River Hoard Hoard Grave Grave

/ /

/

/

Red

c695

39

Grave

/

/

/

Red

f

iv vi

D D V D VI D VI E (VI) E E E E IV/V E

f

vi

IV

E

Bog

?

/

Several repairs Bent / / / Bent

/

4, 5 4 4 4

Blade bent oval Fragments Sword bent Riveted repair

Bent Bent Bent

1 (back) 1?

Bent? Repair Delib. break? Delib. break? Fr. Plate broken Worn (continued )

Table 5.1. Continued Stead Name number

Scabb. Loop Chape Sword Stage Group Length Width Deposit Iron (mm) (mm) sword/ scabb

Cu alloy scabb

174 175

Wetwang Ferrybridge

Wa Wa

176 177

Bugthorpe Grimthorpe

Wb Wb

182

199

Bargany House Corham, R. Tweed Melsonby

X

A276-9 200 203 204 205

South Cave Flasby Asby Scar Cotterdale Embleton

206 207 208

Mortonhall Sadberge Warton

183

5 5

f

Decupper scabb.

Decwhole scabb.

vi vi

IV IV

E E

c535 -

37 -

Grave Ditch

/ /

/ /

/ / prob.

g g

vi vi

V

E F

c570 c590

40 41

Grave? Grave

/ /

/ /

/

X

g

vi

F

-

-

Land

-

/

X

g

vi

F

-

-

River

-

/

6

h

vi

VI

F

560

36

Hoard

/

/

5

Y Y Y Y Y

6 6 6 6 6

h h j j j

viii viii viii viii ix

VI?

F F F F F

520 565

36 29 34

/ / / / /

/ / / / /

5

543

Land Land Land Land Land

Y Y Y

6 6 6

j h?

viii viii ix

V/VI F F F

-

-

Land Land Land

/ /

/ /

VI

Chape Enamel Damage

3 3

Red, yellow, coral

3

Delib.break & repair Fr.plate bent Repair Bent, worn Repair Replacement chape?

Red / laddering

5 5

Red, yellow

Repair

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Table 5.2. The depositional contexts of Iron Age swords (data from Stead 2006: Table 11)

Groups A–B Groups C–D Groups E–F Group H Overall total

Rivers

Graves

Single deposit

Multiple deposit

46 24 1 0

1 10 21 0

3 6 10 3

0 19 3 4

Hillfort etc. 20 2 0 18

Stray Totals 8 6 8 17

78 67 43 42 230

together), suspension loops (looped metal plates at the back-plate of the scabbard through which a strap of leather or other material could be passed to secure the scabbard to a belt or over the back of the bearer). Distinctions are also made on the basis of the Celtic art stages (I–VI) defined by Stead, and types of material, with brass and gunmetal coming in under Roman influence (Stead 2006: 15). The northern swords were divided less by length and more by typological variants. In terms of time, Group A dates from pre-350 down to 250 BC, group B from c.250 to 150/100 BC, group C from 150 to 50 BC, and group D from the last two centuries from c.100 BC. Northern group E has typological similarities with groups A–C and probably dates to the second century BC; group F diverges from the southern groups typologically and it may have a long date span from the second century BC into the first century AD. Group H mixes elements of the two regional traditions and probably dates from the Early Roman period.

SWORD DEPOSITION Richard Bradley (1990: 21) has pointed out for the Bronze Age that multiple deposits of objects on dry land have a discontinuous history, whereas those in water are a continuing feature. The same observation could be extended into the Iron Age for a number of rivers, particularly the Thames. Some remarks concerning the factors influencing the nature of river deposition are needed. Riverside landscapes are dynamic, resulting from a complex of factors, including human influence. The Thames shows the following basic sequence of rising

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river levels from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Romano-British periods, as the clearance of trees caused greater run-off. The lowest terraces started flooding in the winter from the Middle Iron Age onwards and human occupation was often restricted to gravel islands raised above the lowest terrace (Booth et al. 2007: 17), with some local formations of shallow lakes and bays. Smaller channels come in and out of use, sometimes influenced locally by the construction of causeways (as at Yarnton) or bridges (at Dorney) (ibid). As the RomanoBritish period approached, silt loads increased, making the water less clear. In the Romano-British period some drainage lowered water levels on the lowest terrace (Booth et al. 2007: 18). Although later Iron Age swords were new in their forms and decorations, some of them were deposited in spots that were sites of ancient forms of deposition, probably going back to the Neolithic and, for metal-bladed weapons, to the Middle Bronze Age, more than a thousand years earlier than the swords of interest here. Although there is a hiatus in the Romano-British period, when statuary, coins, but few weapons were thrown into rivers, swords and spearheads are again deposited from the Anglo-Saxon periods onwards (see, for example, Booth et al. 2007: 232–3). Indeed, the earlier Iron Age (c.800–400 BC) witnessed a contraction of the area over which deposition occurred, as shown by the distribution of daggers (Jope 1961), which expanded out to the area of the Bronze Age depositions after c.400 BC (Fitzpatrick 1984). Ehrenberg (1989: Fig. 2) documents pottery, stone, and bone as well as iron and bronze from the Thames above Teddington for all periods of prehistory and into the postMedieval period. The association of the various materials is unknown and makes interpretation hard. Human bones, especially skulls, have also been recovered in considerable quantities from various points along the river, often those that also produce metalwork. Bradley and Gordon (1988: 503) refer to early observations by Cuming (1857) of a ‘Celtic Golgotha’ near Battersea Bridge, where famous metalwork finds were recovered. As Bradley and Gordon (1988: 504) also note, there may be a link between areas where metalwork is deposited in graves directly with human bodies and in rivers, quite possibly in association with parts of people or whole bodies. That swords (and other forms of later Iron Age metalwork) are found in graves in some areas is clear, raising the possibility of similar associations in river deposits. Skulls are found along the course of the Thames from Oxford to estuary waters, but the majority come out of the stretch

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between Richmond and Battersea, paralleling the quantities of metal (Bradley and Gordon 1988: Fig. 1). A small number (nine in all) of skulls were dated, mainly to between the Middle Bronze Age and the Romano-British period, with one dated in the Neolithic and one in the Anglo-Saxon period (Bradley and Gordon 1988: 508). Larger numbers of dates are needed to create a firm pattern, but the existing ones do raise the likelihood that some human remains were deposited with some metalwork. As discussed above, Stead divides later Iron Age swords into two geographical groups – southern swords, from south of the Humber, and those from the north (Stead 2006). See Table 5.2, in which groups A–B, C–D are southern and E–F northern, whereas Group H contains swords showing Roman influence. The first thing that stands out is the marked discrepancy between the north and south in the river deposition of these weapons – of the 71 swords deposited in a river, only one definite example comes from the north. From the Thames 49 swords have been discovered, and another three from the Lea, with 14 from the Witham, eight from the Nene, two from the Lark, and one from the Widsey (Stead 2006: 79). The number being discarded in rivers declines after about 150 BC, with slightly larger numbers thereafter found in graves, the odd deposit of Llyn Cerrig Bach, and hoards, principally Essendon (although the exact dates of many of these sites are uncertain and might be slightly earlier). If these chronologies are correct, then one sword went into a river every six years for the earlier period and one every 14 years for groups C–D (Stead 2006: 79). Even if we multiply the numbers of swords by 100 to counteract the vagaries of recovery, this gives around two swords per year for the earlier period and 1.5 per year for the later. Given the areas involved, the act of sword deposition seems to have been an important but somewhat rare event – the rarity giving it more power. It was also a practice that declined into the Late Iron Age, being given up entirely in the Romano-British period. Fascinatingly, it re-emerges in the Early Medieval period, when 22 Late Saxon or Viking swords came from the Thames, four from the Lea, two from the Witham, and two from the Nene (Wilson 1965), reproducing the Iron Age proportions very closely. Hillforts reveal much larger numbers of fragments and one complete sword in its scabbard from Hunbsury, which is unparalleled

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anywhere else. Several sites, primarily Cadbury Castle, Maiden Castle, and Spettisbury stand out for the relatively large numbers of sword fragments occurring. A disproportionate number of these are chapes and this might indicate preferential deposition of this part or the fact that metal assemblages were often deposited in the open so that more robust elements, such as chapes, were more likely to survive. Apart from the Hunsbury sword and scabbard (probably from a pit) and the tang and upper part of a blade deliberately broken from The Caburn (Hamilton 2007: 32), many hillfort finds emerge from unusual contexts, such as those from a layer near the surface in Cadbury with other metal finds and loosely associated with metalworking (Barrett et al. 2000). The swords from Spettisbury, a small hillfort with a single bank and ditch, appear to come from a large pit, cut into a silted ditch, which contained 80 to 90 skeletons, shield bindings, two brooches, and a small cauldron (Stead 2006: 33–4). The Hunsbury finds, in which scabbards predominate, were made at various parts of the hillfort, although little is known due to widespread iron stone mining in the 1880s. Currency bars and a large number of iron tools were also found in the interior (Stead 2006: 34). The pattern of sword deposition in hillforts is elusive, as so much of the material is fragmentary, but these fragments form a pattern in themselves. As discussed, this contrasts with the almost total absence of swords on settlement sites and their rather more complete character in graves and river finds. It is only in these last two sets of contexts that we can start to talk of the biography of individual objects. While only one sword of the 43 with good provenance comes from a river in northern England, in the south this rises to 78 out of 214 (just over a third). Thirty-eight swords from southern Britain show signs of damage or wear (see Table 5.3), a large percentage of these (21 in total, or 55 per cent) coming from rivers. It is often from the scabbard that much of the history of a sword can be read in terms of damage and repair. From the total of 78 southern river finds, 31 have no scabbard and around 20 more have very fragmentary scabbards. Most of the scabbards that are reasonably preserved show signs that the sword was not new when deposited and had been patched up, deliberately damaged, or both. It is to artefact biographies that we now turn.

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Table 5.3. The history of damage, repairs, and replacements on scabbards and swords (data from Stead 2006) Stead number and name

Scabbard and sword history

8 Battersea Scabbard back-plate repaired with iron band. Repair on front-plate? 31 Orton Meadows Reinforce on scabbard, 2 repairs on back-plate. 35 Standlake Possibly 3 phases of scabbard construction – Jope. Stead doubtful. Wear. 53 Fovant Three repairs on front-plate of scabbard. Scabbard shortened – therefore sword with it not original. Burnt? Design worn. 66 Mill Hill, Deal Sword and scabbard not a pair. Chape end worn. 67 Little Two small repairs (copper alloy strip) on chape. Wear. Wittenham 80 Springfield Blade bent into an oval. 82 Llyn Cerrig Sword blade bent. Bach 85 Henley Riveted repair to scabbard. 88 Meare Heath Repair to top of chape and reinforces. Repair to edge of back-plate. Back-plate broken level with top of chape bridge. 89 Hunsbury Sword blade bent. 90 Amerden Lock Three minor repairs to back-plate where split. 92 Thames Replacement suspension loop? Scabbard buckled in front and split at back, then repaired. 97 Orton Meadows Sword in scabbard bent in two places and then straightened so sword could be removed. 98 Abingdon Scabbard slightly bent in centre and then straightened. 99 Northchurch Bottom of sword and scabbard deliberately bent and broken. 101 Isleham Back-plate bent (in the Iron Age?). Decoration pristine, little wear. 103 Congham Back-plate bent – unclear whether ancient or modern (found when looking for newts). 104 Battersea Slightly bent in upper part. Scabbard crudely mended along edges (soldered?). Back-plate scored in arcs through use. 110 Essendon Sword blade in fragments – deliberately broken? 112 Essendon Scabbard front-plate bent and broken. 172 Kirkburn Front- and back-plates broken at top of chape clasp and repaired. Decoration on plate below break similar in design but much cruder in execution than upper part. 173 Wetwang Worn decoration on front-plate. 175 Ferrybridge Scabbard broken, repaired, and then deliberately broken again. Found near bottom of ditch of Neolithic henge. 176 Bugthorpe Front-plate bent and straightened (but back-plate not, although too fragmentary to tell). 177 Grimthorpe Back-plate and chape repaired. 182 Bargany House Front-plate bent above chape. 183 Carham Cast-on repair to chape. 199 Melsonby Suspension loop squashed flat deliberately. Present chape a (Stanwick) replacement? 205 Embleton Worn elements of handle. Repair to back-plate. 208 Warton Handle and guard worn. Back-plate broken in antiquity?

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In her review of the treatment of Bronze Age metalwork entering the Thames above Teddington, York (2000: Fig. 5) shows that the incidence of use and deliberate destruction of artefacts rises from the Penard phase onward (in other words, after c.1350 BC). The major objects are spearheads (100), swords (56), dirks and rapiers (49), socketed axes (25), and palstaves (23). In the Early Bronze Age no metalwork was deliberately destroyed, but 21 per cent of the Middle Bronze Age artefacts and 50 per cent from the Late Bronze Age were (York 2000: 83). Swords show both high levels of use (84 per cent) and of deliberate damage (59 per cent). The latter took varying forms, ranging between swords bent in an arc using heat until they snapped and others that had been hit and broken into two or often more pieces. Again the incidence of deliberate breaking increased between the Penard phase and Ewart Park (c.1350 to 1050 BC) (York 2000: 87). Spearheads also suffered deliberate damage, but not at the same rates as swords. Part of the development of swords as a class of artefact involved deliberate destruction prior to being thrown into water (we do not have comparable figures for various forms of damage to swords deposited on land, although this did happen too). Damage and destruction were not accidental occurrences but an important element of the life cycle of swords. Swords were made to inflict violence, but were also the victims of violence, so that the violence done by swords and to them was perhaps part of a reciprocal relationship. Swords and scabbards were complex assemblages of components, which led to varied histories. If we take Stead’s exploded version of a reconstruction of the Kirkburn sword (172) from East Yorkshire we can get a sense of the number and variety of components involved (Fig. 5.2). What might seem to be the central aspect of the object, the sword blade and tang, is the most singular element, although complex to make. The tang supported the handle with a hilt made out of two plates of metal held together with pins or rivets and washers – the handle was made of horn over which was placed a cylinder of bone and then an iron latticework, which was inlaid with glass, and the pommel had an even more complex structure than the hilt. The scabbard was composed of a front-plate of bronze, with a backplate of iron, the edges of which overlapped the front-plate. The iron chape consisted of a plate that fitted around both scabbard plates

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Fig. 5.2 Kirkburn sword, exploded view (Stead 2006: Fig. 87) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

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and into the chape end, all of which were held by fasteners and washers and then ornamented in glass, as was the front-plate near the mouth. The length of this plate was covered in engraved ornament formed of a continuous scroll with tendrils. The suspension loop is in the middle of the scabbard, consisting of a long thin plate decorated with a triscele featuring a red glass background, and the remains of a thong in the loop had traces of hair or fur, showing skin was used and not leather (Stead 2006: 184–5). Admittedly the Kirkburn sword is both particularly complex and well preserved, but it does show the multiple nature of the materials, crafts, and skills that often came together to make a sword. Many swords were old when deposited, having accumulated a history, which can be read to some degree through the sequence of damage, repairs and replacements of key components (for details of the swords used in this analysis, which were those that were relatively complete and have a fairly secure context, see Table 5.3). A number of different interventions can be seen here, ranging from wear during use to deliberate breakage to the combination of swords and scabbards that were not originally paired. The most decisive interventions were those such as sword 80 (Springfield) which was bent into an oval, an act as skilled and difficult as making the sword in the first place. Sword 110 (Essendon) had its blade broken into fragments (possibly deliberately) and sword 175 (Ferrybridge) had its scabbard broken, repaired, and then apparently deliberately broken again. It was also found near the bottom of a ditch in a Neolithic henge, a potentially charged and significant spot. Sword 92 (Thames) in Stead’s catalogue is relatively complete, but shows a history of repair to the scabbard (Fig. 5.3). The sword in its copper-alloy scabbard is notable for its high campanulate mouth and a cast laddered chape. The scabbard shows good surface condition, but the back-plate is split across its width in the centre. The mouth is emphasized by an added swag of metal with a decorated roundel in the centre and two further roundels lower down, with a rivet hole for a third. There is a reinforced strip on each edge of the scabbard at the top and there are marks from what might have been a bridge for a further reinforce below the roundels. The loop plate at the back is ornamented, but may be a replacement for a longer loop with a broader terminal. Near the middle the scabbard has been buckled and repaired by clips at the edges. There is a possible further repair within the chape.

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Fig. 5.3 Scabbard from the River Thames (Stead 2006: Fig. 70) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

Some of this damage may derive from use, but some such as the buckling of the back-plate (but not the front?) may well have been deliberate. This fits into a broader pattern of deliberate damage, which includes forms requiring skill, such as the sword from Springfield (80) bent into an oval. Wallingford Bridge (37), Llyn Cerrig Bach (82 and 137), Aldwinkle (138), and Thames (229) were all probably bent in antiquity, whereas Hammersmith (42) and Essendon (110) may well have been deliberately broken (Stead 2006: 51–2). Few of Stead’s Group A swords exhibit signs of repair and damage, which seem to become more common as time goes by. This corresponds to a shift from all iron scabbards to those with a bronze front-plate and iron back-plate. These later scabbards are also more commonly decorated, so that there might be some correlation between decoration,

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repair, and damage: as decoration increases in frequency, so too does damage and heavy use. Swords from graves have interesting characteristics. Graves, as we have seen, are relatively few, being found only in particular times and places (see also Chapter Seven). Thirty-two swords came from graves, out of 214 swords with a good context; 11 from southern Britain and 21 from the north. Even in the north, only half the total number of swords came from graves and in the south it is closer to 5 per cent, most of which are Late Iron Age. Very few weapons of any kind derive from cremation burials and this is not purely to do with the destructive nature of the rite. Swords in burials are relatively unusual. A surprisingly small number of these are decorated and we might easily be misled by famous examples (including Mill Hill, Deal, in the south, and Kirkburn, the two swords from Wetwang, and that from Bugthorpe in the north) into thinking larger percentages were decorated. Over half the northern swords had organic scabbards, decoration on which rarely survives. Some swords in burials had intriguing histories. The scabbard and sword in Mill Hill, Deal, do not fit each other (see Chapter Seven for a more detailed discussion); the front-plate of the Kirkburn sword was broken at the top of the chape clasp and repaired. Most intriguingly, the decoration within the chape is a cruder version of that on the upper part of the plate and had obviously been added later than the upper decoration, showing again that swords could be works in process. Other scabbards, such as Bugthorpe (176), were deliberately bent and then repaired. In addition, two southern swords (Kelvedon – 105 and Coleford – 128) and one northern (Acklam – 189) were put into their graves bent. Bending, breaking, or occasionally twisting the blades of swords were the favoured methods of damaging, with the first and last needing considerable skill. It is hard to detect any systematic differences between the treatment of swords being deposited into rivers and those placed in graves. The relatively frequent deposits of skulls in rivers like the Thames (Bradley and Gordon 1988) make us wonder whether there were parallels between the two. A number of general conclusions can be made. First, although Stead (2006) has put a considerable amount of effort into constructing typologies that make some sense of the differences between swords in the north and the south, as well as change over several hundred years, the typological differences he sees do not always work well at a detailed level. Swords and scabbards, or at least those that

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come down to us, are too complicated to fit easily into neat typological sequences. A relatively trivial, but important reason for this is the small number of swords that have survived – less than one for each year of the later Iron Age. It is possible that swords were scarce, but it seems more likely that several hundred were made every year, rather than just one. Importantly, the variety in the types and histories of swords may well be an important element of the pattern. Swords and scabbards were constellations of attributes, beaten and cast, iron and bronze, decorated or not. Such assemblages of features encouraged varied interactions, through breaking, mending, or combining swords and scabbards not originally made as a pair. The paradox around swords is that there are some strong patterns – their deposition in southern rivers and northern graves, for instance, but great variability within these patterns. Sword decoration encapsulates this paradox, in that there are hints of local styles, as seen in Kirkburn (172) and two swords from Wetwang Slack (173 and 174). But even here, the similarity of constructional features and modes of engraved decoration are counterposed by the sheer complexity of the decoration, for which no simple or final reading was possible. Each item had its own history, set of narratives and performances, as is indicated by the fact that the Kirkburn sword may well have been placed in its grave several generations after the other two, judging by the relative date of the graves. The power of the sword lay in its variability, the fact that it was an assemblage and not a singular object, so each was able to generate and carry various narratives, histories, and impacts on humans. Many, probably most, swords had been used before their deposition, having histories probably ranging from a few years to a number of generations. Many swords did not enter contexts that make them archaeologically visible unless there were very low numbers of swords in existence indeed. The deposition of whole but used or damaged swords in rivers, and smashed-up swords in hillforts, were fairly unusual events. They might then have been occasions of considerable theatre that lived long in the memory of the community. In the case of river deposition, this would have to be true in order to explain the long-lived but rare deposition of swords in the same spots on the river over a millennium or more. Quite what the immediate reasons were for throwing a sword and scabbard into a river can only be guessed at – possibilities include the death of an important person, an important event, or a significant date. The bark-edge dendrochronological dates

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for some of the timbers of the Fiskerton Causeway, where two swords were deposited, indicate the felling of timbers coincident with midwinter eclipses of the moon (Field and Parker Pearson 2003: 144–8). Whether one accepts the possibility of links between astronomical observations and deposits of material, or the observations of Sharples (2010) and others (discussed in Chapter One) that the death of an important inhabitant might have occasioned the abandonment of a house, we can see a series of episodic acts punctuating Iron Age life. Artefacts of some age, and hence of some significance, were key parts of such acts. Many swords were old when deposited and may have been older than the human participants in these ceremonies. As the oldest participant, a sword might well have been the means of sustaining earlier histories, its history of damage or alteration acting as mnemonics for story and performance.

TORCS Torcs are a relatively infrequent find in later Iron Age Europe. They exhibit variety disproportionate to their number. The bodies of torcs are made from wire, rods, or tubular sheet, with terminals that vary from loop to ring to buffer, cage, or spool, the uncommon tubular torcs having complex fixing mechanisms hidden inside their buffer ends (Fig. 5.4). Torcs are mainly made in gold, silver, or electrum (Fig. 5.5), but are also found in bronze or iron. There are three areas of torc finds in Europe: a dispersed region from northern France through Central Europe to Bulgaria; a concentrated density of torcs in the so-called ‘castros’ of northern Portugal and north-western Spain; and in the British Isles and Ireland (Fig. 5.6) (Hautenauve 2005). The latter two areas show internal typological similarities, while the broader continental region has a variety of types and periods of torcs. Not all artefacts labelled as such are strictly speaking torcs – only those with a twist demonstrate torque, having a springiness that tubular torcs or other neck rings do not possess, the latter having more in common with arm rings made of sheet metal. Torcs represent an important phase in the intermittent history of what we would call ‘precious metals’, that is, gold and silver. In Britain these disappear from the record by the eighth century BC to reappear probably in the third in the form of personal ornaments,

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Fig. 5.4 Torc terminal types (after Stead 1991: Figs. 7–10) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

mainly torcs and arm rings. This pattern of disappearing and reappearing mirrors that of bronze and iron, being part of the general revaluing of metals from around 400 BC onwards. The working of gold and silver, through the making of sheet metal and its decoration with engraved or repoussé decoration, shares techniques with bronzeworking. Similarly, engraving, basketry hatching, or casting on are

Fig. 5.5 The Ipswich torcs # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

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Fig. 5.6 European distribution of torcs (after Hautenauve 2005: Carte 1)

all means of surface alteration, which remove or add metal to a surface and are found in goldwork but also shared with bronze. Hot soldering of joints is known from the seventh century BC onwards (Hautenauve 2005: 172) and this may have an Etruscan origin. Techniques found in most developed forms on torcs, such as granulation and filigree, may also have an ultimate source in Etruscan workshops. Like many before her, Hautenauve (2005: 182) sought evidence of such workshops in a combination of chemical analyses of metal composition and in detailed descriptions of techniques. She feels that the tubular torcs from Hoard A at Snettisham may have a continental origin (ibid), but there is no direct evidence for this and workshops are impossible to identify. Rather than looking for workshops, we are more interested in the nature of the metals used, their forms of deposition, and the modes of deposition of torcs, all of which show interesting patterns. From as early as the third century BC torcs

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are joined by coins of gold (and later silver), with which they seem to have a close relationship. The British evidence for torcs is dominated by the finds from Snettisham (Stead 1991d, Joy forthcoming), which in turn are part of a broader concentration of finds in East Anglia (Hutcheson 2004), featuring a hoard of six torcs from Ipswich (Owles 1969), a number of pieces from Bawsey (Clarke 1954, Hutcheson 2004), North Creake, Sedgeford, and Middleton (Hutcheson 2004, Hautenauve 2005: 237, 238). These form a typological group linked by form and decorative motif. Distributions are extended to the south-west and south by finds in Clevedon, Avon, and Hengistbury Head, Dorset. A second group is concentrated in the Midlands, exemplified by Glascote and Middleton in Warwickshire, Needwood and Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, and Ulceby in Lincolnshire. Three outliers complete the present distribution: torcs from Le Catillon in Jersey (Fitzpatrick and Megaw 1987), Netherurd in Scotland (Hunter 1997), and Merthyr Mawr Warren (Hauteneuve 2005, 237, no. 148). Important finds from Broighter and Knock in Ireland (Raftery 1984) reveal interesting similarities to the British material. The recent find of a hoard of four torcs near Stirling (Hunter 2010) contained two ribbon torcs, relatively common in Scotland and Ireland where they are known from both the Bronze and Iron Ages. It also contained an annular tubular torc of possible southern French manufacture and an unusual fourth torc with a rope-like hoop of eight braided pairs of gold wires and a disc-like terminal, decorated with gold wire and granules, possibly of Mediterranean manufacture. The torcs were found within a circular structure on a low terrace above a bog (Hunter 2010). It is possible that they are not all the same date of manufacture. The scattering of torc finds across much of Britain may indicate that originally they were widely used from the third to the first centuries BC. Their absence in graves (with the exception of the lead torc from Brackmills, Northamptonshire – Chapman 1998) contrasts with their occurrence on the Continent and might mean torcs were infrequently deposited, skewing our understanding of the range of types and uses across Britain. There were probably more torcs in circulation than we generally have evidence for, so as to generate the numbers deposited at Snettisham. Let us focus initially on the finds from Snettisham, an assemblage that overwhelms all others in the size and quality. Snettisham produced five hoards of torcs due to deep ploughing between 1948 and

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1950 (later known as Hoards A–E). Four more torcs were found between 1964 and 1973. In 1990 another series of finds was made, first by a metal detectorist (who found Hoard F) and then through investigations led by Ian Stead, who recovered Hoards H–L (Stead 1991d). To quote Stead, ‘The “Gold Fields” at Snettisham have produced at least 12 and perhaps 14 hoards, including 75 more or less complete torques and fragments of 100 more. The entire treasure, some 20kg of silver and 15kg of gold, is surely more than the savings of an individual and must represent the wealth of a community’ (Stead 1996: 49). To put the Snettisham finds in perspective, we can note that Hautenauve (2005) records 276 whole torcs in total from continental Europe. Until the publication of finds from Snettisham has been completed (Joy forthcoming), it is hard to reconstruct the hoards fully and accurately from existing publications. The site of Snettisham is on a low hill, as many finds of torcs are, and is enclosed by a ditch, which might post-date the deposit of the torcs, although this is not certain. We will pick two hoards, F and L, as they contain a range of material, including torc types, the forms of which, together with their treatment, will illustrate some key aspects of the Snettisham material. As noted, Hoard F was found by a metal detectorist, although the pit from which it came was excavated shortly afterwards by Stead (1991: 447, 450) with few additional finds. The hoard consisted of some 587 separate items, some strung or fused together and many in a fragmentary state (Fig. 5.7). As well as wire, ring, and straight ingots, a range of torc types was found, most of which had wire hoops with, variously, cage, buffer, reel, or ring terminals. In terms of their decoration, torcs exhibit two main qualities. First, all torcs are three-dimensional, so that not all of the body of a torc could be seen at once. Plays of light and shadow would also have changed their appearance, making them seem mobile in an inconstant light, like that of a fire. Secondly, even simple torcs were fairly complex in terms of their manufacture and the truly complicated, such as the Snettisham ‘Great’ torc (Fig. 5.8) or the so-called ‘Grotesque’ torc (see Fig. 1.3), were dazzling and beguiling, feats of workmanship and of deposition. As a nested set of relationships Hoard F is extremely complex. Torcs were made through different forms of wire and ingots or terminals which were cast, as well as sheet that was then worked by repoussé decoration, along with the punching, tooling, and polishing

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Fig. 5.7 A selection of the objects from Snettisham, Hoard F (Stead 1991: Plate 2) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

Fig. 5.8 The ‘Great’ torc from Snettisham # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

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found on other decorations. A number of fragments of tubular torc were found, one had been folded over as a container for five coins, including a halved coin (Stead 1991d: Plate 1). Parts of the tubular torc fragments were repaired in antiquity, so were worn and probably old when deposited (Stead 1991d: 454–5). One piece, which was highly decorated, was pierced for threading (Stead 1991d: Plate III). A considerable array of objects, including torc terminals, and fragments of torc bodies were threaded onto pieces of wire or bracelet ingots. Some pieces were fused together, but these were unlikely to be part of recycling as they involved objects with varying metallic composition. Hoard F is similar in composition to Hoards B and C at Snettisham, but also shows characteristics (the combination of torcs and coins, as well as the deliberate destruction of objects) with other hoards across Europe, such as that at Beringen, Niederzier, Kegelriss, and Netherurd (Fitzpatrick 2005, 168–9). All those hoards were deposited on land and are complemented by massed finds from La Téne and Pommeroeul deposited in water (Fitzpatrick 2005, 169). In Hoard F care had been exercised in the making, breaking, and curating of objects, some of which might have been old when they entered the ground. Artefacts had been transformed from wholes to parts and then combined in new ways. Hoard L is very different from Hoard F. It consists of a pit with two sets of nested torcs separated by 17 cm (6 5=8 in) of soil (see Figs. 1.1 and 1.2). The upper assemblage consisted of seven silver and bronze torcs and was in a small deposit in the top of an existing pit. The lower deposit was of four gold torcs (including the so-called ‘Grotesque’ torc), seven of gold-silver alloy and one of silver, which were all found in a layer in the bottom of the pit (Stead 1991: 450, Plates VI–VIII, fig. 11, Table 1) (Fig. 5.9).1 Bracelets were also found at the top of the lower deposit. We are dealing with two episodes of deposition separated in time, possibly not long, and the later deposit was made with some memory of the earlier one. Each deposit was arranged according to the criteria of colour and metal composition, which were in turn linked to decoration.

1

We are grateful to Jody Joy for information on the deposition of torcs within Hoard L.

Artefactual Times: Swords, Torcs, and Coins G

H

J

K

L

b b?

b b b b

key

1

2

3

4

5

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6

7

Diagram to show the stratification of torques in Hoards G,H,J,K and L, distinguished by metal content (as analysed by D.R. Hook): 1 over 50% gold 2 gold/silver alloy, with 20–50% gold 3 gold/silver alloy, with 10–19% gold 4 over 50% silver, and less than 10% gold 5 copper alloy with some silver 6 gilt bronze 7 bronze b= bracelets in Hoard L, ingot bracelets in Horard G. The breaks in Hoards G and H show where a clear layer of earth had completely covered the most valuable torque in each hoard before further torques had been deposited; in Hoard L the double break shows the division between the two quite separate superimposed deposits.

Fig. 5.9 Schematic diagram of Snettisham, Hoards G, H, J, K, and L, showing metallic composition and stratigraphic position of each torc (Stead 1991: Table 1) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

Torc Decorations The decoration of some of the ring terminals on the Snettisham torcs has led to the notion of a Snettisham style: The multi-stranded torque from Hoard E at Snettisham, the Great Torque . . . is one of Britain’s first antiquities. Its hoop is made of eight strands twisted together and each strand in turn comprises eight lengths of swaged wire. The ends of the wires have been secured on hollow terminals made by the lost-wax process. The decoration on the terminals, which would have been modelled in the wax, is formed of lowrelief lobes, some of which form trumpet voids with matted hatching. Details, including the small knobs with triple dots, show a close relationship with the terminal of a similar torc from nearby Sedgefield and more surprisingly with a comparable terminal from Cairnmuir (Netherurd) in Scotland (Stead 1996: 50; Fig. 5.10).

Further occurrences of the low-relief lobes forming trumpet voids are also found on four of six torcs from Ipswich, two which were deposited as cast, the decoration on the other two having been worked

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Fig. 5.10 The ‘Great’ torc from Snettisham (detail) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

over with a tracer. Jope, in a discussion which is hard to follow in detail (2000: 89–91), links the low-relief lobes and trumpet voids found on the Snettisham goldwork with bronze linch pins and bits from Ulceby, Ringstead, Garton Station, Bury Hill, and Owslebury. A second form of highly modelled decoration is found in the socalled ‘Grotesque’ torc in Hoard L, but also in repoussé decoration on a stray find of a tubular torc (Stead 1991d: Fig 12). Although produced in different techniques, both decorations are heavily contoured, allowing for the play of light and shade, which throw up glimpses of human faces amongst other possibilities (compare Stead 1991d: Figs. 11 and 12). Similar modelled decoration is found on the Newark torc, which had consistent wear on the inside, indicating a period of use (Hill 2008). In their effects they echo that of the so-called Wandsworth Mask Shield, a work of heavy repoussé modelling creating a three-dimensional shape (Jope 2000: Plates 70–5). It may well be that there is a contrast between the more geometrical decoration on tubular torcs and the asymmetrical, curvilinear motifs on others. Not only do varying torcs have different effects, but their decorations are spread across a variety of items of both gold and bronze. The sport of motif chasing is one prone to personal perception and disagreement. However, we would see at a general level of resemblance the low relief of lobes forming trumpet voids as linking torcs, horse gear, and even swords (the repoussé decoration on the scabbard plate of the sword from Mill Hill, Deal, for instance; see Fig. 7.16).

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Such linkages open up the possibility that people made connections over time and space between items of decorated metalwork, which formed a complex map influencing links between people (see also Joy 2009) – one of a series of complicated connections that could be traced between people and things.

COINS AND TORCS As discussed briefly above, gold reappeared in Britain around 300 BC after an absence of five hundred years (Eogan 1994), in the form of torcs (see Garrow et al. 2010 for a detailed discussion of the dating evidence). A century later masses of gold started being transported across the Channel in the form of gold coins (Haselgrove 1999). Iconography is a most obvious aspect of coinage. The broader corpus of Celtic art, as a complex and varied set of designs, would have been important in setting the iconographic context into which coins were accepted in Britain. Coins are the great typological artefact, undergoing changes by regular but tiny steps from a prototype. The subtle shifts in decoration seen in coinage appear to contrast with other elements of Celtic art and its decorative schemes. We shall argue that the proliferation of new types of coins, along with novel sets of personal ornament, principally fibulae, set the conditions for the end of one mode of Celtic art around 50 BC. When Celtic art reemerged a century later, not only were its designs more symmetrical and colourful but it underwent a process of typological change. Coins helped usher in a new set of relationships with metalwork and possibly with the material world more broadly. British coinage arrived in a number of waves or stages, best described by Haselgrove (1987, 1999; see also Creighton 2000: Appendix). The first incursion of coins was minor, confined to east Kent, and formed by small numbers of imports heavily modelled on the coinage produced by Philip II of Macedon (359–336 BC), with the head of Apollo on the obverse and a two-horse chariot on the reverse. Around 200 BC (taking Haselgrove’s dates, which are based on a thorough reassessment of the dates and usage of French coinage, but rather earlier than those found in other publications, for example, Van Arsdell 1989, Hobbs 1996, Creighton 2000) the first significant numbers of coins arrive in Britain in the form of Gallo-Belgic A and B

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Fig. 5.11 Gallo-Belgic A coin # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

coins, found mainly in north Kent, Hertfordshire, and Essex, with a smattering along the south coast from Selsey eastwards. Gallo-Belgic A are very striking coins produced on a large flan, with a stylized head emphasizing the hair on the obverse and a more or less fragmentary horse on the reverse (Fig. 5.11). Gallo-Belgic B coins are interesting iconographically, as the head was produced with a die that has been ‘defaced’ with lines across it, resulting in an obscured image (Haselgrove 1999: Plate 17). The name of these coins implies production in France, but it may well be that some were struck in Britain, given the large numbers on this side of the Channel, an idea reinforced by the recent find of a Gallo-Belgic B die from Alton, Hampshire.2 Eventually, these were succeeded by Gallo-Belgic C coins, which gave rise to most of the series in southern and eastern Britain from 125 BC onwards (Creighton 2000: Fig. 2.3). The majority of these coins are found deposited singly or in hoards (especially after 125 BC) away from settlement sites, out in the landscape. As well as these struck coinages, potin, or cast bronze coins (with a high tin content), are found again around the Thames estuary in north Kent and Essex. From around 60 BC quite new inscribed coinages are found in great numbers and varieties, with imagery derived both from earlier series and new Romanized influences. These coinages continue to evolve until the later first century AD and some of them have names of individuals known historically, such as Verica or Cunobelinus. 2

http://www3.hants.gov.uk/museum/curtis-museum/alton-history/stater-die.htm

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During this period potin disappears, to be replaced by struck bronze coinages. Three metals made up the majority of coins and torcs: gold, silver, and bronze. It is striking that overall gold and silver are used in a restricted manner, for making the two artefact classes of interest here (torcs and coins) as well as the occasional fibula or bracelet. Although we talk of gold, silver, and bronze, in reality coins and torcs were made from a combination of these three substances in varying proportions. Three factors underlay the proportions in which metals were combined: colour, malleability, and weight, and of these three colour was probably the most important. Ternary diagrams, which portray the interaction of three variables, can best demonstrate the effects of combinations of metals on colour. Metallurgical analyses of both coins and torcs or bracelets have shown patterned variability in composition and colour (Fig. 5.12). The earliest Gallo-Belgic coins (Gallo-Belgic A–E) have considerable variability in gold content. Some coins have less than 50 per cent gold. The key issue might not have been the percentage of gold per se and therefore questions of value or debasement, but rather maintaining a yellowy-golden colour, despite the reduction in gold (Creighton 2000: 38). The earliest British issues show even more variability in gold content, but still remain in the area of yellowy-whitish gold colour. By contrast, the new forms with serial imagery starting around 60 BC consistently attained a redder colour, changes in iconography and colour going hand in hand (Creighton 2000: 38). Bracelets and torcs show a much greater range of variability in colour, which overlaps with the yellowy-gold of the Gallo-Belgic coins, but also explores the yellows and red-yellow achieved by high gold content, the whiter colours from high proportions of silver, and the reds deriving from high bronze content (see Fig. 5.12). A key aspect of coins, whether they were produced in Britain or France, is that they provide evidence for cross-Channel movements and exchange relations which are otherwise invisible. Torcs, particularly cylindrical ones, show some more limited evidence of the movement of artefacts across the Channel, with consequent similarities in the way objects were used. It is interesting to wonder whether coins linked into existing relationships across the Channel or helped create new ones. Coins moved from France to Britain (and in the reverse direction?) and for several generations similar schemes of decoration were

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Fig. 5.12 Ternary diagrams showing the relationship between metal composition and colour in torcs and coins (information from Creighton 2000)

maintained on either side of the Channel. As we have seen, decoration was composed of a human head on the obverse and a horse on the reverse, making the importance of the link between people and horses clear. Creighton (2000) has argued for the importance of the horse in the later Iron Age in some detail, both as a steed for a possible caste of knights and as an element of iconography on coins and other metalwork. Indeed, from the perspective of Celtic art the major artefacts fall into two classes: those connected with the human body and those connected with horses and chariots. In later coins, and in the repoussé decoration on buckets such as that from Aylesford, Kent, people and horses mix, so that a horse may have a human head or legs. Clear distinctions between people and animals were not always made. As we saw in Chapter One, many people in the world make no clear distinction between people and animals. It is likely that in the British Iron Age links between people and horses were regularly made, blurring the boundaries between species.

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Various other aspects of the decoration on coins stand out. Creighton (2000) rightly puts considerable emphasis on the serial imagery of coins, in which there are small incremental changes in images over time, following what Gell (1998) has called ‘the principle of least difference’ – the smallest change that is possible within the canon of a style to make an item different from those that preceded it. Coins changed step by step as new dies were cut and used, so that batches of coins were produced which had the same images but differed from those both earlier and later. The changes in designs, although small and incremental, all went in the same direction – they became simplified and abstract, with an aspect of synecdoche whereby the part stands for the whole. In the derivation of Durotrigian coins, in the south-west, from Gallo-Belgic C, features of the hair on the head become emphasized, especially the wreath, and the horse comes apart in a set of dots and lines, ending in a most minimalist fashion (Fig. 5.13). In the north-east amongst ‘Corieltavian’ coins abstraction and simplification again focus on the hair and wreath on the obverse, creating abstract but fuller designs than in the south-west. And the horse becomes a series of lobed crescents, in some ways reminiscent of the cast or repoussé designs on Snettisham torcs. Another intriguing aspect of coin imagery is its partial nature. Dies were larger than the flans of coins they were used to strike, so that only some of the image on the die was struck onto the coin. This must have been deliberate: given the skill of Iron Age metalworking, it would have been a trivial matter to make dies and flans the same size. Instead it was only by combining the image on a number of coins that the complete design on the die would have been recreated. Within a hoard various complete designs would have existed, or in the coins held by a number of individuals. In this latter instance, perhaps only with a coming together of individuals into a group could a complete image be seen or reconstructed. A single coin was part of a larger unity and this may have echoed the position of the single human being, who was not a totally independent individual but always existed as part of a social whole. Coins promised wholeness, which could only be achieved if all parts of a decoration were brought together, in the process possibly bringing into direct contact people who might have been otherwise dispersed. In terms of deposition, there seems to have been a move from depositing single coins in the landscape away from settlements before about 125 BC to a greater incidence of hoard deposition after that date

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Gallo-Belgic A VA12:SE1-3

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VA920:NE8 ‘ESVP ASV’ Gold

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SW Coin Series ‘Durotriges’

NE Coin Series ‘Corieltauvi’

Fig. 5.13 Gallo-Belgic C coin abstraction (after Creighton 2000: Fig. 2.4)

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(Haselgrove 1999, 2005). Some places like Selsey Bill, Sussex, were the site of a number of hoards deposited over time. An Iron Age individual coin was part of a whole in two ways: firstly, as a step in a series of changing designs; secondly, as an element of the partial imagery that only came together through a collection of coins. Changing patterns of deposition split up or combined designs in different ways, initially distributing bits of a design across the landscape and later aggregating these designs through hoards. In the Late Iron Age, when temples and sanctuaries provided a more formalized place for depositional practice, coins were important aspects of the deposits, for instance at Hayling Island and Harlow (Haselgrove 1987).

Summary Coins demonstrate quite different principles of production and perception of form and image from other Celtic art objects. Before exploring difference, let us start with possible similarities. Coins, as we have seen, demonstrate partial imagery. It is also an intriguing aspect of scabbard decoration that images have no clear beginning or end. The Sutton scabbard from the Trent has six panels of curvilinear decoration alternating with laddering, together with a panel near the mouth with four lobes (Fig. 5.14). The lowest panels at the distal end of the scabbard have a linear decoration and partial keeled roundels, the latter aspects looking as if they were appearing and disappearing from some hidden dimension. The next panel up has two keeled volutes joined by a line that does not describe a full sinuous curve, as elsewhere on the scabbard, but the volutes are linked by a straight line in their middle sections. This again gives an impression of partialness, as if the full curve has been folded or cut in some way. Various Yorkshire scabbards, such as Kirkburn (Stead’s number 172; Stead 2006), the two swords from Wetwang Slack (173, 174) and that from Bugthorpe (176) have complex tendril decoration that emerge part-way through a motif at the top and alternate into a thin tendril at the bottom, rather than having a clear beginning and end. The Kirkburn and Wetwang Slack swords may well have been made in the same workshop and are the nearest thing to serial imagery we have on scabbards. It is a statement of the obvious to say that, with the exception of animal and human figures, Celtic art was not representational in any

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Fig. 5.14 The Sutton scabbard (Stead 2006: Fig. 49) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

straightforward manner. Part of this non-representational aspect may have been that decorations were not always presented as whole, but rather appeared and disappeared in mid-flow as it were. Whether, if we had larger sample sizes, we would be able to link designs on scabbards into some larger whole, as is possible with coins, is unknown at present. However, it seems more likely that the wholeness of design was not an issue in the case of scabbards at least, where designs flow into view on the particular piece possibly from another, less easily perceptible, dimension. Like coins, what can be seen on scabbards is related to what is not visible, yet with scabbards the

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whole is not completed by other artefacts, but remains notional rather than actual. Some have seen birds and human heads in some designs in Celtic art (Stead 1991d; Spratling 2008), although such attributions are very much in the eye of the beholder. This leads us to wonder whether a process of abstraction has taken place, such as that seen in coins where human heads and horse bodies are rendered into more simplified forms. This process might have occurred in Celtic art too, but all we can say is that there is no evidence for such a process, as is found in coins. There might be a relationship between people, plants, and animals or birds on the one hand and abstract Celtic art designs on the other, but it is impossible to discern in the evidence we have. This is a somewhat negative conclusion, but does sustain our feeling that coins operated in a quite different manner to Celtic art more broadly conceived. Although coins were rare at first, they soon became more numerous; given that often only a small number of examples are known to have been struck from each die (Haselgrove 1987), they must have been even more plentiful originally. Earlier in our argument, we made the point that Celtic art represented a return to quality in metalwork, with a small number of striking pieces in comparison to the large quantities of identical or similar axes in Late Bronze Age hoards. Coins indicate something of a return to quantity, but now with the added complexity of a changing decoration. For a long time, some 150 years, coins and other Celtic art coexisted in southern Britain, possibly bringing into being and nuancing new sets of social relations, both across the Channel and within Britain. These relations were both regionalized within Britain (see Haselgrove’s broad regional groupings – Haselgrove 1987) and widespread. Celtic art shows little obvious regionalization within Britain, but equally no links across the Channel. After around 60 BC a new phase of coinage came into being; larger in number, greater in the range of types, and inscribed with names of individuals. Other changes predated this, such as the introduction of wheel-turned pottery in some areas and a greater standardization and number of fibulae in many. On present dates (Garrow et al. 2010) Celtic art seems to cease at a time coincident with the changes in coinage, only reappearing on a large scale fifty to one hundred years later. The Snettisham torcs are the last large gold objects to be produced, until Roman plate and ornaments a century or more later. The Late Iron

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Age sees a shift back to quantity, but it also maintains an emphasis on quality through complex decoration and use of colour.

CONCLUDI NG DISCUSSION Celtic art emerged around 400 BC as part of the revaluation of metalwork. Its complexity of form and design were key elements that gave metal artefacts value. The start of the later Iron Age was a time of instability in terms of population, material forms, and social relations. Celtic art did not change in a predictable or regular manner but instead experimented with form and an accumulation of decoration. Both swords and torcs exhibit great variety, and although they can be fitted within typologies this demands effort. When coins started to appear they may have shared some key aspects of Celtic art more broadly, such as the partial nature of decoration on any one artefact. Coins were profoundly different in one respect: they change in a sequential manner so that today we can form them into series in which, in the earlier periods at least, a process of abstraction can be seen. Such sequences herald a new relationship between people and the material world, as more regularized changes in artefacts might bring about more regularized relationships between people. From the first century BC a profound change in material culture occurs as fibulae, coins, and in some regions pots are produced in much larger numbers in more standardized forms. People made, used, exchanged, and deposited more regularized objects, and this must have affected the relationships they entered into and the everyday practices they followed. A key plank of our argument concerning the relationship between people and things is that people did not have prior social relations into which artefacts could fit. This contrasts with the excellent study of Roymans (1990), for instance, who provides a model of social relations and then attempts to see how material things, such as coins, work to sustain those relations. In our view, objects, through their materials, forms, and decorations, helped create relations between humans. If this is true, new objects helped produce new links between people and we may be witnessing this process in the Late Iron Age. Things changed within the Iron Age, but some things also stayed the same. In addition to the shifts in the artefactual world were ancient

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continuities in river deposition and the regular abandonment of houses, both possibly linked to the deaths of key human individuals. Swords were ancient artefacts by the Iron Age; they had disappeared for some centuries before being refashioned with new forms and decoration. Neck ornaments of gold and other substances were well known within the Bronze Age in Britain, but none looked like Iron Age torcs, which were quite new in their manufacture and decoration. Nothing like coins had ever been seen before, either in their form, iconography, or multiplicity. Assemblages within the Iron Age had elements with a range of antecedents and degrees of novelty. Consequently time was complex and multi-layered in the Iron Age. It only took on the shapes that it did because of some of the longer-term rhythms brought about by artefacts. In the very long term, measured in a millennium or more, were the typological changes of metalwork emerging from the Bronze Age, linked to the deposit of artefacts in special spots in water (and possibly land?). Artefacts were processes and sites for the production of histories, stories, and connections, in contrast, say, to many Late Bronze Age socketed axes that appear to have been cast and buried with little intervening use. At the smallest of scales, temporally and spatially, the decoration on scabbards or on torcs could have been the bearers of stories or exegesis, and the fact that decoration often had no easy beginning, end, or representational content allowed such stories or modes of interpretation to be openended and varied. In contrast to such openness is the possibility of definite rules governing or influencing what happened to artefacts in particular places, with swords smashed in hillforts and various forms of alteration of torcs before their careful stacking in the pits of Snettisham. Celtic art was powerful by virtue of its dual openness and constraint, building up rich and contradictory histories from making to breaking. Coin decoration had a real direction to it: towards greater abstraction. The human head and the horse become stylized into dots and lines, with parts, such as the wreath, coming to stand for the whole. A few essential qualities evoke the whole for those with discernment and it is this evocation that is important rather than an attempt to represent objects in any straightforward manner. The partial nature of much coin imagery is also thought-provoking where designs are larger than the flans on which they are placed. There are parallels here with the fact that motifs on scabbards start in mid-flow, rather than having a defined beginning and end. In the case of coins it was only by

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bringing a number of individual coins together that a complete image could be seen, so that a partial image had the promise of completeness. People holding part of a design would have known that the rest existed somewhere else, possibly held by other people, so that joining with others would be necessary to complete the design. It is intriguing to think that scabbards might have been seen as parts of some broader whole, or at least that their decorations might have been conceived of as being present somewhere else, perhaps in a dimension slightly different to the one the scabbard itself inhabited. Much more could be done in comparing other Celtic art and coins, which too often are considered separately. Individual pieces of Celtic art appear to be truly individual and the conjunctive, flowing nature of decoration allowed the basis for variability. Such variation we have glossed as a stress on quality. Coins were produced in large amounts, with even early series being relatively numerous compared with other aspects of decorated metalwork. A stress on quantity changed the relations between people and things, perhaps equalizing the numbers of objects and people. Celtic art might have been outnumbered by humans – estimates of population levels of people or numbers of objects are very hard to come by. It is possible, however, that coins existed in similar numbers to people, even given the population growth in the Late Iron Age. Coins might have been less rare and therefore made less of an impact, not just by virtue of their size, but also because their decoration was less challenging, even though it had mysteries of its own. The Late Iron Age does not return to the emphasis on quantity that we found in the Late Bronze Age, but now combines quality and quantity in new ways. In this chapter we have considered three artefact types and their inter-relationships. In the next three chapters we will look at three contexts of deposition: hoards, burials, and settlements, each of which contain changing combinations of artefacts with their own complex effects on people.

6 Hoards ‘There is always much interest and not a little romance in a hoard’ (Smith 1909b: 146).

Hoards, as a general category, have been studied only rarely within the British Iron Age. Given the intense interest in ‘deposition’ over the past decade or so, and the attention that hoarding has received within Bronze Age studies (e.g. Taylor 1993; Bradley 1998, 2005; Fontijn 2002), the fact that no overall survey has been undertaken for the Iron Age is in some ways surprising. Much recent work has focused, primarily at least, on individual sites (Macdonald 2007b; Davis and Gwilt 2008), but even wider-ranging studies have generally maintained a restricted focus, preferring to investigate particular regions, object types or materials (Hunter 1997; Hutcheson 2004; Haselgrove and Hingley 2006). The picture is similar for the Roman period. Since Manning’s detailed study (1972), which focused predominantly on hoards containing iron objects, the majority of research has been carried out in relation to a small number of individual sites (e.g. Johns and Potter 1983; Jackson 1990; Bland and Johns 1995). A few general papers have been written (e.g. Reece 1988; Millett 1995; Johns 1995, 1996), but these have tended to outline particular researchers’ interpretations of hoards rather than to consider the evidence in any detail. Given its main focus on Celtic art, the study presented in this chapter cannot pretend to be a comprehensive investigation of hoards either. However, since we are able to build on the thorough database of material culture described in Chapter Three, as well as many of the specific studies mentioned above, it is hoped that we are able to move discussion about this topic forwards. At this early stage, it is important to note one key area in which our study differs from most other work on hoards. In the majority of

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cases, previous writers have been interested primarily in the reasons why people in the past would have deposited collections of material culture in the ground, and the effects those events may have had. Discussions as to whether certain hoards would have been made by smiths or were votive deposits have been repeated on numerous occasions (e.g. MacGregor 1962; Fitzpatrick 1984; Millett 1995; Johns 1996), and have even intervened in legal battles concerning the modern ownership of finds (Fitzpatrick 1992). More recently, people have moved on to consider metalwork deposits in relation to broader interpretative issues, such as beliefs concerning fertility and regeneration (Hingley 1997) and the desire of elites to use their wealth to appear as protectors of the wider community (Hunter 1997). The motivations behind the placement of multiple objects in the ground or in water, while undeniably important, will ultimately always be archaeologically elusive. While these remain a concern within our concluding discussion especially, our interest for most of the chapter lies elsewhere. Our central focus is on human/object networks. It is primarily in their capacity to act as ‘snapshots’ of these networks that hoards are considered here. In a number of recent discussions, it has been pointed out that the notion of ‘a hoard’ – in the sense of a multiple collection of objects – can serve to deny the existence of many other, possibly equally important, deposits of single objects (Fontijn 2002; Hutcheson 2004; Haselgrove and Hingley 2006). Within work focusing on the motivations behind or geographical distributions of votive deposits, etc. this is undeniably a valid and important point. However, within this part of our study at least, single deposits are of limited interest. A linch pin found on its own in a field, or a sword dredged from a river miles away from any other contemporary finds, has little to tell us directly about the networks in which these items of material culture came to be caught up. Our concern is the relationships between objects found together. Much like ‘Celtic art’, what is actually meant by ‘a hoard’ is a subject that has usually remained unexplored. In this case, ‘hoards’ were identified using the overall database described in Chapter Three. In every instance in which more than one artefact had been found on one site, the descriptions of those objects’ context were investigated in more detail, allowing us to assess whether they could justifiably be classed as part of a hoard. As Haselgrove and Hingley (2006) discuss, the line between a ‘hoard’ and what they term a ‘multiple deposit’ is in

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some cases extremely difficult to draw. In this chapter, however, we were keen to emphasize those assemblages of Celtic art (and other material) that had been purposefully placed together in the ground or in water, usually but not exclusively as the result of essentially one action. Consequently, collections of artefacts that may not have been deposited together in this way, such as the ‘massacre’ deposits at Spettisbury and Cadbury (Gresham 1939; Barrett et al. 2000), are not included.1 Equally, some other deposits that blur the boundary between hoard and what might be termed ‘other types of structured deposit’ – such as the collection of horse gear deposited along with broken pottery, animal bones, etc. in a pit at Bury Hill (see Chapter Seven) – have not been included because they are not generally discussed as ‘hoards’. The blurring of the boundaries between different types of deposit such as these is considered in more detail within Chapter Nine, and our discussions here add to those on the contrasts between land and water deposition in Chapter Four. As mentioned in Chapter Three, the deposits we call ‘hoards’ might in some ways be viewed as somewhat contrived sets of objects. Unlike the material gathered at the bases of enclosure ditches or roundhouse gullies, and deposited in many storage pits, hoards can rarely, if ever, be seen as having derived from the inadvertent debris of everyday life. However, this slight artificiality in itself does not mean that they should be seen as problematic. These collections of objects were gathered together, or simply came to be together, at some point, and in that sense must be viewed as entirely representative of the social and material dynamics of Iron Age/Romano-British society – just in a different way to assemblages at the bottom of ditches. Whether a simple pair of massive armlets, or a large collection of what can seem an almost random assortment of material culture, the very combination of more than one item of material culture sets up a dynamic with which it is possible to work. Processes in the past made, or at least enabled, those objects to come together. The fact that they then came to be deposited – irrespective of the reasons why they were deposited – ensures that we have some traces, a ‘snapshot’, of those processes to investigate in the present. It is these traces – the 1 After some deliberation we decided to include the material from Llyn Cerrig Bach, despite the fact that this site occupies a grey area of uncertainty, since the deposit may have accumulated over the course of many years (Macdonald 2007b). This material was not included in any time-specific analyses.

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equivalents of the historical relationships, the unlikely (but meaningful) combinations of people, the physical wear and tear, which come to be expressed visually in literal ‘snapshots’ – that we will be considering in this chapter. Fontijn (2002) has discussed convincingly and in detail how practices of deposition during the Bronze Age varied according to the ‘meaning’ an object had accrued over its lifetime. In a sense, in this chapter, we are turning this way of understanding material culture on its head, and trying to get at ‘meaning’ and object histories through an object’s depositional associations. After a brief consideration of previous discussions of hoards during this period, we move on to provide an overview of their geographical patterning, changes in their character through time, and the different material connections or networks that can be gleaned from them, before considering what any evidence for attrition, fragmentation, and wear on artefacts might tell us about the dynamic processes these items were caught up in before being deposited. In order to obtain this information, the original reports for each hoard were consulted in detail (see Appendix 3 for details and references). Finally, we turn to look in detail at two specific hoards as case studies, investigating what the dynamics of deposition can tell us about those sites. It is worth pointing out that, in total, 705 Celtic art objects were found within hoards. This chapter therefore deals directly with 27 per cent of all those within the database.

HOARDING: RECENT DISCUSSIONS Given the theme of this book, the following discussion focuses primarily on hoards that contained Celtic art. This selectiveness necessarily results in a starting point for the survey of c.400 BC, when Celtic art first appeared in Britain. It is important to emphasize, however, that this date does not fall so late in the Iron Age simply as a result of our focus on Celtic art. As discussed in Chapter One, following a flourish of hoarding towards the end of the Late Bronze Age and into the earliest Iron Age, there appears to have been a hiatus in the practice as a whole for several centuries (see also Bradley 1998, Ch. 3; Haselgrove and Hingley 2006). The earliest phase of iron hoarding appears to begin during the third century BC (Haselgrove and Hingley 2006: 155), while no hoards containing Celtic art can

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definitely be dated to before the second century BC (with the possible exception of Llyn Cerrig Bach; see Macdonald 2007b and Garrow et al. 2010). The votive deposition of (single?) items in rivers such as the Thames and the Witham and in the Fens, possibly along with human and animal remains, appears to represent the only comparable practice during the interim period (see Fitzpatrick 1984; Bradley 1998; Jope 2000), and does not seem to have taken place on a very large scale. Before considering the broad-scale findings of our own investigation into hoards containing Celtic art, it is important to outline the results of two other directly relevant surveys: Hunter’s work on Iron Age hoarding within Scotland and northern England (1997), and Haselgrove and Hingley’s study of iron deposition in Britain as a whole (2006), which built on Manning’s 1972 study. Within his paper, Hunter (1997) identifies a number of clear geographical trends. In particular, he highlights a tripartite regional division of hoarding practices, relating to north-eastern Scotland, southern Scotland, and northern England: in the central area, hoards tend to be large, and to contain many different types of object, whilst in the northern and southern areas, hoards are generally small in size and contain a much less varied selection of objects. Hunter also makes the intriguing observation that Roman objects appear to have been deliberately excluded from hoards in the northern region, despite the fact that they were being used in other contexts (ibid: 113). He goes on to suggest that while smaller hoards were perhaps made at the personal or household level, larger deposits could have been communal, facilitating the integration of different communities at a much broader scale (ibid: 122). While acknowledging that the motivations behind hoarding are difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain, he suggests a range of possible reasons for hoarding, most of them tied into achieving help from the ‘gods’ – in relation to fertility and agricultural production, contacting the ‘otherworld’, and countering the threat from Rome (ibid: 121). In their study, Haselgrove and Hingley (2006) identify a number of other distinct trends through time and across space. In looking not only at deposits identified as ‘hoards’ but also at assemblages containing multiple items (a hazy distinction as the authors themselves point out), their work fits comfortably with our aims in this chapter. They identify a ‘core’ zone in the Severn/Cotswolds/Wessex region, within which the earliest ‘multiple deposits’ of iron are found, usually within hillforts or other enclosed settlements. Outside this core, deposits are

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mostly later in date, and found in a wider variety of contexts (notably lakes, rivers, and bogs, but not generally settlements). These patterns were identified both for those deposits containing only currency bars and for those with a wider repertoire of material culture. Haselgrove and Hingley suggest, as a result of what they identify as the ‘liminal’ locations selected for these deposits (in enclosure boundaries within the core, in rivers/bogs, etc., outside it), that many of these deposits would have been ‘ritually motivated’ (ibid: 154).

HOARDS AND CELTIC ART: BROAD PATTERNS The very mention of ‘hoards containing Celtic art’ perhaps conjures up an image of torcs stacked in a pit at Snettisham, perhaps the most famous hoard site in prehistoric Britain (see Figs. 1.1, 1.2, and Fig. 6.1; Stead 1990, Joy forthcoming); or possibly also the elaborate sets of horse gear from first century AD sites like Polden Hills, Somerset, or Santon, Norfolk (Fig. 6.2). While individual deposits like these tend to be remembered for their stand-out items, it was actually fairly rare for

Fig. 6.1 Torcs within Hoard L at Snettisham, being recorded on site by Ian Stead # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

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Fig. 6.2 A selection of first century AD horse gear # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

hoards to contain a single object type; in fact, only 36 per cent did. Hoards containing Celtic art are a fairly mixed group, varying tremendously in size (Fig. 6.3) and containing a broad spectrum of material culture. The hoards at Snettisham, for example, produced coins, ingots, etc., amongst the torcs. Similarly, at Polden Hill, numerous other objects accompanied the well-known horse gear. It is important to recognize this complexity from the start, not least because, as we shall see, the connections between different object types have a great deal to tell us about these deposits. In total, we identified 75 deposits containing Celtic art that could be classed as hoards, from 65 different sites. These hoard sites have been found right across Britain (Fig. 6.4). Much like Celtic art objects

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20

Undated hoards

18

Late hoards

16

Early hoards

14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 2

3–4

5–9 10–19 No. of objects in hoard

20–49

50+

Fig. 6.3 Sizes of hoards containing Celtic art (see below for details of ‘early’ and ‘late’ hoards)

in general, while distinct ‘hotspots’ are discernible (in southern Scotland/northern England, East Anglia, and central southern Britain particularly), overall their distribution is broad. Figure 6.4 also shows the overall distribution of the ‘multiple iron deposits’ identified by Haselgrove and Hingley (2006: 163).2 In total, they identified 52 different deposits from 39 sites (only eight of which overlapped with our own). Interestingly, these iron deposits have a rather narrower distribution; they are clustered more towards central southern England, and do not extend as far north. This distribution reinforces the point made in Chapter One that Celtic art links communities in a way that few other materials and practices do. The most significant discrepancy between hoards containing Celtic art and multiple iron deposits is their depositional context (see Fig. 6.4). The vast majority of the former were deposited out in the landscape3 (i.e. away from settlements, not in rivers, etc.), but iron deposits were almost never associated with this context. Equally, the majority of iron deposits are found in hillforts, but hoards containing 2 The list of hoard sites by Hunter (1997, 124–9) is fully incorporated into our own survey. 3 The category of ‘landscape’ hoards is necessarily a rather vague one. We are confident that many of these would have been discrete deposits, placed in small pits cut into the ground well away from settlements, etc. However, the possibility remains that some of those deposits defined as ‘landscape’ hoards may actually have been recovered from unrecognized settlements, burials, etc.

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Landscape hoard

Hillfort

Lake/Bog

IA settlement

IA/RB settlement

RB settlement

River

Cave

IA temple

Fig. 6.4 Distribution of hoards containing Celtic art (left) and multiple iron deposits (right) by context (iron deposit data from Haselgrove and Hingley 2006)

Celtic art virtually never are. While multiple iron deposits and hoards containing Celtic art have been found in broadly similar geographical areas, what is revealing is the fact that they were deposited in very different places, suggesting that they perhaps participated in very different types of social and political discourse (a matter we return to at the end of the chapter).

OBJECT NETWORKS Following this initial broad-brush survey, it is time now to turn to a more in-depth discussion of hoards. Having identified all potential hoards containing Celtic art at the outset, we went on to consult each

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350 300 250 200 150 100 50

Ar

m

rin

g/ a To rml rc et /c ol l D ar ag ge Sw r or d S H hie or se ld g H ea or r nca p M irr or Bo S w p oo l/c au Ta n ld n O ron kar rn d An am /bu im en cke al t t /h al s u O ma trip th er n fo C rm el tic ar t C oi ns In go Sp To o e ts /c arh ls ur re ead nc s y b R Bro ars O om oc th er an hes no ves ns C els el tic ar t

0

Fig. 6.5 Total numbers of each object type within all hoards (total: 1,393)

of the original reports relating to these deposits in detail. This enabled us to move into the heart of those assemblages with all of their attendant objects, building up a ‘total’ picture of the objects within hoards. Figure 6.5 shows the artefact types found within hoards. Arguably its most striking aspect is the extent to which artefacts that would not normally be classed as Celtic art (shown in grey on the right-hand side of the graph) do feature.4 In total, these objects comprise 50 per cent by number of hoard assemblages. Figure 6.6 shows the relative quantities of each object type found within hoards in comparison with all other contexts. The fact that torcs/collars are over-represented is perhaps the most striking pattern (it should be noted that this is partly a result of the bias introduced by Snettisham). The next largest categories numerically – swords, horse gear, and ‘other Celtic art’ – are slightly under-represented in hoards (almost certainly a knock-on effect of the over-representation of torcs having skewed the overall total). All in all, despite these biases, the impression obtained is one of fairly close comparability between the composition of hoards and that of the database as a whole, at this general level. With the exception of torcs, the artefact types found in hoards closely mirror those found elsewhere.5 4 It is worth noting that, while some of the coins and brooches could certainly be described as Celtic art, the majority of those included were actually Roman coins or Romano-British style brooches. 5 While hoards did contribute a substantial proportion (27 per cent) of the total number of artefacts within the database, we still might not have expected the two to be quite so closely matched, and so this correspondence is ultimately revealing.

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Fig. 6.6 Relative proportions of each Celtic art object type found within hoards in comparison to those from all other contexts

In order to allow more detailed analysis of hoarding practices, and to make sure that we did not homogenize a varied and changing material record by dealing with them in a single block of time, we introduced a degree of temporal separation into the study. As discussed in Chapter Three, the process of dating Celtic art is often far from straightforward. In some cases – hoards that contained brooches, for example – approximate dates were relatively easy to establish, but in others, dating had to be rather more subjective (i.e. at a similar degree of certainty to the ‘second tier’ of dated objects described in Chapter Three). Ultimately, however, it was possible to assign a date to 60 of the 75 hoards (80 per cent), allowing us to approach chronological change with some degree of confidence. Interestingly, very few hoards could be dated confidently to Phase 3 (c.20 BC–AD 40). As a result of this apparent gap, combined with the relatively broad dating bracket for many hoards, we decided that hoard assemblages were divided simply into an ‘early’ (roughly third to first century BC) and a ‘late’ (first century AD) phase. In total, 22 hoards were assigned to the early phase (ten of which were from Snettisham) and 38 to the later one. The fact that the later phase lasted less time overall is worth remembering, suggesting that the practice of hoarding was definitely more prevalent during the first century AD. The general division into hoards as ‘early’ and ‘late’ reinforces our overall feeling that Celtic art changes in its forms and decorations between these earlier and later periods.

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Object Types Hoards contained different types of object, depending on when they were deposited. Figures 6.7 and 6.8 show the make-up of hoards within the early and late phases. In the early period, torcs dominate the picture to an impressive extent, featuring in 82 per cent of hoards. (It is important to point out that this is not completely a consequence of the bias introduced by Snettisham: 58 per cent of those found elsewhere also contained torcs.) Ingots/currency bars, coins, horse gear, other Celtic art and other non-Celtic art objects also feature in 100

% of all early hoards

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 bu ck et t a al ls /h um trip an O th fo er rm C el tic ar t C oi ns Sp Too In go ls ea ts rh /c ea ur ds re nc y ba rs Br o R om oc h O es an th er v no ess el ns C el tic ar t en

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m le To t rc /c ol la r Sw or H d or se ge ar M Bo irr w o r l/c Ta au nk ld ar ro d n/ O b rn am uck An e t im enta al ls /h um trip an O th fo er rm C el tic ar t C oi ns Sp Too In go ls ea ts rh /c ea ur ds re nc y ba rs Br oo R om ch O e a s th n er v no ess nel s C el tic ar t

0

Fig. 6.8 Percentage of late hoards containing each object type

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more than 10 per cent of early deposits. The spread of object types within late hoards is far broader. While horse gear dominates to an extent, overall the spread of objects is fairly even; nearly half of the object categories, for instance, occur in between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of the hoards.

Object Connections In order to convey the connections between 18 different classes of object within 75 hoards effectively, it is necessary to schematize these relationships to some degree. The images within Figures 6.9 and 6.10 are designed to illustrate the connections between particular objects

Other objects

Animal/human figure Armring/bracelet

Ingot/ currency bars

Massive armlet

Roman vessel

Torc/collar

Bowl/ cauldron

Brooch

Coin

Horse gear

Spear

Mirror

Iron tool

Ornamental strip Other Celtic art

Tankard

Fig. 6.9 Object connections in early hoards

Sword/ scabbard

Number of hoards: 1–2 3–4 5–9 10+

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Chapter Six Animal/human figure Other objects

Armring/bracelet

Ingot/ currency bars

Massive armlet

Roman vessel

Torc/collar

Bowl/ cauldron

Brooch

Coin

Horse gear

Spear

Mirror

Iron tool

Ornamental strip Other Celtic art

Tankard

Sword/ scabbard

Number of hoards: 1–2 3–4 5–9 10+

Fig. 6.10 Object connections in late hoards

within each individual hoard, yet to show this information in a single diagram so that general tendencies between them can be discerned at the same time. They are fairly complex diagrams, which perhaps benefit from a degree of explanation. The various object types found in hoards are depicted around the edge of each circle. A line drawn across the circle between two objects indicates that those two items were found together in a hoard during the relevant period. The thickness of that line relates to the overall number of hoards within which that particular connection was made. The overall intensity of lines on each image relates to a number of factors. Figure 6.9 is fairly sparse due to the fact that early hoards were both less numerous and contained fewer object types than late ones. The connections that

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stand out most are those between torcs and arm rings/bracelets, torcs and ingots/currency bars, torcs and coins, and horse gear and ingots/ currency bars, illustrating that these were the relationships most commonly found in early hoards. Figure 6.10 is much more busy, reflecting the fact that in this later period there were more hoards, containing more object types, which allowed more connections to occur more often.6 We see a shift between an earlier period of Celtic art with an emphasis on quality and a later one based on quantity, a division that is also borne out in the hoard evidence. To an extent, these diagrams mirror the information contained in Figures 6.7 and 6.8. However, in contrast to the bar charts, they are able to highlight the connections between objects rather than the straightforward prevalence of object types. This fact is most evident in relation to torcs and arm rings/armlets. While torcs are found in 82 per cent of early hoards, the line extending outwards from them is no thicker than that for a number of other items – as many of the hoards containing torcs produced only torcs, their connections with other items were in fact relatively limited. Similarly, despite the fact that arm rings/armlets represent the fourth-highest object type numerically during the later period, there are only a few connections linking them to other objects – again, this is a consequence of the fact that massive armlets in particular are often found on their own, or with only a very few other items. These images are very effective in allowing us to assess the strength of object connections within these networks overall and stress that some types are central nodes of linkage, whereas others are more peripheral.

Summary Before moving on to explore a new kind of network – that between different materials (rather than objects) – it is worth summarizing the main patterns observed in this section. Firstly, it was noted that while hoards containing Celtic art and iron hoards have broadly similar geographical distributions, they are found in very different archaeological contexts: the vast majority of the former were deposited out 6 Although these diagrams were originally produced before Facebook became a household word, a knowledgeable friend pointed out to us early on that they perform a very similar function to, and work in almost the same way as, Facebook ‘Friend Wheels’.

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in the landscape, while the latter were placed in hillforts, other enclosed settlements, and watery places. Secondly, it was observed that hoards containing Celtic art are made up in roughly equal measure of objects which would not normally be classed as such. Interestingly, those Celtic art objects that are found in hoards occur in roughly equal proportions to those found in all other contexts. Thirdly, two main phases of hoarding were defined: early (essentially the years BC) and late (those AD); as discussed, these two phases may actually have been separated by a gap of half a century or more (c.20 BC to AD 40) during which very little hoarding took place. Significant changes in terms of the composition of hoards containing Celtic art were identified between the two. During the early period, hoards contained a more specific set of objects (with torcs particularly prevalent), while during the late period there was much more variability, with multiple objects represented in similar quantities.

MATERIAL NETWORKS Overall, the hoards under consideration contained a broad spectrum of materials: copper alloy, iron, gold, silver, tin, lead, enamel, bone, leather, wood, glass, and pottery.7 However, these were by no means present in equal quantities. As Figure 6.11 shows, hoards are dominated materially by metals, enamel being the only non-metal to feature to any significant degree. Of the metals, copper alloy is easily the most prominent, featuring in 81 per cent of deposits. Iron, gold, and silver are also present in significant numbers, tin and lead much less so. Arguably the most important thing to note about the contents of these hoards is that they are entirely different to those you would find on almost any other Iron Age or Roman site: most excavations are dominated by pottery and animal bone, with metal objects, and particularly ‘precious’ metals, rare, often extremely so. This discrepancy supports the suggestion that hoards can be viewed as an unusual, and in some ways unrepresentative, type of deposit, which 7 In this chapter, all copper alloys are included as one group. The category ‘enamel’ is used in its broadest sense, in order to distinguish softened glass compounds used for ‘decorative’ purposes from other glass objects such as beads, bracelets, etc.

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s la s

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r he Le

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Le

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n Iro

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al lo y

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Fig. 6.11 Percentage of Celtic art hoards containing each material

came into being as a result of a very different set of dynamic processes to those in evidence elsewhere. Intriguingly, it also suggests that ‘metal’ was a meaningful and coherent category at this time as well. In addition to the discrepancies between hoards and other types of deposit, there were also significant material differences between early and late hoards (Fig. 6.12). Gold (and gold-like alloys such as electrum) is found exclusively in early hoards, while silver is also significantly more common in early hoards. By contrast, non-metallic materials are found only in late hoards. As a result, even those materials that feature in both periods do so in very different quantities: copper alloys, for example, were present in 95 per cent of late hoards but only 48 per cent of early ones, while iron was present in 42 per cent and 22 per cent of hoards respectively. Given the

Unknown date

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Iro n

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Early

Fig. 6.12 Contribution of each period in terms of all hoards containing each material

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differences, especially in terms of depositional context, between hoards containing Celtic art and multiple iron deposits, the fact that a significant proportion of the former did in fact contain iron is also worth highlighting.

FRAGMENTATION, ATTRITION, AND WEAR The concept of ‘fragmentation’ has seen a considerable amount of attention within prehistoric archaeology in recent years. The most prominent contribution has been that of Chapman (Chapman 2000a and 2000b), subsequently with Gaydarska (Chapman and Gaydarska 2007). His research initially focused almost entirely on the Neolithic of south-east Europe, but more recently has been extended to other places and times. One of the key points that has been made is that, although our natural tendency as archaeologists might be to focus on ‘the whole’ artefact (often reconstructed from fragments), we must be careful not to lose sight of the fact that those fragments may themselves have played an important role, as fragments, in the past. Similarly, he suggests that we need to consider in detail exactly why we often see only parts of pots, figurines, etc., in the archaeological record, and to ask where those missing portions might have got to. In a slightly different vein, and perhaps more directly relevant to our concerns here, a few writers have addressed the issue of object fragmentation within Bronze Age hoards. Until fairly recently, hoards containing broken objects were generally viewed as directly associated with metalworking, being termed ‘scrap’ or ‘founder’s’ hoards (see Bradley 2005: Ch. 5). The fragments were seen as either having been broken up, or collected once broken, in order to be melted down and recast as complete items. In recent years, however, some have problematized this neat, but arguably rather simplistic, picture. Nebelsick (2000), for example, successfully deconstructed any straightforward notion of a ‘founders’ hoard in northern Europe by arguing that many items within them had been purposefully destroyed prior to deposition, and that particular parts of particular objects were significantly over-represented. Like Chapman, he also pointed out that, often, the whole of an object is not present in a hoard (even in a fragmented state), asserting that we need to consider where the

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‘missing’ parts have gone. While not everyone would agree with his interpretations (which focus on male- and female-associated objects, divine and human portions of scrap metal, etc.), his argument that these hoards of fragmented objects should not necessarily be seen as straightforward collections of ‘scrap’ is ultimately a very successful one. Bradley (2005: Ch. 5) puts forward a similar argument (partly based on Nebelsick’s work), highlighting the apparent preferential selection of certain object parts, in order to suggest that the distinction between ‘votive’ and ‘utilitarian’ hoards is both an artificial and an anachronistic one. In this section, we consider the issue of object fragmentation within Iron Age and Early Roman hoards containing Celtic art in Britain. The suggestion that deposits containing fragmented objects may not have been problematized to a sufficient degree is as relevant to this period as it is for the Bronze Age. Again, broken objects have often been viewed as indicative of metalworking activity; in many other cases, the fact that we are actually dealing with parts of objects at all has been entirely ignored. In assessing the degree of, and intentionality behind, any wear and tear evident in hoards containing Celtic art, we hope not only to problematize – and thus to rethink – the presence of broken objects within them, but also to gain insight into some of the broader processes that those objects were caught up in prior to deposition. In total, 59 per cent of artefacts within hoards containing Celtic art were complete, and 41 per cent were incomplete or fragmentary.8 Overall, the majority of hoards (53 per cent) contained both complete and fragmentary objects; a substantial proportion produced only complete objects (36 per cent), whereas far fewer had only incomplete objects (11 per cent). Such results reinforce our findings in the last 8 These figures relate only to those objects where it was possible to tell if they were fragmentary or not. Here, and in the discussion that follows, a number of object types are omitted from numerical surveys. These are: animal/human forms, ingots/currency bars, and ornamental strips (because it is often difficult to assess whether these objects are indeed ‘complete’ in a meaningful sense); tankards (because most had wooden bodies that would not have survived); coins (because in many cases the required information was not available); and other Celtic art and other non-Celtic art (because these amalgamate significantly different categories of object into one). Where an object had clearly broken after deposition, or during its recovery, it was counted as a complete item. Where multiple fragments appeared to derive from a single (but nevertheless still incomplete) object, these were only counted as one incomplete object.

Chapter Six

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re se t Bo (o gea w the r l/c r) au l bu dro ck n/ et To ol Sp s ea rh ea ds Br oo ch es TO TA L

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 ar Ar m m To let rc /c ol la r sc Sw ab o ba rd/ rd Br id le bi t Li nc h pi n

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Incomplete

Complete

Fig. 6.13 Proportion of complete and incomplete items for each object type

chapter that the majority of swords and torcs were used or damaged before deposition. Figure 6.13 shows clearly that, overall, different object types were fragmented to very different degrees. For example, four of the categories (arm rings/armlets, terrets, ‘other horse gear’, and spearheads) were usually found in a complete state. By contrast, torcs, brooches, and bridle bits were more often found in a fragmentary condition than not. Three of the eleven object types (swords/scabbards,9 linch pins, and bowls/cauldrons/buckets) were present in roughly equal proportions of complete and incomplete items, while tools matched the overall average figure of 69 per cent complete very closely. Given previous views that saw the presence of broken objects as indicative of ‘scrap’ or ‘founders’ hoards, and more recent arguments (conducted primarily in relation to the Bronze Age) concerning the deliberate ‘killing’ or damaging of artefacts, as well as our interest in the processes those objects were caught up in prior to deposition, it is important that we try to establish exactly how so many of the objects within hoards containing Celtic art came to be broken. In the next few 9 A sword without a scabbard has not in this case been treated as an incomplete object, especially since many scabbards would have been made from wood and so may not have been preserved.

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sections, we explore fragmentation amongst each of the main object types concerned. The torcs found at Snettisham are perhaps the most famously fragmented objects of all those under consideration here, as we saw in Chapter Five (see Fig. 5.7). Alongside the many impressive, beautiful, and of course complete, examples that we know so well from images in books and museum displays, numerous fragments of twisted, melted, bent, and broken torcs were found. In advance of the full publication of Snettisham (Joy forthcoming), Ian Stead kindly provided us with a provisional estimate that in total at Snettisham there were 60 complete torcs, and 158 more represented by fragments. Of the seven other early period sites with torcs, four produced fragmented items (Bawsey, Narford, Clevedon, and Netherurd). Perhaps more than any of the objects discussed in this section, a broken torc or neck ring is difficult to explain. If they were indeed treasured or prestigious objects, possibly worn around the necks of either people or effigies, as is often assumed, it seems unlikely that they would easily have been broken as a result of ‘normal’ wear and tear. In the case of early hoards, we have to focus almost exclusively on the essentially unique site at Snettisham. It seems unlikely, to say the least, that the numerous incomplete torcs found there were broken during what we would see as normal use; indeed, in at least one case there is evidence of a torc having been purposefully cut (Mansel Spratling, personal communication). As a result, we must assume that most, if not all, were deliberately fragmented (see also Fitzpatrick 2005). The presence of ‘unfinished’ torcs, molten lumps, droplets, ingot rings, and off-cuts of metal suggest that Snettisham was a place where metalworking was carried out (J. D. Hill and Jody Joy, personal communication); torcs may thus have been produced as well as deposited there. The processes by which the torcs at Snettisham came to be broken are not yet apparent, but it is probable that many were broken up simply to be melted down. However, the extent to which some had been distorted, and the fact that many had been fused or looped together, suggests that this would not represent the full story. Snettisham is such an unusual site that it simply cannot be interpreted easily. It will be interesting to see what interpretations full publication of the site (Joy forthcoming) brings to light. Amongst the horse gear, bridle bits and linch pins also showed a high degree of fragmentation, with over 50 per cent of items being

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incomplete in each case. In some instances, only single rings or small fragments from a bridle bit were recovered, making it difficult to assess the pre-depositional processes that had affected them. However, in those cases where more substantial fragments were identified, the situation was variable. In most cases, there were no clear indications that an item had been damaged purposefully. Several were missing single rings or stopknobs, for example (e.g. Ringstead, Saham Toney); given the potential stresses that these items would have been subjected to, it is quite conceivable that damage such as this could have occurred during ‘normal’ use. However, in a small number of other cases, it was rather less clear how an object could have broken in that way during ‘normal’ use. Some bits had snapped in places where it is hard to imagine ‘natural’ breakage occurring (e.g. Santon), while a number appeared to have been deliberately fragmented: for example, it is also possible that the bridle bits from Melsonby/Stanwick (along with many of the other finds) had been deliberately destroyed through burning prior to deposition (Fitts et al. 1999: 48). Eleven of the 15 fragmented linch pins were also found at Melsonby/Stanwick. Many of these had broken across their iron shafts, damage that could have been caused simply by corrosion. However, as with the bridle bits, a number had clearly been distorted by fire, and thus could also have been intentionally damaged. Of the remaining four linch pins, the two from Colne Fen were viewed by Tebbutt and Fox as having been broken during use (1961: 236), and the two from Carlingwark Loch showed no evidence of deliberate damage. In contrast to bridle bits and linch pins, terrets and ‘other horse gear’ were found predominantly in a complete state (88 per cent and 86 per cent respectively). It is possible that such different patterns of fragmentation emerged as a result of the ways in which these different objects were used; bridle bits and linch pins may have been subject to greater stresses and strains and would thus have broken more often. However, it is also worth bearing in mind that terrets were mostly used in sets of five. Consequently, even two ‘complete’ items might at the same time be viewed as an incomplete set. Interestingly, on only four of the 17 hoards in which terrets were found were complete ‘sets’ of five matching items found together. The same can perhaps also be said for ‘other’ horse-related items (harness mounts, etc.), many of which also came in multiple sets (see, for example, Fox 1958: 124). Amongst those terrets that were incomplete, as with bridle bits and

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linch pins, most appeared to have broken as a result of general wear and tear (iron bars being broken, rings worn through, and so on), and none had clearly been deliberately damaged. As bowls/buckets/cauldrons tend to be relatively fragile, being made of sheet metal, it can be difficult to tell for sure that individual items were not deposited complete, only subsequently being corroded. However, in many cases, the fragmented pieces were found alongside other, equally fragile sheet metal objects that had survived; it could thus be argued that their incompleteness is likely to be genuine. Cauldrons in particular appear to have suffered a great deal of natural wear and tear, as the high number of repairs on those that have been found indicate (see for example Piggott 1952– 3: 40). Certainly, none of the original reports mentioned any evidence of purposeful damage (bowls might, for example, have been cut in two, or clearly hit with a sharp implement, but were not). The 18 incomplete brooches were found on just two sites. At Santon, Spratling specifically suggested that all 13 brooches appeared to have been damaged through natural wear and tear (1966: 49); the same appears to be the case with those from Polden Hills (see below), as these too were missing springs, pins, etc.. Amongst the tools, as with bridle bits, there were a number of finds that appeared to have been deliberately fragmented. For example, a pair of tongs at Waltham Abbey had been broken in half, not at the hinge but across one handle; and at Carlingwark Loch, numerous partial sections of blades from a variety of different tools were found together. Similarly, amongst the swords, there were a small number of examples that also showed evidence for deliberate damage. Notably these were from the same two sites. One found at Waltham Abbey had been twisted and broken to a degree that seems unlikely even in fierce combat, while at Carlingwark Loch eight blade tips (but no main blade sections or hilts) were represented, leading Piggott to suggest that they had been ‘deliberately selected and [were] not casually accumulated scrap metal’ (1952–3: 35), presaging by some decades the arguments put forward by Bradley and Nebelsick (see above). Elsewhere, the single chape ends found at Birtley and Polden Hills could well have become separated in ‘normal’ use, while the sword at Springfield may have become fragmented simply as a result of corrosion. In summary, it must be said that it is difficult to draw out any definitive conclusions, as the picture is one of such variability – an

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interesting realization in itself. It is important to remember first of all that the majority of items in hoards were deposited in a complete state. However, in most hoards, we do not appear to be dealing with a situation in which pristine objects were made specifically for deposition. In the vast majority of cases, objects did seem to have been used. However, perfectly workable objects (in our terms at least) had been placed in the ground. Secondly, it is important to remember that, despite this trend, a sizeable minority of objects were deposited broken. In most cases, these also appeared to have been through their normal ‘use-life’, and had become fragmented as a result of natural wear and tear, before being deposited. Intriguingly though, a substantial proportion of these broken items were also incomplete (i.e. parts of them were missing from the hoard). Clearly, with some (brooches, for example), the missing pieces could easily have been lost accidentally (brooch pins or springs are easily detached). While the same is true to an extent for many others as well (swords are often represented by easily detachable chape ends, etc.), an argument can certainly be made for the ‘token’ inclusion of parts of objects in some cases at least (for example, where bridle bits were represented by both rings, as at Llanaber and Middlebie). Some objects, however, did appear to have been deliberately broken. Interestingly, the most definitive examples came from just two sites (Carlingwark Loch and Waltham Abbey). These hoards both date firmly to the latter decades of the first century AD, and might actually be better viewed as part of an emerging ‘Romano-British’ tradition of blacksmith-associated hoards, which often contained broken iron objects (see Manning 1972). All in all, it is clear that there were no hard and fast rules as to the condition in which objects could be placed in hoards. In both early and late hoards, it was perfectly possible to place complete objects, broken objects, or fragments of objects, often together in a single deposit. The objects within them had extremely varied biographies. In order to investigate further some of the issues raised so far, and to bring out the rich intricacies of site-specific detail, in the next two sections we turn to look at two specific hoards as case studies: Ringstead in Norfolk, which dates to the early phase (probably second or early first centuries BC), and Polden Hill in Somerset, which dates to the late phase (c.50–75 AD).

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CASE STUDY 1: AN ‘EARLY’ HOARD AT RINGSTEAD, NORFOLK Stories about the original recovery of hoards are often both intriguing and entertaining, and the one associated with Ringstead, which Clarke (1951a: 215) narrates in some detail, is no exception. The arable field in which the hoard was found is in the parish of Ringstead, north-west Norfolk, about 2 miles from the (modern) sea shore. Early in March 1950, a farmworker, Mr C. Hines, noticed a semicircular bronze object lying in a furrow as he was ploughing the field. Using his fork, he dug around it, uncovering a tightly grouped cluster of artefacts about 50 cm (19⅝ in) below the surface. He took four of the smaller objects home with him, but threw all of the larger pieces at the base of a mouldy straw stack at the edge of the field. A few days later, another man, Mr V. Helsdon, lit a fire in order to dispose of the haystack. When the fire had burnt out, he noticed the metal objects, which by then, unsurprisingly, had been somewhat damaged. He retrieved the bridle bit and showed it to someone else, who in turn showed it to Rainbird Clarke at Norwich Museum. The full story of their initial recovery eventually emerged, and the original collection of objects was reunited. Importantly, subsequent excavations and a ‘mine detector’ survey carried out across an area of 23 x 10 metres around the original find spot revealed a few more scraps of sheet bronze, but no other features, suggesting that the hoard had been buried in isolation (ibid).

Object Connections The objects that Mr Hines found were:       

Two bridle bits Two ‘plates’, almost certainly from a shield One button-and-loop fastener One strap union One ingot ‘cake’ Two rivets Several fragments of sheet bronze

The bridle bits, a matching pair of ‘three-link’ type (Fig. 6.14a), were in a very good condition, despite a certain amount of post-depositional iron corrosion. The main body of each was made from cast bronze, the

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side rings from iron sheathed with bronze. Each one was decorated with two different, sinuous, stylized plant-like patterns (on either end of the central linking section), incorporating both berried rosette and tricorn-in-circle motifs. The bronze coatings on the side rings were also decorated with a similar, but simpler, pattern. Most commentators have noted close similarities between the decorative motifs on these horse bits and on some of the torcs found (around the same time) at Snettisham. The bridle bits showed no signs at all of wear, and were described by Clarke as ‘perhaps never used’ (1951: 224). The two near-semicircular, bronze ‘plates’ (Fig. 6.14b) also appear to have been a matching pair (although the facts that both were damaged, and that one survived in better condition than the other, make it difficult to be certain). These were made from sheet bronze, and had maximum dimensions of 16 x 10 cm (6¼ x 4 in). Each ‘plate’ had a large central repoussé boss (with an applied roundel at its centre), flanked by two large and one small repoussé rings or roundels. Each of the roundels had originally contained three calcareous studs, mounted on bronze pins and arranged in a triangle. Following discussions with Cyril Fox, Clarke suggested that these ‘plates’ were most likely to have been ‘the end ornaments of an oblong shield arranged to balance a large circular boss [now missing] in the centre’ (1951: 220). Others since then (e.g. Spratling 1972, Jope 2000) have generally agreed, and indeed it does seem a very likely interpretation; such a shield would, for example, have been similar in form and size to the Battersea shield. The two ‘eyelets’ visible at the flat end of each ‘plate’, and a probable third at the apex of the curved portion (lost through damage on both), would have enabled their attachment to a wooden backing. Interestingly, one of them had been repaired through the application of a bronze strip (made from three conjoined tricorn motifs) over the torn section, suggesting that these items could have been fairly old when deposited. The button-and-loop fastener (which Clarke calls a ‘clasp’) was a simple loop and circular disc form: Wild’s (1970) Type Va. It was made from cast bronze. The strap union was also a fairly simple, figure of eight form (Taylor and Brailsford’s [1985] Type 1); it too was cast bronze. Clarke viewed these two objects as having been used together in combination to suspend a sword belt. While the former may well be true, especially in the absence of any such sword the latter remains a somewhat speculative assertion. The ingot ‘cake’ (Fig. 6.14c) was an almost circular disc of bronze (approximate

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Figure 6.14 Bridle bits, ‘plates’, and ingot ‘cake’ from Ringstead (Clarke 1951: Plates 16, 18, and 19e). Reproduced by kind permission of the Prehistoric Society

diameter 10 cm or 4 in), one edge of which had been tooled away slightly. Hammer marks (apparently from flattening the object once it had been cast) are visible as discontinuous lines on the surface of the ‘cake’, running perpendicular to each other on either side. In addition to these seven objects, two bronze rivets and a number of sheet bronze fragments were recovered. Intriguingly, the two

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loose rivets recovered within the hoard had never been used. Clarke pointed out that ‘the shanks of these rivets fit the eyelets on the bronze plates and the cupping under the head [of each rivet] fits the moulding surrounding the eyelets so that the head would fit the plate flush’, going on to add, quite reasonably, that ‘this close fit renders an association of the plates and the rivets almost a certainty’ (ibid: 220). He suggests that the plates were perhaps in the process of being transferred from an old (broken?) wooden shield backing to a new one. The largest fragment of sheet bronze measured 19 x 5 cm (7½ x 2 in). A row of perforations was visible along one edge, while one face bore the impression of wood. In combination, these attributes could be seen as suggesting that this had originally formed part of the covering of the same shield (Clarke 1951: 223).

Interpretations The combination and character of the objects found at Ringstead left Clarke at least in little doubt as to the nature of the hoard: the lack of wear on the bridle-bits and on the rivets for the bronze plates, the presence of the bronze “cake” or ingot show conclusively that this is a founder’s hoard . . . the hurried act of a wayfaring metalsmith beset by some sudden danger’ (ibid: 224).

While today we might be slightly less certain of this interpretation, you can certainly see how he came to this explanation. This particular combination of objects is not easy to explain, and certain elements do have clear associations with metalworking (and the making of objects more generally). The deposition of a brand-new pair of bridle bits is undeniably odd. Equally, the presence of two plates from a shield, apparently not attached to their wooden backing, is also intriguing. While the fastener and strap union are difficult to interpret in isolation, the presence of the ingot ‘cake’ also has clear associations with metalworking, or at least with the ownership of metal. In trying to understand this collection of objects, it is also important to think about what is not represented within the hoard, as well as what is there. For example, alongside the two bridle bits, the rest of what would usually be thought of as a complete ‘set’ of horse gear (terret rings, linch pins, etc.) was absent. Equally, while the two end ‘plates’ from a shield were deposited, the presumed central boss was

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missing; apparently, so was the wooden backing upon which these would have been mounted. Finally, in a ‘metalworker’s hoard’, in addition to the ingot ‘cake’ one might perhaps also have expected a collection of broken-up ‘scrap’ metal. It is difficult to know exactly what to make of these absences. The lack of any other horse gear could suggest that the bridle bit was a ‘token’ deposit, the part standing for the whole; equally, it could be that the owner(s) – whether metalworker (s) or not – actually only possessed these two items, rather than a whole set. The absence of a central shield boss, in combination with the presence of rivets for securing the ‘plates’, does add weight to Clarke’s suggestion that this object was being transformed, perhaps being transferred from one person to another, as well as from one object to another. Finally, the absence of any obvious scrap metal from the deposit could imply that, here, ownership of the raw material itself, rather than just the process of metalworking, was being presenced. We saw earlier in this chapter that associations between ingots and ‘prestige’ items such as horse gear and torcs were fairly common in hoards from the early phase. In order to develop our understanding of the hoard at Ringstead, it is important to move the focus of our analysis outwards into the wider region. Fortunately, the broader implications of metalwork deposition in Norfolk have been considered in some detail in recent years (Davies 1996, 2009, Hutcheson 2004). Discussions of Iron Age metalwork in Norfolk are inevitably dominated by the site at Snettisham, where 12 separate hoards containing torcs and other material have been found (Stead 1991d, Joy forthcoming). It is important to note that there is in fact an impressive wider density of torc and gold-coin hoards across the region (Hutcheson 2004: Chs. 6 and 7). Given its location and likely date, the absence of any torcs or gold coins makes the deposit at Ringstead slightly unusual. However, as we have already noted, the decoration on the bridle bits does ensure at least a tangential connection to some of the torcs recovered at Snettisham, and indeed elsewhere. Davies and Hutcheson have both noted that, during the second and early first centuries BC – the period to which the hoard at Ringstead dates – metalwork deposits are concentrated specifically in the northwest corner of Norfolk. On the basis of this distribution, Davies has argued that there may have been a ritual tribal centre at Snettisham itself (1996: 87). Hutcheson considered the issues in slightly more detail, suggesting that this concentration of hoards and single finds

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was the result of one particular social and political group becoming prominent at that time, perhaps through the control of trading networks that ultimately allowed them to acquire large quantities of (especially) gold (2004: 94). Notably, neither author discusses explicitly the role that the act of hoarding itself would have played in the consolidation (or illustration) of this power. The fact that, even in the region that includes Snettisham, it is very difficult to understand the relationship between these often odd, and in some senses actually quite variable, deposits of metalwork, and indeed between the deposits and the people making them, reminds us again of the difficulty of interpreting hoards. In trying to understand this broader regional patterning, we would agree that there may well have been a regional powerbase in north-west Norfolk at this time, which sucked in precious (and perhaps powerful) objects. Intriguingly, the subsequent deposition of that metal in the ground – on a massive scale at Snettisham, and on a smaller scale in other comparable landscape locations elsewhere – seems also to have been caught up in the processes of acquiring and/or maintaining social and political authority. It might be that the role these hoards played was analogous to the situation that many have suggested for the Bronze Age, where it has been argued that ‘prestige goods’ were deposited (as offerings to the gods?), in order both to maintain their economic and symbolic ‘value’ and to ensure the goodwill of supernatural forces (e.g. Barrett 1985: 100). However, importantly, during the Iron Age, the process of creating metalwork – not just of depositing it – was clearly central to this discourse: metalworking appears to have been carried out at Snettisham (metal droplets, etc., have been recovered there), while the ingot at Ringstead clearly presences the manufacturing process there as well. Overall, as a result, we are reminded yet again of the point made at the beginning of this book – that we are dealing here with ontologies very different to our own. In this case, powerful people did not just acquire power, and then purchase valuable Celtic art objects in order to display that power, or even necessarily ritually dispose of those objects to cement power in the minds of those who could not. The entire process – making, using, depositing objects – seems to have been bound up in social relations to an extent that is hard for us to fathom. The ‘scientific’ knowledge required to make them, and their ‘magical’ properties in use and/or deposition, appear to have been inseparable.

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CASE STUDY 2: A ‘LATE’ HOARD AT ‘POLDEN HILL’, SOMERSET The story surrounding the recovery of the hoard at ‘Polden Hill’ in Somerset (Harford 1803) is just as intriguing, and certainly no less entertaining than that at Ringstead. In June 1800 a farmer’s servant was ploughing a field near Bridgewater, Somerset. For various reasons, not least the fact that Harford describes the location of the hoard as being on ‘Polden Hill’ when in fact there is only a whole range of hills known as the Polden Hills, the exact findspot remains unestablished (see Brailsford 1975: 222 for a full discussion). The farmworker noticed that his furrow had become irregular in one place, and on stopping his work to investigate realized that the ploughshare was ‘clogged with several rings’ (Harford 1803: 91). At this point, it is best to hand over completely to Harford’s description: these he naturally concluded were the fetters of some prisoner escaped from gaol; and, on this supposition, he traced back the ground, expecting to find a file or saw, but was surprised to pick up several scattered pieces of metal, and soon found the spot where he had struck into them, whence he took what remained. He dug about this place, which he describes as a round hole about the size of a bushel, the bottom of which was formed of burnt clay or brick reduced to cinder, but without effect, as they were all deposited in a heap in one place (ibid).

The farmworker went on to offer the objects for sale in Bridgewater, and their purchaser (a Mr Anstice) showed them to Harford (a local antiquarian), who in turn reported their discovery to the Society of Antiquaries of London. No one investigated the immediate surrounds of the hoard at the time, and since its precise location is now impossible to pin down, unfortunately we know nothing of the local context of this find.

Object Connections The objects that the farmworker found were:     

16 bridle bits 24 terrets Nine cheek-pieces (two of them iron) One strap union One linch pin (iron)

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 A few fragments from a nave hoop  Three horse ‘brooches’ and three ‘dolphins’ – decorative fittings             

for a horse One ‘cavesson’ and two ‘bridle spurs’ – head-gear for a horse Two ‘trace-hooks’ – fittings used to attach a cart to a horse One torc (iron bound with bronze wire) Two bracelets Six brooches Three shield bosses One chape end from a sword One small hammerhead One piece of decorative strip One piece of wire One ferrule One ring (iron) One rod (iron)

The hoard is generally considered to date to c.AD 50–75 (Brailsford 1975: 232; Davis and Gwilt 2008: 164). The majority of the objects were made from bronze; where objects were made from iron, it is stated in the list above. In addition, much of the horse gear was decorated with red glass (see Davis forthcoming, for a full discussion and scientific analysis). Interestingly, on close inspection, the character of decoration, and the manner in which it had been applied, is seen to vary considerably across the objects within the hoard. This is particularly interesting since, overall, there is a considerable degree of (at least superficial) stylistic uniformity, especially within the horse gear. For example, all of the bridle bits were of the same two-link type, and very similar in form. However, while some were plain, others were subtly decorated with cast rows of dots, and others still elaborately decorated with glass inlays and more complex motifs (Fig. 6.15). Similarly, there were three different types of terret (seven ‘simple’, fifteen ‘parallel-winged’, and two ‘transverse-winged’); again, even within each type there was substantial decorative variation (Fig. 6.16; see also Brailsford 1975: Plates XVII and XVIII). The cheek-pieces, horse brooches and strap union also showed considerable variability, albeit around a common theme. Intriguingly, as Davis (forthcoming) points out, the shapes created to form the decorative schemes were also extremely varied in

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Fig. 6.15 Three of the bridle bits from Polden Hill (Brailsford 1975: Fig. 3). Reproduced by kind permission of the Prehistoric Society

their execution: the holes cut to receive glass inlays, for example, had, on different objects, been either cast, cut, or drilled into the metal. In contrast to the horse gear, the other objects within the assemblage were not in general heavily decorated: one of the three shield bosses (the one presumed to have been the central of three) was decorated with an angular, running scroll motif; both bracelets were decorated with

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Fig. 6.16 Three of the terrets from Polden Hill # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

simple incised lines; the bronze strip with a geometric zigzag pattern; and the chape end with a simple double ring and dot motif. The other items, including the torc, were undecorated. Davis’ analysis (forthcoming) of the chemical composition of the red glass used to decorate the horse gear from Polden Hill produced some very interesting results. In advance of the final publication of her work, it is appropriate only to mention a couple of the broader patterns she identifies. The first is the possibility that different ‘sets’ of objects (defined according to the chemical composition of their glass) appear, in some cases but not all, to match closely with different ‘sets’ of objects (defined according to their stylistic attributes). The second is the fact that these different ‘sets’ appeared in some cases to have been treated differently prior to deposition: some had been broken, and others burnt. Having discussed the decoration evident within the hoard, and also the treatment of objects prior to deposition, it is important to consider in a little more detail the ‘network’ of objects represented. As with late-phase hoards in general, many different object types are present within this hoard. The majority of the assemblage (53 of the 72 objects) is horse and chariot gear, adding at least a degree of coherency in that regard. The bridle bits had predominantly been deposited in exactly matching pairs (i.e. as they would probably have been used). Interestingly, given this, the terrets were not apparently deposited in sets (of five); in a few cases, four did appear very similar to each other, but in others they matched only in ones and twos

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(Brailsford 1975: 223–4). Five of the bronze and enamel cheek-pieces were exactly the same, two others similar but different, while the iron ones were also a matching pair (ibid: 230). The horse brooches all varied in terms of their shape and/or decorative technique. Thus, while the main ‘theme’ of the hoard can justifiably be said to be horse gear, much of which looks superficially similar, on closer inspection the picture is actually quite complicated. We are not dealing straightforwardly with complete and/or distinct ‘sets’ of material. The other objects within the hoard were a fairly mixed bunch. Both torc and bracelets appear to have been well used (and thus old?) prior to deposition. The shield bosses, as at Ringstead, appear to have been deposited unattached to any wooden backing (a full-size shield would not have fitted in a hole ‘the size of a bushel’ [approx. 36 litres]). Five of the six brooches were damaged or incomplete, the other one not in pristine condition. The bronze hammer was a very small object (5 cm or 2 in long), presumably used for detailed metalworking. It is difficult to say a great deal about the final few objects (sword chape, ferrule, etc.), all of which could reasonably be interpreted as scrap metal.

Interpretations In his initial discussion of the hoard, Harford – quite understandably, considering the time at which he was writing – was unsure even of the function of many of the objects within the hoard, let alone the reasons for their deposition together within a pit. As a result, he determined to ‘leave it to others to decide to what nation they belonged, and what were the uses to which they were applied’ (1803: 90). Nearly two centuries later, when Brailsford (1975) came to publish the hoard in full, broader interpretation of the deposit was not on the agenda either. His aim was to provide a catalogue of all items found, and to assess the most likely date of the deposit, but clearly not to speculate about the reasons for its deposition. Unfortunately, unlike Ringstead, when drawing up an interpretation of the site it is not easy to move outwards into discussions of hoarding within the wider region, as Somerset simply has not been given the attention that Norfolk has. The only other hoard containing Celtic art within 50 km (31 miles) miles of the Polden Hill find was that containing two bronze spoons at Weston, Bath. The hoard at

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Polden Hill is, however, broadly comparable with a number of other hoards, of roughly the same date, which have been recovered around Britain: for example, Seven Sisters, Neath (Davis and Gwilt 2008), Saham Toney, Norfolk (Bates 2000), and Melsonby/Stanwick, North Yorkshire (Fitts et al. 1999). Davis and Gwilt (2008) have discussed the broadly similar art ‘styles’ represented within these hoards in some detail, suggesting that while their makers were drawing on ‘Roman’ metallurgical and decorative techniques, they were nevertheless probably manufactured by the indigenous inhabitants of Britain, who were actively creating a novel and distinctive ‘native campaigning art’ style that was intentionally ‘not Roman’ in character (ibid: 177). Again, as we saw with Ringstead, there has been a certain reluctance amongst those writing about Polden Hill, and indeed these later hoards more generally, to discuss the role that the act of hoard deposition itself might have fulfilled. Why did people collect together this assortment of objects, and then bury them all? One of the reasons for this interpretive reluctance is, of course, that it is ultimately impossible to know the answer. However, it is nevertheless important to consider the possibilities. We feel that, on the basis of the wide variety of objects represented, the deposit is likely to have been gathered together by a fairly broad range of people.10 This suggestion is supported by the fact that much of the horse gear was, at one level, very similar, but in fact decorated (often post-casting) in a wide variety of different ways. Intriguingly, Davis (forthcoming) herself makes a similar argument, adding the substance of her much more detailed analysis to our own: ‘the fact that different groups of objects appear to have been treated differently [some sets (intentionally?) broken, some burnt] might suggest separate origins or ownership of components within the hoard’. Essentially, what Davis suggests is that different groups of people, who owned fairly similar objects (which could possibly have been made together), brought some of those objects back together again at ‘Polden Hill’. However, prior to deposition, some groups chose to break their objects up, others to burn them (possibly in situ, given the signs of burning noted at the bottom of the pit), and others simply to place them in the pit as they were.

10

Hunter (1997: 122) has argued along similar lines in relation to hoards from northern Britain.

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It is interesting to note that while much of the material deposited (the horse gear, the torc, the shield bosses) might well be considered ‘high status’, not all of the assemblage necessarily would be (the brooches, the scrap of wire, the iron ring, etc.). Given this, it might be argued that, while people of status perhaps contributed the most objects to it, other groups were also included, adding what metal they had, or could spare, to the hoard. But why deposit all of these objects in a pit on a hill in Somerset? In some ways, this is the most difficult question of all to answer, especially without invoking somewhat clichéd (if not necessarily wrong) explanations of ‘gifts to the gods’. At this stage, it is helpful to remind ourselves again of Davis and Gwilt’s (2008) broader argument concerning the meaning that these objects may have had for people at that time, as being ‘not Roman’. As they point out, in regions outside the south-east ‘core’, where the threat of Rome around this time loomed, the manufacture of those objects may well have represented an act of resistance or solidarity. Just as the objects themselves may have been ‘not Roman’, so may the ceremonies associated with their deposition in the ground. The focused deposition of these potentially symbolically powerful objects, along with other metal items, created both a landscape location and a social opportunity – perhaps attended by a wide spectrum of people – for resistance along these lines.

CONCLUDI NG DISCUSSION Hoards brought groups of artefacts together and might in the process also have brought groups of people together, in some cases at least. The breaking-up of artefacts can take two forms: that of fragmenting individual pieces or of breaking up groups of items, such as terrets. As we shall see again in the next chapter on burials, there are cases where similar but not identical sets of chariot gear and other things were brought together in a hoard or burial. Such items may have circulated between individuals, who were formed into a group through holding similar objects. At times of importance, such as death or an event with implications for the community, similar items were combined and similarities of form and decoration were the basis for this recombination. If we follow this argument, hoards

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were not the wealth of the elite or material for a smith to recycle, but elements of a dispersed community of people linked through artefacts. We have indicated that the same might have been true for coins with partial decoration on them. Following this view, which is a hypothesis to be subjected to further scrutiny, Celtic art played a key role in negotiating key relations between people and between the community as a whole with spiritual forces. The important thing Celtic art did was to help maintain tenuous and dispersed bonds of kinship, gift friendship, and enmity. As we saw at Ringstead, the whole process – of making and depositing, as well as using these objects – seems to have been intimately bound up in these social negotiations, and sometimes even carried out (or at least referenced materially) in the same places as hoarding. The hoards containing Celtic art that we have dealt with in this chapter themselves extended over a relatively long period – from c.200 BC to AD 100. As a result, we should perhaps expect significant changes over time. Indeed, important differences in the character of hoards were observed between the two main phases. During the early period, they incorporated a fairly restricted range of object types, with torcs, coins, ingots, and horse gear featuring prominently. The range of materials deposited was also much more limited than in the later phase, with silver and especially gold prevalent. During the late phase, hoards contained a greater range of object types, and the materials included within them were also much more variable. Interestingly, important continuities between the two phases were also discernible – throughout the whole period, hoarding remained a practice that (a) focused predominantly on metal objects, (b) incorporated significant numbers of fragmentary objects (sometimes broken on purpose, sometimes just worn out), and (c) took place out in the landscape. Given these arguments, it is interesting to remind ourselves of the fact that hoards made up exclusively of iron were deposited in entirely different places to those containing Celtic art. Iron hoards from this phase are found primarily in hillforts. This discrepancy could suggest two parallel discourses existing side by side. The last two centuries BC were a time of particularly intense social and political transformation. Iron hoards were perhaps bound up in what was by then an older, established political system focused on hillforts, centred largely in central southern England. Hoards containing Celtic art, on the other hand – the majority of which, during this phase, were of course deposited in East Anglia – may well have been tied into a social

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discourse associated with this newer, emerging regional polity. However, even at a sub-regional level, Hutcheson’s work (2004), which focuses specifically on Norfolk, has shown that the picture is one of complex evolution and change, with both the location of power and associated material emphases of deposition shifting subtly over time. The possible cessation of hoarding during the late first century BC and early first century AD closely matches other aspects of the material record. Celtic art simply does not seem to have been deposited (and used?) in abundance at this time (see also Chapter Nine). We have seen that, following this gap, hoards containing Celtic art became much more variable in character. During the late phase, nothing in particular stands out as having been preferentially deposited at this time. Hoards might also be described as more ‘democratic’: the fact that a much broader range of objects and materials was deposited can perhaps be seen as an indication that a broader range of people was involved. This certainly appeared to have been the case at Polden Hill, where different groups appeared to have come together to deposit material, perhaps using the hoarding event itself as a geographical and social focus of resistance against the onset of Roman rule. The nature of community was obviously changing fast in the century after 50 BC and material culture was generally more abundant. As a result the character of hoards and the condition of the material changed, with a greater range and quantity of artefacts, so that more complicated and subtle forms of power and linkage may have been at stake. The broader implications of these patterns will be picked up again in Chapter Nine.

7 Burials ‘By putting certain artefacts in the grave, the mourners not only created an image of death but also said something of themselves’ (Barrett 1994, 117).

Burial during the Iron Age is a complex and multifaceted subject. In comparison to earlier phases of prehistory in Britain, particularly the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, Iron Age burials make up a small proportion of the surviving archaeological evidence. The age-old archaeological cliché that we know more about the dead than the living does not generally apply to the first millennium BC. In fact, many would argue that, across much of the country and throughout most of the Iron Age, the exact opposite is true. Whimster (1981), for example, suggests that the most common burial rite at this time is simply invisible, archaeologically – corpses may have been excarnated or allowed to float away on rivers, ensuring that coherent sets of bones simply could not survive. Even when human ‘burial’ does become visible, the practices through which bodies were dealt with often remain difficult for us to comprehend. For example, in many cases single human bones ended up amongst everyday rubbish within storage pits and enclosure ditches on settlements, rather than in formalized burial contexts (Hill 1995, Lally 2006). In Chapter One we put forward the idea that death posed a choice for many groups between ways of using a dead body through burial, cremation, excarnation, or disposal in rivers. Bodies were circulated and may be seen as cultural resources, linking to ancestors and to the living to be used as effectively as possible. We have posited a broadly reciprocal set of relations for the Iron Age, with the bodies of the dead being a key resource in the complex reciprocal relations linking the living, the dead, and broader spiritual forces.

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Formal burial practices are perhaps best described as becoming visible in ‘pulses’ during the Iron Age – they generally appear in a limited region for only a relatively short period of time. Perhaps the best-known ‘pulse’ of this kind is the practice of inhumation within square barrows in East Yorkshire (e.g. Stead 1991b, Giles 2000), roughly between the fourth and first centuries BC. Other such pulses include the tradition of cist burial in south-west England around the same time, the ‘Aylesford’ rite of cremation in south-eastern England during the first centuries BC and AD, and the very localized ‘Durotrigian’ inhumations of southern Dorset from the late first century BC onwards (see Cunliffe 2005, Ch. 20, for a useful summary of all of these). Even in the case of these highly visible burial traditions, it is not certain that the whole community was buried in the same way. In other instances still, individual burials stand out as being totally unique within a given region and period, appearing as isolated ‘oneoffs’ rather than being part of a tradition – the chariot burial at Newbridge, Edinburgh (Carter and Hunter 2001) and the probable cist burial at Cerrigydrudion, Conwy (Smith 1926), to name two wellknown examples. During the Roman period, the regionality seen within the Iron Age is perpetuated, particularly in rural areas (Mattingly 2006: 343). As with most aspects of material culture, ‘Roman’ burial practices were taken up to different extents in different regions. Over the course of the four centuries of Roman rule in Britain, certain trends are visible at a very coarse level: there was an overall shift from cremation to inhumation, for example. However, especially in the first century AD (the phase with which we are concerned here), considerable variability is apparent; with, for example, the decapitation of corpses, the placement of body parts in boundary ditches, and the burial of bodies under house floors, all seen to different extents even within single regions (Mattingly 2006: 478–9). Given that the burial record across Britain is at best fragmentary, and at worst entirely invisible, the fact that quite so many of the bestknown pieces of Celtic art have been found in burial contexts is especially notable: the Cerrigydrudion ‘crown’, the Kirkburn sword, the Birdlip mirror, the Welwyn fire-dog, to name just four. Our primary aim within this chapter is not, however, simply to hold these objects aloft for further admiration. As with the previous chapter on hoards, we will instead be attempting to re-insert them – and other objects like them – back within their original assemblages; assemblages

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of which Celtic art objects usually formed just one part. These ‘networks’, as we have termed them, contained artefacts that would not be described as Celtic art, and also of course humans and even animals (or animal parts) as well. It is only through an investigation of these social and material relationships that we can approach an understanding of what those Celtic art objects ‘did’ in burials. As with hoards, burials might in some ways be seen as somewhat contrived assemblages. The days are long gone when archaeologists were able to read an individual’s status or occupation unproblematically from the material culture deposited with them when they died. Work carried out over the past thirty years or so has shown that, when trying to understand such assemblages, we need to think more critically. As Hunter has put it: in studying the warrior [and, it might well be said, other burials as well], we are dealing with the projection of a desired image, the creation of a picture which was intended to appeal to or influence contemporary audiences rather than leave a record for archaeologists (2005: 43).

Material culture was generally placed in a grave by the mourners to have an effect – on the onlookers at the funeral, on the ‘gods’ in the present, on the dead person in the afterlife, etc.. For this reason, Gell’s notion that we need to try to understand what objects did – both to people and to each other (see Chapter One) – is relevant in this chapter perhaps most of all. The fact that burial assemblages are contrived in this way does not, however, mean that we cannot use them to say anything meaningful about the objects – or indeed people – buried. In fact, it might actually be argued that those objects were deposited in a context within which their meanings and associations were actually more visible than usual. The need to construct an appropriate image in death, the process of choosing which objects to put together in the grave, and the emotional experience of a funeral, almost certainly brought those meanings and associations to the front of people’s minds. This intensity of meaning (in the past) arguably offers us (in the present) a particularly good opportunity to think through what objects ‘meant’ or ‘did’ in burial contexts. While Hunter’s point (above) is meant to be cautionary, reminding us to be both careful and critical in our interpretations, it is also possible to read it in almost the opposite way. It might be argued that, since people in the past were intentionally creating a ‘desired image’ for themselves, as archaeologists we are presented

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with a better opportunity than usual to access their intentions and understandings of the material world. In this chapter, following a brief summary of recent discussions, we look first of all at Celtic art within burials on a broad scale. As a result of this analysis, we are able to define four particularly prevalent ‘types’ of burial constructed through Celtic art objects. Subsequently, we shift the scale of our investigation dramatically, to look in substantial detail at four individual burials (representing each of the ‘types’) as case studies, in order to investigate exactly what it was that the objects ‘did’ within these graves. In total, 262 Celtic art objects were found within burials. This chapter therefore deals directly with 10 per cent of all the objects within the database.

IRON AGE BURIAL: RECENT DISCUSSIONS Discussions of individual burial assemblages have featured prominently within Iron Age archaeology since its very beginnings. From Colt Hoare’s (1821) description of the then undatable cremation contained within the Marlborough bucket, Evans’ (1890) consideration of possible family burial groupings at Aylesford, and Mortimer’s (1905) discussion of the ‘warrior’ grave at Grimthorpe, through Stead’s (1991b) extensive excavations of square barrows in East Yorkshire, all the way to the recently discovered ‘warrior’ burials at Brisley Farm, Kent (Stevenson and Johnson 2004), burials of this period have excited the archaeological imagination. Whimster’s impressive and very wide-ranging study (1981) remains the most comprehensive synthesis of burial practices in Iron Age Britain. Having put together a huge gazetteer of every burial then known across the country, he was able to identify what he saw as seven main traditions of burial: (1) inhumation in central southern Britain (often within storage pits in hillforts); (2) Durotrigian inhumation in southern Dorset; (3) cist burial inhumation in south-western England; (4) La Tène inhumation in eastern Yorkshire; (5) inhumations with swords (a category that cuts across many different regions and time periods); (6) late La Tène ‘Aylesford’ cremation in south-eastern England; and (7) peripheral burial practices (essentially a catch-all category designed to incorporate all of the rest).

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Since Whimster’s survey, Stead’s excavations in East Yorkshire (1991b) have added most significantly to the overall total. However, over the years since both of these works were published, many more burials have been found, and every one of Whimster’s categories has been augmented. More ‘pit burials’ have been discovered at Danebury, for example (Cunliffe 1992); another ‘south-western cist inhumation’ at Bryher (Johns 2006); more ‘East Yorkshire inhumations’ at Wetwang Village (Hill 2002); more ‘sword graves’ at Deal and Alloa (Parfitt 1995, Mills 2004); more ‘Aylesford’-type cremations at Westhampnett (Fitzpatrick 1997b); and so on. Almost thirty years on, Whimster’s study is much in need of an update. Despite the absence of recent synthetic works, over the course of the past decade a considerable amount of attention has nevertheless been focused on Iron Age burial. There have been a number of insightful osteological studies, tackling specific aspects, including excarnation (Madgwick 2008), the skeletal evidence for violent combat (Redfern 2006), and the informal deposition of human bone on settlement sites (Lally 2008). A number of other studies have focused more on the material culture within burials than on the bodies themselves. Since they are so often found in burials, Joy inevitably reflected on burial practice in his study of Iron Age mirrors (2008). In addition, Hunter’s consideration of the ‘image of the warrior’ in Iron Age Britain (2005) provided an updated review and gazetteer of weapons burials; he discussed the different ways in which that image was variously drawn upon and performed in burials, on coinage, and in hoards. Fitzpatrick also touched upon weapons burials in his study of late Iron Age mortuary practices in southern England (2007), although the main focus of his paper was the rich ‘Welwyn/ Lexden-type’ burial practice of the first centuries BC and AD. He too provided an up-to-date review of the evidence, primarily in order to assess the role and representation of feasting within those burials and beyond. One of the most sustained and in-depth recent considerations of Iron Age burial practices is Giles’ work on East Yorkshire. In her doctoral thesis (2000), a number of papers published since then (e.g. 2007, 2008), and her forthcoming book ( forthcoming), Giles’s localized, regional focus has enabled her to produce a rich and multidimensional study of identity and social relations in the Yorkshire Wolds over the course of the Iron Age. A consideration of the mortuary evidence has, unsurprisingly, formed a major part of this

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work, and she has tackled a number of relevant issues, including the landscape settings of square barrow cemeteries, the creation of identity through grave goods, and the possible symbolism of carts and swords within graves.

BURIALS AND CELTIC ART: BROAD PATTERNS It is important to emphasize right at the beginning of this section that, when investigating the Celtic art objects found in burials, we are dealing with a very particular subset of material. It was highly unusual for someone to be buried at all within the Iron Age. For most of the period, across most of the country, dead bodies were disposed of in archaeologically invisible ways. Occasionally, however, burial rites do become evident in what we have described as ‘pulses’. Yet even amongst these burials, it was actually quite rare for someone to be interred with something, and especially something other than a simple brooch or a pottery vessel. The vast majority of the burials in East Yorkshire, for example, did not contain swords or horse gear, or even brooches or pots for that matter. Equally, the vast majority of Aylesford cremations were buried with little else other than the ceramic vessel in which the cremated bones had been placed. It was, then, rare for people to be buried; and rarer still for them to be buried with grave goods; and even rarer still for them to be buried with Celtic art objects. Equally, if we look at this situation from the objects’ perspective (so to speak), we see a similar pattern. As discussed in Chapter Three, there is little doubt that most of the Celtic art objects ever made were, like people, deposited in a way that did not render them visible archaeologically. Equally, we saw that even when they were deposited, this was not generally in a burial context but elsewhere – as stray finds, in hoards, on settlements. It was, then, rare for Celtic art objects to be deposited; and rarer still for them to be deposited with people in a grave. As a result of these realizations, during the analysis that follows, two related questions must always remain at the back of our minds: why was that person buried with that object, and why was that object buried with that person? In order to get a full understanding of the kinds of burial that contained Celtic art, and to be able to analyze broad patterns visible

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within those burials, we constructed a database compiled by going back to the original site reports. This detailed the complete contents of every burial, as well as important background information about its likely date, its location, whether cremation or inhumation was chosen, the age, sex, etc.. The database included 83 burials overall (see Appendix 4 for details of all burials analyzed within this chapter, and the original references for sources consulted). Figure 7.1 gives an impression of the kinds of Celtic art objects deposited within burials. As the numbers for all other contexts are depicted alongside, it is possible to see which types were actually deposited preferentially in burial contexts. The artefact type that stands out most is the mirror – mirrors make up a far larger percentage of the total number of objects in burials (8 per cent) than they do of the total in other contexts (2 per cent). Swords are also slightly better represented in burials than they are elsewhere, as are arm rings/ armlets, shields, and spoons. Conversely, torcs/collars are very significantly under-represented in burials (a statistic that would stand even if the multiple finds from Snettisham were excluded). The fact that, in total, 60 per cent of all known mirrors have been recovered from burials, whereas the total is fewer than 1 per cent for torcs, reinforces a point which has arisen throughout the course of this study – that many objects had specific life histories (which may have been mapped out from the moment of their manufacture), and as a result often ended up in very specific depositional contexts.

All other contexts

Fig. 7.1 Relative proportions of each Celtic art object type within burials in comparison to those from all other contexts

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Before taking this broad-scale analysis any further, it is important to introduce an element of temporality into the equation. Overall, there were substantially more burials containing Celtic art earlier on, with three-quarters of the total dated to before 20 BC. The chronological patterns revealed do, of course, echo broader patterns relating to burial in general, and as a result, this figure is no doubt skewed slightly by the highly visible East Yorkshire inhumation rite (dated to Phase 1). Equally, while inhumation dominated the earlier periods, cremation took over later on – again, a reflection of broader burial shifts. It is also worth noting that there was a significant lull in the deposition of material within burials between 20 BC and AD 40 (a situation which, interestingly, parallels that observed within hoards – see Chapter Six), while only a single grave containing Celtic art – Boverton in the Vale of Glamorgan (Adam Gwilt, personal communication) – is known after AD 65. In order to make comparisons over time possible, all objects were allocated to one of three broader periods: pre-80 BC, 80–20 BC, and 20 BC–AD 100 (Fig. 7.2). As a result, significant differences in terms of the objects chosen for inclusion within burials can be discerned. For example, swords and horse gear were much more commonly deposited in Phase 1, fire-dogs and buckets were more numerous in Phase 3, while mirrors were seen in fairly similar overall numbers throughout the whole period. These changes suggest that there were important shifts in the ways in which objects were perceived – in relation to death, but perhaps in life as well – over that time. It is also

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important to note that these changes do of course have a regional dimension as well, echoing the more general ‘pulses’ of burial visibility discussed above.

BURIAL TYPES As we have already discussed, Whimster identified seven predominant types of burial within his survey (1981). These were: southern inhumations; Durotrigian inhumations; south-western cist burials; east Yorkshire inhumations; inhumations with swords; Aylesford cremations; and the catch-all category of ‘peripheral’ burials in northern England, Scotland, Wales, etc.. The logic behind Whimster’s categories is, at times, slightly difficult to follow; they are based on a variable combination of geographical location, burial rite, and artefactual inclusions, with the result that it can be unclear why particular burials (inhumation burials with swords in east Yorkshire, for example) are classed as one type rather than another. It is important to stress that this should not necessarily be seen as a criticism of his work: it simply is very difficult to draw firm boundaries around this extremely variable set of evidence. Since we are dealing here only with burials containing Celtic art objects, our task in categorizing our own dataset might be viewed as relatively easy in comparison. Due to the object-focused nature of our investigation, we decided to identify burial ‘types’ according to the material culture they contained. The three object groups that stand out most clearly as having been deposited in substantial numbers are horse gear, swords, and mirrors (see Figs. 7.1 and 7.2). Interestingly, these object-defined ‘types’ map closely onto categories of burial that are already commonly used: chariot burials, ‘warrior’ burials (or, more neutrally, ‘weapons’ burials), and mirror burials. While arm rings stand out to some extent as well (especially within Fig. 7.2), these were generally found on their own in graves, and thus were not a particularly informative category to explore further in themselves. In addition to these three categories, towards the right-hand side of Figs. 7.1 and 7.2, several object types are visible only in small numbers (tankards, fire-dogs, etc.). Many of these were, however, found in varying combinations within our fourth burial category – Aylesford

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Table 7.1. Number of burials within each category. Note that the total is slightly greater than the overall number of burials within the database because a number of ‘crossover’ burials contained more than one ‘type’ (see below), and have therefore been counted twice. Burial type

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tradition cremations.1 The latter is, admittedly, a rather disparate and varied category in terms of the Celtic art objects it contains. However, as we discuss in more detail below, overall, these burials do represent a fairly coherent group in terms of the broader spectrum of objects (amphorae, exotic metal vessels, etc.) they contain. Our final category, somewhat inevitably, is ‘other’ burials – one that enables us to mop up the various Celtic art objects not gracious enough to fit neatly into the previous four categories (see Table 7.1). Before moving on to discuss all of these burials in more detail, it is important to acknowledge the vagaries of our own typology. First of all, there were a number of burials that cut across the boundaries of our categories. In addition to the ten Aylesford burials, for example, we had one ‘Aylesford-weapons’ burial (Snailwell), and one ‘Aylesford-mirror’ burial (Dorton), which contained material culture suitable for both ‘types’. Similarly, we also had three ‘chariot-mirror’ burials (Arras, Wetwang Slack 2, and Wetwang Village), two ‘chariotweapons’ burials (Wetwang Slack 1 and 3), and one ‘weapons-mirror’ (Bryher). It is also important to acknowledge that our categories are varied (and therefore not necessarily directly comparable) in their geographical and temporal distribution. Chariot burials, for example, may have spanned a broad time period from the fourth to the second century BC, but were very restricted geographically, all but one of them being found in Yorkshire (Fig. 7.3). Weapons burials, on the Our category of ‘Aylesford’ burials includes ‘Welwyn’ and ‘Lexden’-type burials; the latter are essentially a sub-category of ‘richer’ burials within the former group. 1

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Fig. 7.3 Spatial distribution of burial types

other hand, are broad in both respects, possibly extending from as far back as the fourth century BC through to the first century AD, and being found from the Isles of Scilly in the south to central Scotland in the north (Hunter 2005). Mirror burials are rather more restricted on both counts; iron mirrors are found primarily in East Yorkshire between the fourth and second centuries BC, bronze mirrors only in southern England from the very late second century BC through to the mid-first century AD (Joy 2008). Aylesford burials date from the early first century BC to mid-first century AD, but are even more restricted geographically to the south-eastern corner of England (Fitzpatrick 2007). Again, as with the crossover categories above, this lack of direct comparability should not be viewed as problematic, but rather as a positive attribute. The fact that some objects persisted across time

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and/or space, while others came and went, provides us with important initial insights into how those items were perceived throughout the whole of the time period with which we are concerned. Finally, it is important to stress that in creating these burial ‘types’, we are not wanting to imply any kind of unity or stasis within each one over the course of their currency. A ‘mirror burial’ in East Yorkshire during the third century BC, for example, would almost certainly have been understood very differently, and meant different things, to a ‘mirror burial’ in Dorset during the first century AD, and so on. Similarly, in defining a category of ‘weapons burial’, we are by no means implying that the person buried was necessarily a ‘warrior’ in any straightforward sense. Equally, the fact that our ‘types’ (which were defined purely according to the notable prevalence of particular object types) happened to map onto more broadly accepted burial ‘types’ (such as ‘mirror burial’ or ‘warrior burial’) should not be seen as an uncritical acceptance of the latter on our part. If anything, as will become clear in the remainder of this chapter, it in fact allows us to engage directly, and more critically, with these, assessing their validity, and allowing us to evaluate the very varied meanings that these objects had in each specific context they were used.

OBJECT NETWORKS Up until now in this chapter, we have focused almost exclusively on Celtic art objects in our analysis, using them first of all as the basis on which to isolate a restricted subset of burials from the much larger pool defined by Whimster and others; and then, secondly, to identify further categories of ‘burial type’ within that subset. In order to understand burial assemblages fully, however, we need now to move on, to situate these items within the broader human-object networks found.

Object–Object Connections Figure 7.4 provides a breakdown of all artefact types found in burials. As was the case with hoards, it is striking how many artefacts feature that would not normally be classed as Celtic art (shown in grey on the right-hand side of the graph).

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The majority of non-Celtic art objects found in burials can actually be lumped together further into three overarching categories: tools/weapons (iron knives and iron or bone spears/points2), vessels (ceramic, metal, and glass), and animal parts (usually deposited as joints of meat). The ‘other’ category incorporated a vast array of items, including glass beads, belt buckles, ferrules, toggles, etc.. The connections between these different object types are explored in more detail in the latter part of this chapter.

Object–Human and Object–Animal Connections As we discussed in Chapter One, ours is an explicitly object-centred approach. Thus far in this chapter, objects have certainly been the main focus of our attention. However, in burial contexts perhaps more than any other, the human elements of past ‘networks’ come sharply into focus. In contrast to hoards and settlements, the human body (and sometimes parts of a body or bodies) formed part of every burial assemblage. Moreover, in many cases, that body would have been the main focus of that assemblage, the accompanying objects being selected, and then perhaps also set out physically, in relation to it. As a result, it is particularly important to investigate the object– 2 Following Hunter (2005), we have drawn a distinction between spears placed in the grave to accompany the body, and spears apparently thrust into the body as part of the burial ritual (the latter a relatively common rite in East Yorkshire).

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human relationship in burial contexts. It is worth noting that animals (and animal parts) were also a prominent feature of many burials, featuring in just over a quarter (21 out of 83). Their presence was generally related to broader localized traditions relating to the contents of burials; for example, many were recovered in East Yorkshire, where it was fairly common to include animal bones in burials of many different types. However, animal parts were also found in a number of burials outside East Yorkshire as well. For example, the burial at Folly Lane, St Albans, notably included a cremated hare or cat, as well as horse, cow, and sheep/goat bones (Fitzpatrick 2007: 136); and the burial at Baldock reveals bones from a bear claw, possibly indicating that the dead person had been wearing a bearskin (see also below). Although the relationship between humans, animals, and objects is a subject which is in many ways best investigated at the scale of the individual burial, before we move on to our analysis at that level, it is worth summarizing a few of the general patterns that could be discerned. Of the 85 bodies found within the 83 burials,3 a total of 37 had been sexed. Of these, 25 were male and 12 female. In the case of both weapons burials and mirror burials, there was a very strong correlation between the sex of the person buried and the artefacts accompanying them, a pattern that many other writers have noted previously (e.g. Hunter 2005: 50; Joy 2010). Of the 16 weapons burials that could be sexed, 15 were male, with one ‘possible female’ found at Rudston (Stead 1991b: 205). Equally, of the nine mirror burials that had been sexed, all were female (although see Joy 2010 for a discussion of the problems associated with sexing burials with what are assumed to be strongly gendered objects, such as mirrors). Within chariot burials, the divide between the sexes was slightly less severe, with eight being male and three female; interestingly, all three females in this case were also buried with mirrors. Aylesford burials have proved very difficult to sex or age (partly a consequence of the fact that many probably contained very little bone in the first place). The only sexed Aylesford burial was a mature male at Lexden tumulus, Colchester. Three of the nine ‘other’ burials were sexed: the burial with spoons at Burnmouth was male, whereas those with a heavy collar and two bracelets at Boverton, and with three arm rings at 3

A mirror burial at Latchmere Green contained the cremated remains of an adult and child; a weapons burial at Camelon contained two inhumations.

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Cowlam, were female. Children are extremely poorly represented, with only one child (aged less than five), cremated along with an adult at Latchmere Green, noted.

Summary At a general level, the analysis set out above has revealed a series of interesting patterns within the burial assemblages of which Celtic art objects formed one part. Our investigation of which Celtic art objects were deposited in graves revealed three dominant categories of artefact: horse gear, swords, and mirrors. Swords and mirrors were preferentially deposited in burial contexts; horse gear, on the other hand, was not, but stood out through sheer quantity alone. Importantly, the three dominant material categories were, by and large, kept separate in burials, and thus were used to define three main ‘types’ of burial. The fourth type – Aylesford burials – was not as rigidly linked to one particular Celtic art object, but nevertheless did contain a fairly standardized suite of other objects (e.g. ceramic pots, metal vessels, etc.). Once an element of change over time was introduced into the equation, differences in the kind of objects placed in graves in successive phases emerged, as one might expect. These differences partly reflected broader changes in the burial types common at any particular time, but, to an extent, also had their own trajectory independent of these. Our assessment of all sexed skeletal remains revealed that, just as there was often a direct link between burial type and all of the objects placed with it, there was also a very close correlation between burial type and sex, especially in weapons and mirror burials. While a degree of leeway was evident in terms of the object–object networks in these burials (the items buried along with swords or mirrors could vary to an extent), there appears to have been very little in terms of the human–object side (swords were, almost exclusively, buried with men, and mirrors with women). Having defined a series of burial ‘types’, and established that their contents have the potential to tell us a great deal about the networks in which we are interested, it is time now to shift scales. Thus far in this chapter we have dealt with the broad scale. In the following sections, we move to the opposite extreme, looking at individual examples of each of the four main burial ‘types’ in order to see what

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the details of each burial can tell us about how people thought, what ‘images’ in death they wanted to construct, and ultimately what Celtic art objects were ‘doing’ in those contexts.

INTRODUCTION TO THE CASE STUDIES It is important to investigate burials at the micro- as well as the macro-scale, not only because every burial, once its contents are considered in detail, is actually quite different to the next, but also because, ultimately, this was the scale at which people created those assemblages. Barrett (1994: 115–17) has discussed the fact that, while each burial assemblage would necessarily have been composed with reference to those that had preceded it, it also gave mourners the opportunity to say something specific about themselves at that point in time, and of course about the individual being buried. In this sense, then, each burial was unique, and must be understood on its own terms as well as in relation to any wider tradition of which it formed part. The four case studies are presented in approximate chronological order. We begin by looking at one of the best-known East Yorkshire burials: the chariot burial from Kirkburn (Stead 1991b), which probably dates to the third century BC. Next, we turn to the weapons burial at Mill Hill, Deal, Kent (Parfitt 1995), which has been dated to the late third or early second century BC. Following this, we investigate one of the earliest ‘Welwyn-type’ burials from Baldock, Hertfordshire (Steadand Rigby 1986), dated to the late second or early first century BC, before finally turning to one of the later mirror burials, at Portesham, Dorset (Fitzpatrick 1997a), dated to the middle of the first century AD. The burials chosen necessarily all had excellent contextual information, and it is important to make very clear that we could not even have attempted these studies unless they had been written up to such a high standard. It is also important to highlight that, in presenting these burial ‘sketches’, we were inspired, at times directly, by Giles’s evocative descriptions of a few of the graves she studied in East Yorkshire (Giles 2000: 161–9). We begin each case study with a detailed description of the treatment of the body, the positioning of items within the grave, and other intricate details, to try and comprehend the process of burial. Next,

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we focus in detail on the artefacts themselves, and of course the person buried with them, in order to understand the histories of both prior to their being buried, and the associations that could have been made or recalled through their assembly. We have also been intentionally creative (or fictitious, depending on how you view it) in order to bring these sketches to life as much as possible and to push interpretations as far as we can. Ultimately, our aim in each of the four case studies is to get closer to an understanding of what people had in mind when they constructed that ‘image in death’; how they understood those objects, both in themselves and in relation to the person they buried them with; and finally what those objects – Celtic art amongst them of course – were meant to ‘do’, both during the funeral and, in some cases perhaps, in the afterlife too.

CASE STUDY 1: A CHARIOT BURIAL FROM KIRKBURN, EAST YORKSHIRE At some point probably towards the end of the third century BC, a man in his late twenties or early thirties died (see Fig. 7.5). The reasons for his death are not apparent today, but it could easily be that he simply passed away as a result of natural causes. It is likely that this man lived out most of his life in a loose agglomeration of roundhouses, as yet undivided by ditched enclosures into the compartmentalized ‘ladder settlements’ for which this part of East Yorkshire is well-known in the first centuries BC and AD (Giles 2007a). The chariot or cart with which he eventually came to be buried may well have travelled between such villages throughout its life – used for a variety of purposes including trade and exchange, but perhaps also for violent attacks and raids (Giles 2008). In discussing this burial, we draw primarily on Stead’s excavation report (1991b), but also on Giles’s subsequent detailed considerations of the East Yorkshire material (especially Giles 2000).

The Burial Process Following this man’s death, the community of which he formed part made the decision to bury him within a square barrow, on higher ground overlooking the ‘Gypsey Race’. It is possible that through this

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association with a seasonal stream, people were making a metaphorical connection; the watercourse’s ebb and flow could have been seen to echo the transient nature of human life, and it was perhaps also expected to carry the spirit or soul of the dead man away (Bevan 1999).

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Excavations at the site revealed that this barrow (K5) formed part of a small agglomeration that included at least three others. Amongst these, K5 arguably represented a focus. It is by far the largest barrow in the vicinity, and those adjacent to it (two of them round rather than square) could certainly be said to respect it spatially (Fig. 7.6). It is possible therefore that this man’s burial was the first to be made at Kirkburn, setting a precedent for decades to come. The construction of the barrow and grave into which he was placed must have taken considerable effort. The grave was dug first. It was very large, measuring 5.2 m (17 ft) long, 3.7 m (12 ft 2 in) wide, and 1.2 m (3 ft 10 in) deep, and would have taken the best part of a day or two to dig out of the hard-packed natural gravels. Those digging it knew it had to be large. The first things to be placed in the grave were the wheels from a chariot or cart; the vehicle had been dismantled prior to deposition. Given the depth of the grave cut, it seems likely that these were passed down from above to someone standing within. The wheels were arranged on the floor, ‘almost touching one another, and supported by their hubs so that the tyres were angled, resting on the floor in the centre but well clear of it at the sides’ (Stead 1991b: 30).

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Next came the body. Preserved textiles found within the grave suggest that the man was clothed in a tunic or gown, with a cloak over the top that may actually have been wrapping the body rather than worn (Crowfoot in Stead 1991b: 122). The body was arranged carefully, immediately on top of the wheels. The man was laid on his back, his head turned to the left. His knees were drawn up tightly into a flexed position, again to his left-hand side. His right arm was laid out fully extended down by his side, his left folded back across his chest. Next, a series of pig bones was placed in two areas – immediately adjacent to his head and on top of his lower body. These were probably all derived from one animal, and had been butchered and defleshed before being deposited. Intriguingly, the pig skull had been split in two, the left part deposited above the man’s head, the right part down by his legs. Echoing this spatial division, bones from the pig’s left forelimb were deposited next to the former, those from the right forelimb next to the latter. Following these, different elements of the chariot or cart and its associated horse gear were arranged, one by one, alongside the body (see Fig. 7.5). Perhaps first to go in were the linch pins, placed to either side on top of their respective wheels. Next,4 the yoke – its terrets still embedded within it – was laid alongside, and parallel with his right arm, its length almost exactly matching that of the body in its flexed state. One strap union, presumably associated with the yoke in use, was found at either end. Finally came the bridle bits, both placed behind the man’s head, curiously somewhat intermingled with the pig bones that were already there. Adjacent to these, but slightly further away from the body, was a box or basket (marked out on excavation only by its copper alloy lid); if this did contain something when deposited, it had not survived. Then, in an act clearly reminiscent of putting the man to sleep, a cloak of iron mail was laid out neatly on top of the body; this was upside down and inverted, so that its hem was across his chest and its shoulders were over his legs. Next, it is very likely – given the overall shape of the grave, and evidence recovered from nearby Garton Station (preserved there as a result of localized wet conditions) – that the T-shaped frame of the cart was placed over the body, oriented down the main axis of the 4 Not all of the artefacts in the grave had stratigraphic relationships with one another. Therefore, in the description that follows, we have allowed ourselves a certain amount of poetic licence when describing the order in which objects had gone in.

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grave. Finally, the box, which would have formed the upper ‘carriage’ of the cart, was placed upside down over the body, covering it and almost all of the objects alongside. The grave was then backfilled. The square barrow ditch cut around it was a huge construction, 12.5 m (41 ft) across with a ditch 3 m (9 ft 9 in) wide and 0.9 m (2 ft 10 in) deep. As with the grave, even with a team of people working together, a day or two at least would have been required to dig it out. Initially, once finished, the mound of gravel created within the confines of the ditch would have stood out proud and clean against the surrounding grassland. But with time its sides no doubt eroded and slumped (see Stead 1991b: Fig. 6), while the turf would have grown back within a year or so, turning orangegold gravel back to green.

Object and Human Histories It is an often-mentioned irony of archaeology that we usually have to interpret human histories through the artefacts of those people’s lives, rather than the people themselves. As archaeologists have always had to know, and others in the social sciences have more recently come to realize, it is only because the humans and non-humans are essentially inseparable in making up ‘society’ (see Chapter One) that we can actually infer one from the other. As we mentioned above, in burials more than any other context, humans are directly visible in a physical sense. However, even in burials, the primacy of objects arguably remains. Certainly at Kirkburn, it is difficult to tell very much at all about the man buried. We can know his height and estimate his approximate age. We can also point out that he had a slightly unusual skeletal morphology, with a particularly pronounced parietal foramen – a low ridge on the skull, which would not have been visible to people while he was alive (S. Stead in Stead 1991b: 135; see also below). However, the facial expressions and bodily comportment and friendships and memories of which this man would have been composed – as a person – are, sadly, mostly impossible to retrieve. The histories of some of the objects buried alongside him in the grave, on the other hand, are much more accessible. In the most immediate sense of ‘history’, it was possible – as a result of the very careful excavation of the grave fill – to see the collapse of the chariot’s

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main box as it rotted after deposition, the base (which in this case was placed uppermost) gradually dropping down a few centimetres at a time (Stead 1991b: Fig. 27). Prior to this, we can perhaps also infer that the cart may actually have carried the dead man to his grave, before finally being inverted to act as his coffin (Giles 2008: 70). Turning to the individual objects, we can infer a certain amount more. The wheels were matched very closely in size, each being around 90 cm (35½ in) in diameter. However, one was more worn than and had a subtly different tyre design to the other, hinting at the possibility that these were not an exactly matching pair. If so, some months or even years back, one must have been replaced – a consequence perhaps of the no doubt heavily pot-holed Iron Age tracks it would have been travelling along. One of the nave hoops had certainly been reused and then repaired, being reduced in size presumably to fit the new wheel, and then having an iron strip attached to keep the main copper alloy strip from tearing further (Stead 1991b: Fig. 35.4). The decorated copper alloy and iron linch pins were a matching pair, with near-identical triskele and berried rosette motifs on their heads and feet (Fig. 7.7). They, like the wheels, had been well-used, and showed substantial signs of wear in a number of places. The undecorated copper alloy and iron bridle bits were also a matching pair; these showed no major signs of wear and tear, although one of the rings had distorted slightly into a more elongated oval (Stead 1991b: Fig. 44.2, right). Clearly, all of the horse/chariot gear had been in use for some time. The terret rings (Fig. 7.8), which would originally have been laid out down the length of the yoke, appear at first glance to have been a matching set of five (four small, one large, as is usual): they are all of the same ‘lipped’ type, and have the same construction technique (copper alloy rings cast onto iron bars). However, on closer inspection, a few irregularities emerge. While the largest terret has 11 lips, the four smaller ones have uneven numbers (10, 10, 9, and 8 respectively). The four smaller rings are also far from being the same size, and have very different internal bar dimensions (Stead 1991b: 47). It is difficult to establish the background behind this set of objects. It is certainly conceivable that the five terrets were made as a ‘set’ in this way, and that their unevenness of manufacture was intentional. However, it also seems possible that the set’s variability was a consequence of its own varied history. This group of terrets could have

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Fig. 7.7 Kirkburn K5 linch pins (Stead 1991b: Fig. 37) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

been collected together from several original sets, either because the latter had become partial through loss or damage over time, or perhaps even because they had been intentionally exchanged (this idea is discussed further below).

Object–Human Connections Having outlined a few potential histories for the objects within the burial, it is now time to explore in a little more detail the connections (and indeed disjunctions) – between the objects themselves, the objects and the man buried, and indeed between both of these and other people/objects beyond the grave itself – that are apparent. In order to keep things simple, we address each of the main object types in turn.

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Fig. 7.8 Kirkburn K5 terrets (Stead 1991b: Fig. 40) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

Horse/Chariot Gear The horse/chariot gear placed within the grave might be described as being of varied composition, both in terms of the ‘groupset’5 as a whole (the decorative schemes on each subset of horse gear – bridle bits, terrets, strap unions, linch pins – were very different to one another), and in terms of the minute details (the numbers of ‘lips’ on each terret were different). While we must be careful not to assume too readily that all horse/chariot gear would have been manufactured 5 ‘Groupset’ is a term borrowed from modern cycling. There, it refers to the gear shifters, cogs, derailleurs, brakes, etcetera, as a collective; to us, the term seemed to capture the mixture of component parts in a chariot quite well.

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in neatly matching sets, the evidence for production from sites such as Gussage All Saints (see Chapter Eight) and from material found in assemblages elsewhere suggests that the groupset found at Kirkburn could certainly have been more uniform. This variability of forms and styles might well be taken as evidence that the assemblage as a whole had an equally varied history. It is worth noting that most elements of the groupset had a complex history from the very start, many of them being made from both copper alloy and iron, a composition that would have required a sequence of manufacture – perhaps involving different people and places – in the first instance. Because of their differences, it is possible that different items had come from different places and/or from different people. Interestingly, our Celtic art database reveals that the majority of ‘lipped’ terrets have been found in East Anglia, while vase-headed linch pins similar to those at Kirkburn are most commonly found in central southern England. If, as seems likely, the cart did actually appear in life as it was found in the grave (rather than being assembled specifically for the burial), its material components would have come to embody this complex history. If the cart was, for instance, communally owned, it is possible that different groups of people may have contributed different components. It could equally be that the chariot was owned by one individual (the man in the grave?) or family. In this case, the varied material make-up of the vehicle could have symbolized the fact that that person or family had wide-ranging connections (both geographical and social). Whatever the reasons for this material variability, and whether or not people would necessarily have been aware of it during the cart’s use, the process of disassembling the vehicle – an event that probably occurred by the side of the grave – and of placing each item in the grave, would almost certainly have brought those differences to the forefront of people’s minds. The very fact that an ‘image in death’ was being created would have refocused attention onto that image’s component parts. In fact, by ‘unmaking’ (Giles 2000: 164) the cart, it is almost as if people were drawing explicit attention to the material differences it embodied. One final aspect of the chariot gear we would like to discuss is the position of the man’s body in relation to the wheels. His placement directly on top of one wheel appears somehow uncomfortable. Of course, he was dead and wouldn’t have felt anything, but this position suggests – to us at least, and possibly also to the onlookers at the

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funeral – that the wooden spokes would have been digging into his back, his deathbed rockable on its axles and somewhat unstable. By contrast, the chariot burial a few hundred metres away at Garton Station appears much more at rest, the wheels placed vertically against the side of the grave, the man there lying more comfortably on a flat floor (Stead 1991b: Fig. 122). Intriguingly, however, the latter burial is a rare exception, the position seen in our burial at Kirkburn being most common in other East Yorkshire burials as well (Stead 1991b: 29). Although it is impossible to be sure why K5 was arranged in that way, it is possible that his slightly unstable positioning in the grave was intentional, designed to reflect what was perceived as an unstable or transitional state of being. If so, yet again, the chariot was being asked to do metaphorical work, to reinforce materially what was known ideally.

Mail Cloak The man buried at Kirkburn – in a ‘suit’ of armour, with a ‘war chariot’ by his side – would traditionally have been seen as representing an archetypal member of the aristocracy, or one of the ‘warrior’ class below. Certainly, this was how antiquarians viewed the ‘king’s’, ‘queen’s’, and ‘charioteer’s’ barrows they dug at Arras in the nineteenth century (Stead 1979). Nowadays, of course, there are many problems with that kind of interpretation. Not only have people questioned the fact that this kind of hierarchical society would have existed at that time (Hill 2006), but they have also raised considerable doubts about whether the chariots – or, in this case perhaps more appropriately, carts – found in East Yorkshire during the Iron Age would have been at all suitable for use in battle (Stead 1979, Giles 2000). More particular to burial K5, we come up against the fact that the man was not buried with a sword or shield. Thus it is also possible to question whether people ever intended to create a fully fledged ‘warrior’ image at all (see below). Giles (2008) has argued that even swords, while having connotations of battle, may only rarely have been used in anger, serving predominantly as symbols of prestige, protection, and magical power (see also Chapter Four). Similarly, Fitzpatrick (2007) has suggested that in the first century AD mail itself may have had more of a display purpose than a protective, functional one. It is perfectly possible that we should view the mail from K5 in a

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similar light, as not necessarily being martial in a straightforward sense, but rather a sign of authority and prestige. We have already mentioned that the careful placement of the mail cloak over the body in death would have reminded people of everyday sleep. The inversion of the cloak seems especially significant once we consider the ‘image in death’ it created. The man clearly was not wearing it, in the grave; it was not even the right way round. As we have already noted, Giles has suggested previously that certain objects, including this cloak, were ‘unmade’ during the funeral process (2000: 144). As a result, their previous uses – and, arguably, their connotations too – were dismantled. In this case, if indeed this coat of armour had served as a symbol of authority or power, it might be argued that through its burial that power or social persona was also laid to rest. We might also suggest that, through its inversion within the grave, the image in death was again serving, materially, to emphasize a social change. The audience were at the same time reminded of the association between this man and that role, but also that the latter was no longer his.

Pig Bones The inclusion of animal bones within graves in East Yorkshire is a relatively common occurrence (Legge in Stead 1991b: 140–7). On seeing animal bones within a grave, one’s initial reaction is to imagine that the mourners must have left some food for the deceased in the afterlife; that a joint of lamb or pork was kept aside from the funeral feast, saved for the person in the grave. On closer inspection, however, as is so often the case, the situation is not quite so simple. At Kirkburn K5, as in many other East Yorkshire burials, the bones had been thoroughly defleshed prior to deposition. These were the remains of a meal, not the meal itself. As Legge puts it, ‘these food offerings were very likely to have been symbolic rather than actual’ (in Stead 1991b: 144). Given that members of the funeral group had carefully saved certain butchered bones from an earlier meal, and then arranged them in a very particular order within the grave – left half of skull and left forelimb above the man’s head, right half of skull and right forelimb down by his knees – it seems likely that these too had an important role to play in terms of the ‘image in death’ which was being created. Of course it is impossible to know for sure what went

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on before the grave was dug, but one might imagine a scenario in which this division was established much earlier. It is possible that at the funeral feast people were arranged along a table, one half of the guests down one side eating very strictly from their part of the pig, the other half of the guests the other. One can imagine the split being down gender lines, down family lines, or between locals and outsiders. The bones’ recombination in the grave – and their association with specific objects – could again have been reflecting connections that were there in life. One set of people may have been linked with the (authoritative?) role symbolized by the mail, which ultimately covered the right set of bones. Perhaps, with this man’s death, that part of the family had relinquished this role? The other set of people were perhaps linked with the bridle bits simply because they had provided or looked after the horses that once pulled on these. This complex web of social links was, again, made material in death.

D-Shaped Box We have left the somewhat enigmatic, D-shaped copper alloy object (probably the lid to an organic container; Fig. 7.9) until last to discuss. This is at least partly because it is difficult to do so – its original use is hard to fathom, and it is not a clear adjunct to the rest of the material within the grave. There are no obvious connections between it and the horse/chariot gear that dominates the assemblage as a whole. Intriguingly, this interpretive separation (in our minds at least) is reflected in the object’s spatial positioning with the grave. It was placed slightly away from the body rather than close up against it, as all of the other items were. It is possible that this object was an adjunct to the main image. Perhaps, unlike the other socially charged items we have been discussing so far, it was ‘simply’ a personal possession. Even if so, that is not to say that this object did any less ‘work’ than the other objects in the grave. It could have reflected, and thus signified, the private persona of the man, in contrast to the public persona highlighted by the other items. Equally, it could have turned people’s minds to other objects elsewhere, recalling as it does the cylindrical ‘canister’ from one of the chariot burials at Wetwang Slack (Dent 1985), and even, much closer to home, the ring buried with the woman in grave K6, just a few metres away. It is to such connections beyond the grave that we turn next.

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Fig. 7.9 Kirkburn K5 box lid (Stead 1991b: Fig. 47) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

Connections Beyond the Grave The most obvious connections to investigate beyond the grave of K5 are those in the burials immediately adjacent to it. In this light, it is vital to note first of all that, intriguingly, three of the four other burials nearby (K3, K4, and K6) were highlighted as being potentially closely related to each other, and to the man in K5, due to the fact that they all had the rare parietal foramen skull trait (S. Stead in Stead 1991b: 135). The most pronounced barrow nearby was K6, situated at a respectful distance from K5. The grave contained a young adult woman, aged 17–25 (Fig. 7.10). In addition, a newborn infant was found lying head-down across her pelvis and upper legs. It is possible that the child was stillborn, and that the umbilical cord had not yet been cut (S. Stead in Stead 1991b: 136). Barrows K5 and K6 have a clear physical relationship. They are very definitely parallel to one another, and even the forms of their ditches are closely comparable (see Fig. 7.6). As we have already discussed, there is no way of knowing for sure which of the two burials came first. However, because of its size and dominant position within the cemetery, we have speculated that K5 may have been the earliest. If so, we might

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Fig. 7.10 Kirkburn K6 (Stead 1991b: Fig. 69) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

imagine that the woman buried in K6 could have been the younger sister or daughter of the man in K5. Given a close relationship such as this, it is notable that two of the small items she was buried with – a copper alloy double-stud and a hollow copper alloy ring – were closely reminiscent of some of the objects within K5. Although it is important not to make too much of this, as these are very common decorative forms within Celtic art, the tricorne and berried rosette motifs on her stud were very similar to those on the linch pins in K5. Equally, as we have mentioned, her copper alloy ring was very similar indeed to the rings decorating the box lid in K5. Other than these small, apparently personal decorative objects, this woman was buried with no other finds. This wider absence of material culture is not totally out of place – K4 contained nothing at all other than the body. However, it may also be telling us that, given the traumatic deaths of this woman and her baby, people simply chose not to make the kinds of material connection that they would have made in other circumstances. Her death could have been seen as ‘polluting’ or

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inauspicious (Giles 2000: 162), but equally it simply may not have felt appropriate to dwell (materially) on other matters in this context. Fifteen metres to the south of this burial, the ‘Kirkburn warrior’ – with his fantastically decorated scabbard and sword (discussed in Chapter Five) – was found, immediately next to K5 in grave K3. He too was aged 17–25 when he died, and like K6 it is possible that he was related to the man in K5. Placed next to him within the grave were the sword and scabbard, and a series of pig bones. In addition, he had been speared in the stomach (as part of the funerary ritual – a relatively common occurrence in East Yorkshire) by three iron spears. Interestingly, the pig bones represented were exactly the same as those within K5, and they had been placed in almost the same position, implying that both burials were perhaps preceded by a ceremonial meal involving a similar set of rules. In terms of its decoration, the famous scabbard was not closely reminiscent of any of the objects in K5 or K6. Nevertheless, in terms of the ‘image in death’ it had been used to create, there were clear connections. His sword, for example, occupied exactly the same position relative to the body as the yoke had done in K5. In addition, as Giles has noted previously (2008), the sword was not in a ‘usable’ position, but had been inverted, its handle down by the man’s feet – a reversal that closely matches the mail in K5. Here again, it is possible that the (warrior?) identity associated with the sword had come to an end with his death, and that, as in K5, this was signalled, materially, in the grave.

Summary Earlier in this chapter, we stated a desire to investigate exactly what it was that the objects included in the four case-study graves were being asked to ‘do’. Judging by the evidence in K5 discussed here, the answer to this question might well be ‘quite a lot’. We have seen that an ‘image in death’ was very clearly being created: the body and associated material culture were positioned carefully, in relation to one another, and arguably also in relation to other burials that came before and after. It is of course impossible to know how many people would have witnessed that ‘image’. The burial could have been a very personal, private affair, with just a few family members in attendance. However, our suspicion is that this would have been a more public event, involving a funeral meal, and perhaps dozens of people.

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In many ways, the material components of this particular ‘image in death’ seem quite disparate: a chariot or cart (dismantled), a coat of iron mail (inverted), some pig bones (carefully selected and arranged), a small D-shaped box. However, having considered each of these elements in turn, it has become clear that each one had its own work to do. The chariot and horse gear together embodied a complex history and set of social relations. Whether or not the cart was actually owned by the man in the grave or by the wider community, it is clear that, in death, the latter chose to ‘elevate’ him simply by including the vehicle in the grave. The process of dismantling the cart, and then arranging its separate elements in the grave, would have drawn people’s attention to the fact that it was composed from multiple ‘sets’ of horse gear, and thus to the drawn-out history and complex network of social relationships and contacts congealed within. The iron mail was also, apparently, doing substantial ‘work’ in the grave. As with the chariot, we cannot be certain that the man buried had actually owned or even worn the mail in life. In this case, though, it does perhaps seem likely that he had, as a result of his occupying a significant social position of some sort. If so, its inversion over the body seems especially significant, designed to signal to people that this role had come to an end, perhaps handed on (with a new cloak of mail?) to someone else. The pig bones too contributed to the image. The fact that they were pig at all, rather than sheep for example, may have been significant in itself. Giles has pointed out that pigs are not well represented in domestic assemblages in the region, and thus may have been special, used to distinguish certain burials (2000: 147). Equally, the complex bipartite arrangement of bones within the grave may have drawn attention to the social groupings (and separations) evident at the funeral feast. In doing so, these bones reflected the broader composition of this man’s social identity, his extended ‘dividual’ personhood signalled first at the meal and thus also in the grave. Finally, the D-shaped box may have presenced his private character rather than his public persona, in this case perhaps inadvertently and subtly, rather than explicitly, making material connections to possessions owned by other members of his family, and beyond. Giles has suggested that ‘some identities are . . . only achievable in death’ (2000: 123). It is quite possible that the identity conveyed by this particular ‘image in death’ was only fully realizable in the grave.

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In death, as in life, this man and the objects with him worked together collectively in remembering, reflecting, and recreating his social and material identity.

CASE STUDY 2: A WARRIOR BURIAL AT MILL HILL, DEAL, KENT At some point probably early in the second century BC, a man in his early thirties died (Fig. 7.11). As with the man at Kirkburn, the reasons for his death were not apparent archaeologically; again, there were no signs of anything untoward, and it is possible that he died of natural causes. Whatever the reasons for his death, placed within the grave alongside him was a series of objects that has been described as ‘one of the largest and most important collections of metal artefacts from any Iron Age burial in Britain’ (Stead 1995: 88). It is these objects – most of which are readily associated with the ‘image in death’ of a warrior – that form the main focus of our inquiry here. In discussing this burial, we draw primarily on Parfitt’s excavation report (1995) and Stead’s detailed consideration of the material from the grave within this (Stead 1995).

The Burial Process Following this man’s death, the decision was taken to bury him on top of a low chalk ridge in eastern Kent, overlooking the sea. Although no one had been buried on the hill within living memory, it may nevertheless have been thought of as a place associated with the dead because of a single Early Bronze Age barrow, which at the time would still have been an impressive earthwork dominating the skyline. Significantly, the ‘warrior’s’ grave (G112), while being located a short distance away from the barrow (40 m/130 ft), was aligned directly upon it (See Fig. 7.12). As we discuss in more detail below, this direct connection with a burial from the deep past may have been a specific strategy, ensuring that the site was established as a place of burial for the deep future (so to speak) as well. The grave cut for the man’s body was described as ‘unimposing’ by its excavator (Parfitt 1995: 19): it measured 1.7 m (5 ft 7 in) long

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Fig. 7.11 Burial G112 at Mill Hill, Deal (Parfitt 1995: Fig. 3). Numbers refer to the object catalogue within Parfitt (1995). # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

by 0.6 m (1 ft 11 in) wide, and would originally have been 0.8 m (2 ft 8 in) deep. Nevertheless, dug into the natural chalk, it would have taken some effort to excavate, small chalk blocks having to be prised out one by one. First into the grave was the man’s body. He was placed on his back in an extended position, both legs and right arm straight, left arm bent slightly to lie on top of the left leg. Intriguingly, given the fact that the grave cut was actually large enough to fit the whole body, the man’s shoulders were pushed close up against the top

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end, ensuring that his head and neck were propped up, his chin resting on his right-hand collar bone. It is possible that the small empty space at the lower end of the grave was taken up by someone standing in it to arrange objects around the body. Placed on his head was our first metal object – a decorated bronze band worn around the head, with an attached bronze strip running over the top. For want of a better word, this object is usually described as a ‘crown’. On excavation, the crown was found to be tipped forward slightly, down onto the man’s eyebrows; given the awkward position in which his head had been placed, it is possible to imagine that it could actually have sat like that in the grave as well. Next to his left shin was a brooch decorated with coral studs. More usually in Iron Age graves, brooches are found by the shoulder, probably having been used to fasten cloaks. In this case, it is possible either that a normal cloak had been intentionally and symbolically inverted (Stead 1995: 88), as with the mail at Kirkburn, or that the body had simply been wrapped in a funeral shroud, the brooch pinned to fasten it at the bottom. Next, a sword – iron, within a wood or leather scabbard decorated with copper alloy panels – was placed over the man’s right arm, its suspension ring (decorated with coral studs, like the brooch) still attached. Given the presence of a triangular strap end (again decorated with coral studs) adjacent to the left hip, it is possible that these had been unclipped from his waist. Perhaps significantly, the scabbard was placed front side down, its decorated panel hidden from view. Following this, a shield (probably made of hide, with copper alloy fittings) was placed on the opposite side of the grave to the sword, one end propped up slightly against the top of the man’s head, the other down by his knees. The shield had apparently been intentionally bent in two along its long axis prior to deposition.6 Finally, the grave was backfilled, chalk lumps clanking against the sheet-metal shield. Now the sword itself, not just its decoration, would finally have been hidden from view. It is not clear whether the grave was marked in any substantial way. Whether or not it was,

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This interpretation was put forward by the excavator as a result of the position of two of the shield binding corners, which were found immediately next to each other in the grave (Parfitt 1995: 20; Figure 4.9). It could also be argued that the shield had bent in situ due to the weight of soil placed on top of it (see Stead 1995: 64–72), but to us this seems a less likely explanation.

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Fig. 7.12 Mill Hill, Deal, excavations (Parfitt 1995: Fig. 2) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

this burial appears to have established a precedent for the next three centuries. Excavations by the Dover Archaeological Group during the 1980s (Fig. 7.12) revealed more than forty Iron Age and RomanoBritish burials in three clusters to the south of G112, and it is clear that many others were destroyed by quarrying in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Parfitt 1995: 30–4). Not all of these burials could be closely dated, but the brooches and pots found suggest that the cemetery as a whole had built up throughout the second and first centuries BC, continuing right through to the mid-second century AD (Stead 1995: 104). Unlike at Kirkburn, there were no clear material connections between these burials and the one described above.

Object and Human Histories Intriguingly, the ‘warrior’ buried within G112 was ‘a rather short young man of slightly feminine build’ (Parfitt 1995: 155; Fig. 7.13). He would have been around 1.6 m (5 ft 3 in) tall – smaller than all of the other adult males found at Mill Hill – and had a ‘small and gracile’

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frame (Anderson in Parfitt 1995: 115). Like all of the other Iron Age burials found across the site, he appeared to have led a relatively healthy life. An unusual non-metric variant trait (large ossicles of the lumbar) marked him out, skeletally. Interestingly, one of the skeletons within the south-west cemetery (G54) shared the same trait, suggesting the possibility that these two individuals were related. In addition, G112 also appeared to have suffered a trauma of some description to his spine, which had subsequently healed. Frustratingly, due to the poor condition of the bone, it was not possible to tell how this trauma had occurred (Anderson in Parfitt 1995: 117). Several of the objects placed within the grave had a complex history as well. We will come to see that this history is arguably even more

Fig. 7.13 Photo of skull and crown (Parfitt 1995: frontispiece) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

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revealing once the assemblage is considered together as a collective. Nevertheless, before moving on to discuss the whole, we will first look at each object in turn. The crown was a complicated object, of what is perhaps best described as slightly odd construction (Fig. 7.14). The decorated band that ran horizontally around the head was made from two separate segments of different lengths (380 mm/15 in and 245 mm/ 9.6 in, respectively). Each segment was decorated with a similar, but certainly not identical, flowing symmetrical wave-like pattern made with engraved/chased/incised lines, infilled in places with punched dots. As Stead points out, ‘the decoration does not run smoothly from one length to the other, suggesting that it was executed before they were riveted together’ (1995: 72). It is certainly the case that, whereas each segment’s decoration is coherent and ‘balanced’ in itself, in the two places where the segments meet once put together, the flow of the decorative scheme overall comes to an abrupt end, changing slightly awkwardly from one to the next (Fig. 7.15). Equally, the two segments were riveted together in such a way that they are unevenly related to the band that ran over the head (see Fig. 7.14, top right). It is also worth noting that the decoration on the crown was described as being ‘quite worn’ (Stead 1995: 72), suggesting that it was old when it went into the ground. In discussing the construction and decorative scheme of this object, we must of course be careful not to impose our own senses of logic and aesthetics onto the past. However, especially in the case of the latter, it does seem a little odd that the crown does not quite seem to ‘work’ in this sense, given that so many other Celtic art objects were decorated in a ‘balanced’ and well-considered way. One possible explanation for this imbalance, bearing in mind the two-piece construction of the crown, could be that the two segments had actually come from a totally different object, or even two separate (but similar) objects which earlier in their history had not been used together (although the similarity of their decorative schemes may imply that they were made together). If so, it is possible that the importance of the effect achieved through their combination into this new object – the crown – may have outweighed the importance of the ‘balanced flow’ of the decoration. It is even possible that the absence of the latter was designed to bring attention to the former. The relationship between sword and scabbard also suggested a complex history, in which previously separate objects may have

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Fig. 7.14 The crown’s construction (Parfitt 1995: Fig. 25) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

been combined. The sword was made of iron, and would originally have had a bone handle. Stead describes its shape as ‘typical La Tène I’ (1995: 59). The scabbard in which the sword was found would originally have been made predominantly from an organic material that had not survived – probably leather or wood. Attached to this were three bronze ‘fittings’: a front panel decorated in repoussé with two interlocking S-shapes (Fig. 7.16), an undecorated back panel with suspension loop at the top, and a chape end decorated with simple

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Fig. 7.15 Modern reconstruction of the crown, showing the point at which the decoration schemes on each of the two different segments (riveted together) meet # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

ring and/or dot motifs, some with unfilled settings for coral or enamel. In contrast to the sword, Stead suggests that the scabbard, particularly its diagnostic chape end, is more akin to a La Tène II form (1995: 64). In addition to these significant stylistic differences between the sword and the scabbard with which it had been buried, Stead also notes an important disjunction between the shape of the sword’s hilt and the top part of the scabbard. Essentially, the scabbard has a much more pronounced curve than the sword, meaning that the two would not have slotted together well. As a consequence, Stead suggests that ‘sword and scabbard were not originally intended for one another’ (1995: 59). Given this, and the fact that on the basis of their different styles (La Tène I and II) they could also have been made at quite different times, it might well be argued that, as with the crown, previously separate objects, with different histories, had been brought together.

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Fig. 7.16 Photo of scabbard decoration # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

It is likely that the shield had had a violent life history immediately prior to its deposition in the grave – as already mentioned, it had almost certainly been intentionally bent or snapped in two lengthways. Since it was probably made from hide, what survived were mostly the sturdier copper alloy corner bindings, edge trim, and clamps of the shield; in addition, one part of the central boss – decorated in

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openwork with what Stead describes as ‘a fairly random arrangement of trumpet-shaped voids’ (1995: 93) – was recovered (Stead 1995: 64– 72). The reasons for, and timing of, the shield’s apparent destruction are difficult to ascertain. One possibility that springs (perhaps a little too readily) to mind is that the shield could itself have been ‘symbolically’ killed, being made to follow the fate of the man it was buried alongside (perhaps because it had failed to protect him?). The three remaining objects within the grave were the brooch, sword suspension ring, and strap end (Fig. 7.17). All together, these appear fairly similar in terms of their decorative style and designs. All three have circular coral studs attached with bronze rivets, while the brooch and suspension ring have comparable panels of abstract, asymmetric decoration. It is possible that they were made and always used together as a set, but equally they could have been brought together because they were similar.

Assemblage History The history of the objects within the grave becomes even more complex once they are considered together as an assemblage. As Stead (1995: 88) points out, the range of techniques used altogether

Fig. 7.17 Photo of brooch, strap end, and suspension ring (Parfitt 1995: Plate X) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

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in their manufacture is extensive: casting (brooch, suspension ring, strap end, and chape), repoussé (scabbard), engraving (crown), and positive and negative openwork designs cut from sheet (shield), as well as the application of knobs of coral (brooch, suspension ring, strap end, and shield). The range of decorative motifs across the assemblage as a whole is equally broad. On the basis of this considerable variety, Stead raises the possibility that these pieces could have been ‘accumulated over the years’ (1995: 88). However, he goes on to note that the scabbard, suspension ring, and shield all have a shared motif – a crescentic shape filled with dots – which, he suggests, could equally imply that they were in fact all made and used at the same time (1995: 90). Indeed Macdonald (2007a: 332) specifically focused on this set of objects to critique the notion that Stead’s ‘styles’ or ‘stages’ were necessarily successive. It will be clear from what we have said already that our inclination is definitely towards the former interpretation. The assemblage of material culture had a long and complex history. The crown may have been assembled from two previously separate segments of decorated bronze. Its decoration was worn. The sword and scabbard could have been manufactured decades or even centuries apart. Never intended to fit together at all, their meeting late in life was signalled by the uneasy fit between sword hilt and scabbard mouth. Equally, the ring from which these would have been suspended during use was decorated in a very different style to the scabbard’s front plate, suggesting that these too may not have been combined from the very beginning. Both suspension loop and brooch had lost a coral stud, implying that they had probably had a long use-life prior to deposition. Finally, while there was nothing obvious to suggest that the shield had not been a single object from the very beginning, it too incorporated a range of decorative motifs, and had also apparently been transformed into a very different object prior to burial.

Constructing the ‘Warrior’ within the Grave In order to get closer to an understanding of why and how this man came to be combined with these objects in the grave, and of why and how these objects came to be assembled with each other, it is important now to take a step back (out of the grave, so to speak) to consider the bigger picture once again.

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For some years now, archaeologists have been aware that a man buried with a sword (and often other weapons as well) cannot necessarily be viewed as having been a ‘warrior’ in life. Collis (1973) made it clear in his seminal paper that a ‘burial with weapons’ was not always the same as a ‘warrior burial’. More recently, in his own updated and expanded version of Collis’s paper, Hunter (2005) made a similar point with his title, discussing the ‘image of the warrior’ in coins, settlements, and burials. He went on to consider the multiple versions of ‘the warrior’ with which we are presented during the Iron Age of Britain, using an extended theatrical metaphor to argue that the identity of a warrior was something that was ‘performed’ differently in different theatres of life (2005: 43). In addition, as we mentioned in the previous section, Giles (2008) has argued that, while swords did of course have the capacity to injure and kill, their role may have been primarily a protective one. She suggests that the complex decorative designs on East Yorkshire scabbards were intended to have an ‘apotropaic’ effect, both enchanting and impressing potential adversaries long before any fighting began. Following on from these arguments, it is quite possible to suggest that the man buried with sword and shield at Mill Hill may not have been a ‘warrior’ himself in any straightforward sense. His shield, for example, even before being bent in two, may not have been a hugely functional item in battle – it was thin and possibly could not have withstood any significant blows. Its role, whether in battle or outside it, could have been as much symbolic, or for display, as it was defensive (a suggestion that has been made for the Battersea shield as well). Equally, his crown – as the name given to it suggests – was not something that one would use in battle, at least in a direct, protective sense. Again, it might be argued that its role was more one of display than of physical protection. Finally, we return to the fundamental point made above – that these items may not even have been his. It is certainly possible that they were assembled specifically for the burial, creating an image that was warrior-like, but – as we will discuss in more detail below – perhaps they had other (more important?) messages to convey as well. It is important not to get too caught up in the question of whether or not this man was a warrior, or even if he necessarily owned the ‘weapons’ in the grave. His skeleton showed no clear signs of injury in battle, and we have no real way of knowing whether his material assemblage in death belonged to him in life. What we do know is that the people burying him chose to create that particular ‘image in death’ at that particular point in time. It is important to consider why this might have been.

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In thinking through this ‘image in death’, it is worth taking a brief detour away from the Iron Age into the Early Bronze Age, where a growing body of work has, over the past few years, come to address a number of directly related themes. To simplify an inevitably more complex picture, in Britain the Neolithic pattern of multiple burials in long barrows is replaced during the Early Bronze Age by individual burials under round barrows. The former generally have very few grave goods at all, whereas the latter are often ‘richly’ furnished with Beaker pots, bronze daggers, etc.. Traditionally, this shift was interpreted as being related to a broader societal change – from a communally focused and relatively egalitarian society, to one in which particular individuals came to dominate politically and economically. In death as in life, their status was supposedly marked through association with apparently ‘prestigious’ objects (for an overview of these and subsequent arguments see Jones 2008). Recently, however, this view has been challenged in two key ways. The first part of the challenge focuses on the notion of the ‘individual’. Drawing on broader critiques of the Enlightenment view of the self, archaeologists have challenged the very idea of ‘individuals’, highlighting the fact that the Western concept of ‘the person’ as a neatly bounded and stable entity with impermeable boundaries is very particular to our own society. Following Foucault, Strathern, and others, archaeologists have suggested that ‘identity’ and ‘personhood’ in the Early Bronze Age might also have been fluid and relational: ‘it is people’s relationships with others that make them who they are’ (Brück 2004: 311; see also Fowler 2004). Consequently, it has been suggested that during Early Bronze Age funerals, it may have been this composite, multiple, and ‘dividual’ identity – composed of many different people – rather than that of the single, individual person (in a bodily sense), that was stressed through the objects placed in the grave (Brück 2004 presents a good overview of these arguments). The second part of the challenge focuses simply on the idea that the ‘rich’ objects placed within Early Bronze Age graves necessarily belonged to, or even reflected the identity of, the person with whom they were buried. These items, it is argued, may well have belonged to many different people (most likely those present at the funeral), and thus, when deposited, would have emphasized the identity of the community as a whole rather than only that of the ‘individual’ buried (again, see Brück 2004). These discussions in relation to the Early Bronze Age material clearly have important ramifications for ‘warrior’ burials – and

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indeed all burials – within the Iron Age as well (see, for example, Hunter 2008, Joy 2010). Specifically in terms of the burial at Mill Hill, they raise two key possibilities. Firstly, that the ‘person’ buried could actually have embodied not one man but the community as a whole (through his composite, dividual identity); and secondly – as we have already discussed to an extent – that the grave goods accompanying him may not have been ‘his’ in any straightforward sense. We have already noted that several of the objects within the grave were old when deposited in the ground. The crown’s decoration was worn, suggesting that it may have been in use for decades, perhaps passed down from person to person as they assumed whichever identity it had come to represent. Equally, according to its stylistic attributes, the sword may also have been a century or two old when it finally came to be placed within the scabbard. It too, therefore, over the course of its long life, is perhaps best seen as an object owned by multiple people rather than an individually owned piece of material culture. As Giles points out in relation to the Kirkburn sword, such objects may have been thought of as ‘elders’ as well, ‘recalling past people and things, long gone’ (2008: 61) that were valued for the histories they had accumulated in ‘life’ (Joy 2009). The fact that these artefacts – ‘antiques’ even – finally came to be buried at this point rather than continuing their historical journey amongst the living is striking, somehow imparting this burial with added significance. At this point it is also worth reminding ourselves that this grave was apparently significant in another way as well, being the first on the hill for centuries, and seemingly establishing it as a site of burial for four hundred years to come at least. It seems quite conceivable that these two ‘significances’ were in fact related. We have already mentioned that, in looking back to the Early Bronze Age barrow on the hill and its association with burial in the deep past, people may also have been looking forward, establishing a long-term relationship and association upon which to build in future. When they buried the man in G112, they may well have been doing so with the future cemetery in mind.7 Equally, it is possible that, in a similar way and for the same reasons, they intentionally assembled a set of objects with a deep history as well. 7 It is worth noting here that the ‘warrior’ burial at Owslebury was the first grave cut there as well, apparently also establishing the site as a cemetery for centuries to come (Collis 1973).

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Summary As with the Kirkburn chariot burial, the material from Mill Hill seems carefully chosen and combined, leading us to ask what these objects were being asked to ‘do’. This does appear to have been an important burial, establishing a cemetery for generations to come, so that maybe the whole community would have been involved. The potentially disparate origins, life histories, and ownership(s) of the assemblage buried with the dead man may have come about because, and could even have been intended to symbolize the fact that, different families or groups were able to contribute items to it. The material components of that ‘image in death’ represent a fairly coherent set, in terms of the object types at least. The sword and scabbard (with suspension ring and associated strap link), shield, crown, and brooch (perhaps used to fasten a shroud) create a picture that, in less critical times, could easily have been seen as one of an aristocratic warrior from the ruling classes. On closer inspection, however, the picture is not quite so simple. In terms of the objects’ decorative styles, the set is not quite so coherent, exhibiting a wide variety of manufacturing methods and decorative techniques and styles. On this basis, it can be argued that this had not been a ‘set’ from the very beginning. We have suggested that this visual variability may have been intentional, helping to signal the fact these objects had different, and in many cases apparently quite long, histories, and diverse origins and ownerships as well. On deposition, some of the objects’ attributes were hidden or transformed. The bronze shield was bent in two, the sword and scabbard were unclipped from their belt and placed decorationdown alongside the man’s body. It is possible – if the man had ‘owned’ these artefacts – that the shield’s deliberate destruction and the sword’s inversion both signified, materially, the end of the social role with which they had been associated, as a result of his death. Alternatively – if these were offerings given by the mourners – it is possible that those objects needed to be transformed before being transferred from one person (and one life) to the next. It is, of course, impossible to say for certain which of these two alternatives is the most likely. However, as discussed, this burial does appear to have been ‘special’ in some way, establishing the hill as a place of burial for centuries to come. It is certainly conceivable that those making the burial collaborated to make it materially special as

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well, bringing together a series of objects with a deep and complex history, and perhaps also a deep and complex set of metaphorical and symbolic associations, in order to do so. ‘The warrior’ was by then a well-established image more broadly within Iron Age Britain; here, that image was drawn upon and manipulated in a particular way. It is possible that communal effort was required to construct an appropriate (if somewhat mythical) ‘ancestor’ from which the later cemetery could emerge. Those objects had been asked to ‘do’ a lot throughout their lives. It is quite possible that what they were asked to do in the grave was to condense time, space, and social roles, congealing these materially in a single grave. Ultimately, the ‘image in death’ created may have been that of a ‘warrior’, for want of a better word, but it was arguably also much more than that as well.

CASE STUDY 3: A WELWYN-TYPE BURIAL FROM BALDOCK, HERTFORDSHIRE At some point probably during the first few decades of the first century BC, a series of objects and a small scatter of cremated human bone were placed together in a large pit. The relatively ‘rich’ appearance and character of Welwyn-type burials has usually been seen as reflective of the high social status of the deceased. However, due to the fact that this deposit contained only very small amounts of fragmented bone, it is difficult to say much about the person who was buried there. We do not know if they were male or female, how old they were, or why they might have died. As a result, here more than ever, the artefacts accompanying the bones have to do the talking. In discussing this burial, we draw heavily on Stead and Rigby’s excavation report (1986).

The Burial Process Following this person’s death, the decision was taken to bury her or him in a style that, quite possibly, simply had not been seen before by many of those taking part.8 Unlike the two case studies we have just 8 This is the earliest known ‘Welwyn-type’ burial, and also one of the earliest known Iron Age cremations in southern England (Fitzpatrick 2007).

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discussed, this person was cremated prior to burial within a grave. It is difficult to infer much about the process of cremation from the evidence recovered. One specific aspect does, however, stand out – dramatically, the deceased appears to have been wearing or wrapped in a bearskin when placed on the funeral pyre, as a number of burnt brown-bear phalanges were mixed in with the human bone (Stead and Rigby 1986: 53). Following the burning of the body on the pyre, the cremated bones must have been gathered up. As mentioned above, only a very small amount (10.5 g) of bone was recovered.9 While the circumstances in which the grave at Baldock was initially discovered were not exactly ideal – it was bulldozed by builders working on the site – the fact that many other Welwyn-type burials have also contained very small quantities of bone suggests that probably only a small amount was actually there in the first place. The rest of the bone could have been left on the pyre, deposited elsewhere, or even circulated amongst the living (see Fitzpatrick 1997b, 213–14, for a helpful discussion). The first stage in the actual process of ‘burial’ was the cutting of a large pit, into the white chalky subsoil; this was circular in plan, 1.6 m (5 ft 3 in) across and perhaps originally 0.6–1 m (2 ft–3 ft 3 in) deep. While information about the positioning of many of the grave goods was not recorded during their initially unsystematic excavation, Stead and Rigby (1986: 52–3) were able to ascertain with reasonable certainty the original locations of each of the objects recovered (Fig. 7.18). First in was a bronze cauldron, placed roughly in the centre of the pit. Next was a large Dressel 1A amphora, its rim resting against the side of the grave. Lying at an angle on top of these items were two iron fire-dogs. Into the spaces around these were placed two shallow bronze dishes (one inside the other) and two small wooden buckets with bronze bands. A number of semiarticulated vertebrae and rib bones from a pig were found towards the south of the pit, suggesting that a joint of pork was also included. Finally, it is important to note the position of the cremated human (and brown bear) bones, which were recovered from ‘three points in the cauldron and elsewhere in the filling but not on the floor of the grave’ (Stead and Rigby 1986: 53). Given this fairly broad 9 McKinley (1997: 136) has estimated that, on average, 1625 g of bone normally remains at the end of the cremation process, and so here we are dealing with a tiny fraction of the original body.

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distribution, it is possible that the cremation was scattered into the grave as it was being backfilled.

Object–Object Connections In terms of their functional roles, the items buried within the pit work very well as a set. In the words of Fitzpatrick, the Baldock burial provides the best evidence from Britain for what is often thought to be a typical “Celtic feast”. There is a pair of fire-dogs to support the fire, a cauldron used for cooking meat over the fire, a pair of buckets for preparing drink, and a pair of basins for serving food and drink (2007: 131).

He goes on to mention the presence of a joint of meat, and might also have noted that the amphora contained wine. In terms of their outward appearance and ‘style’, this group of objects is not as coherent, probably because it was assembled from a wide range of places. In terms of their ultimate geographical origin, the artefacts are a mixed bunch. The cauldron is a fairly undistinctive type, known across north-west Europe; it could therefore have been an import, but may well have been manufactured in Britain. The Dressel 1A amphora is an Italian import, a type widely circulated within Gaul and beyond during the late second and early first centuries BC (Fitzpatrick 1985). The two shallow bronze bowls are also likely to have derived ultimately from Italy, again being a type widely imported into northern Europe during the Late Iron Age (Stead and Rigby 1986: 55). The fire-dogs on the other hand are distinctively British, and likely to have been manufactured fairly locally. The buckets, while sharing certain similarities with continental types, are also likely to have been made in Britain (Stead 1971: 274). The objects within the assemblage that are traditionally discussed as examples of ‘Celtic art’ are the buckets and fire-dogs, particularly the human and animal images incorporated within these (Fig. 7.19). Jope, for example, appreciated the ‘matter-of-fact rustic humanity’ of the faces on the bucket mounts (2000: 95) and the ‘sniffing nostrils, up-tilted head, and mouth detail’ of the ox heads on the fire-dogs (2000: 319). Fairly close parallels for both objects can be found in other Aylesford-type graves (the fire-dog resembles one found at

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Fig. 7.18 Reconstruction drawing of grave (Stead and Rigby 1986: Fig. 20). Numbers refer to the object catalogue within Stead and Rigby (1986). Image reproduced by kind permission of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

Welwyn, the heads on the bucket are extremely similar to those found at Aylesford), and indeed further afield in Britain (a more elaborate fire-dog was found in a bog at Capel Garmon, Conwy, another comparable bucket in a burial at Marlborough, Wiltshire).

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The other non-Celtic art objects within the grave – some definitely, some possibly imported – can also be seen as part of a wider material cultural tradition that emerged during the second and first Centuries BC: that of acquiring apparently ‘prestigious’ items from the Continent. In previous decades, this rise in imports was interpreted as an early sign of ‘Romanization’, the dynamic of which was placed firmly within the Roman/Gaulish ‘core’. However, more recently it has been argued that internal developments and an indigenous process of social hierarchization drove the demand for, and consequent importation of, ‘exotic’ goods (e.g. Hill 2007). The basic tenet of this argument is that emerging powerful groups or families chose to signal their social difference at feasts. In this context, their ability to access long-distance exchange networks, and their possession of ‘wealth’ sufficient to acquire ‘prestigious’ or ‘exotic’ items from abroad, would have been clearly displayed materially. At the same time, equally ‘exotic’ practices – such as the drinking of wine, the use of cups and dining sets, the playing of board games, etc. – would have served to drive this point

Fig. 7.19 Fire-dog and bucket drawing (Stead and Rigby 1986: Fig. 24). Image reproduced by kind permission of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.

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home, impressing those who were present, and surrounding them with a certain mystique in the eyes of those who were not. Whatever the nature of the broader, long-term processes behind their accumulation, the disparate life histories of the artefacts that made up the ‘set’ deposited at Baldock certainly stand testament to the original owner’s (or owners’) determination to accumulate this fairly specific collection of material culture.

Object–Human Connections Consideration of the ‘ownership’ of these goods forces us to focus our attention onto one crucial relationship within this assemblage: what exactly was the link between the person whose cremated remains were deposited along with these objects, and the objects themselves? As we have discussed already within this chapter – both in relation to theoretical debates conducted primarily in relation to the Early Bronze Age and in our case studies – it is important not to assume direct ownership of the material culture within a grave on the part of the person with whom it was buried. Perhaps reflecting this realization, people writing about these burials recently have skirted around the issue of exactly who was buried in the ‘rich’ graves of the earlier and middle first century BC, preferring to identify ‘client kings’ of Rome only from the very late first century BC onwards (e.g. Creighton 2000, Fitzpatrick 2007, Hill 2007). While a burial hierarchy is usually identified and discussed as such, its relationship to a social hierarchy is usually left either implicit or unexplored. Hill has perhaps come closest of anyone to committing himself on the issue. He describes a situation in which small family units in southern Anglia rose to political prominence early in the first century BC, marking themselves out as special through novel forms of material culture and social practices (Hill 2007: 29–30). Others too have suggested that ‘exotic’ imports and the rituals associated with them played an important role in the indigenous social transformations of the first century BC (e.g. Creighton 2000, 2006). These arguments have for the most part been very convincing. It is certainly possible to believe that the artefact assemblage represented at Baldock was both the result and a signifier of the kind of elite exchange networks and feasting displays envisaged for the period. Seemingly prestigious and valuable local objects sit comfortably

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alongside ‘exotic’ imports; together in combination, they may well have been used to entertain and impress. Although it is impossible to say for certain, one can imagine that the person part-buried within this grave might well have been the head of one of the powerful families described by Hill – the host/organizer in Fitzpatrick’s (2009: 398) terms – perhaps even being responsible for their rise to social prominence over the course of her/his lifetime. While we must always remain open to other possibilities, in this case a close personal link – something approaching ‘ownership’ – between the items buried in the pit and the person whose cremated remains were scattered in amongst them does seem a good interpretation.

Summary We have already touched on what the objects buried within the grave at Baldock had been asked to ‘do’ in a domestic, living context: they were signs of localized wealth and access to resources; signifiers of long-distance contacts and exchange; functional objects that played a vital role in feasts where social obligations were established and hierarchies reinforced; stage props that facilitated the performance of ‘Roman’ meals. Interestingly however, rarely – if ever – has the question been asked why these objects, which are thought to have fulfilled such an important suite of functions amongst the living, should have come to be deposited in a grave. What were they ‘doing’ in this burial context? Interestingly, if we consider the deposit as a whole, the artefacts completely dominate, with the cremated human bone appearing almost incidental. As a result, it almost seems inappropriate to talk about it as a burial; in many ways, it shares more similarities with a hoard. At this point, it is important to remember that we are discussing a cremation, a rite that creates a two-stage process of burial – that of burning the body on the pyre, and then of collecting up the burnt remains and dealing with them. Especially given our glimpse of a bearskin shroud, the cremation event itself (which is almost entirely invisible to us archaeologically) could well have been a very elaborate affair. It is possible that during this part of the ceremony the human side of things was dealt with – emotions released, personal obligations acknowledged, the body itself all but removed. The second stage of

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the cremation/burial process appears to have been more about the objects. But why should this have been so? We have already considered at length how this group of objects may have signified political power and social status during use; it is likely that, if so, they would have done the same in the grave. There are a number of possible explanations as to why, if they did play this important role in life, they were then placed in the ground when this person died. It is, for example, possible that the complex biography of this assemblage of objects was so bound up with that of the individual buried that they simply could not carry on being used after her/his death. Alternatively, it is possible that their deposition in the ground was part of a continuing political strategy implicating these objects in the assertion of social power; it could be that those who placed them in the grave were consolidating their status by demonstrating their ability not just to acquire these items but also to throw them away (see Bradley 1998: 38–40). Finally, it is possible that, for this powerful family at least, these objects had fulfilled their role. Generally speaking, the arguments made previously have suggested that the efficacy of objects such as these was directly related to their novelty – their ‘exotic’ quality, and the resulting impressiveness of the social practices they facilitated, depended on it. If the person buried had played a key role over the course of her/his lifetime in ensuring a rise to social prominence through the acquisition and use of these artefacts, after ten (or even twenty or thirty) years of use, they may have become oldfashioned, their novelty worn off. It is impossible to know which, if any, of the above explanations is closest to the real story. Given the fact that the third option successfully incorporates certain elements of the previous two, it perhaps represents the best compromise. Hill (2007), Fitzpatrick (2007), and others have envisaged a scenario in which the geographical focal points of power in south-east England, and the materiality involved in displaying that power, shifted subtly over the course of the first century BC. If this was the case, it is quite possible to envisage the burial at Baldock as being related to one very early ‘hotspot’, whose cooling down was initiated by the death of the person buried, and the deposition of their possessions in the ground. If so, there is an element of poignancy about what the objects were ‘doing’ in this particular grave – according to this account, they ended up there because their vibrancy and potency in life had waned.

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CASE STUDY 4: A MIRROR BURI AL AT PORTESHAM, DORSET One day around the time of the Roman Conquest – almost certainly within the decade AD 40–50 – a woman in her thirties or early forties died. As with all three of our previous case studies in this chapter, there were no clear archaeologically visible reasons why she might have done. Given her fairly advanced age (for that time), it is quite possible that she simply died of natural causes. Following her death, those involved in her burial decided to get together a substantial collection of objects to place alongside her in the grave. The artefact for which her burial is now most famous is a beautifully decorated bronze mirror (Fig. 7.20). Along with this, however, were three copper alloy brooches, two pairs of tweezers, and an ear scoop, an iron knife, a bronze pan, three ceramic vessels, and two joints of meat (Fig. 7.21). The grave was initially discovered in 1994 by a metal detectorist, and excavated archaeologically soon afterwards by Wessex Archaeology. As a result of that excavation, and of discussions with the grave’s finder, it was possible to reconstruct the likely original positions of all of the objects recovered (Fitzpatrick 1997a: 53).

Fig. 7.20 Photo of mirror (Fitzpatrick 1997: Plate 1) # Trust for Wessex Archaeology

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Animal bone Pottery 0

1m

Fig. 7.21 Plan of grave (Fitzpatrick 1997: Fig. 2) # Trust for Wessex Archaeology

Substantial numbers of surface finds collected from the fields in the close vicinity, and subsequent archaeological evaluations, suggest the presence of a sizeable first century BC–first century AD settlement and broader ‘Durotrigian’ cemetery nearby (Woodward in Fitzpatrick 1997a: 52; Valentin 2003); it seems likely that this woman had lived out at least part of her life there. In discussing this burial, we draw primarily on Fitzpatrick’s excavation report (1997a), but also on Joy’s recent consideration of the ‘object biographies’ within the grave (2009).

The Burial Process The spot chosen for the burial was on a gentle south-facing hillslope, which would have afforded panoramic views of the Dorset coast. The grave cut was relatively small, measuring 1.3 m (4 ft 3 in) long, 0.9 m (2 ft 11 ½ in) wide, and perhaps originally 0.5 m (1 ft 7 in) deep, dug

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into the heavy clay soils of the local area. Its short length prefigured the fact that, when people came to place the woman into it, they drew her knees up towards her upper body so that her legs were in a flexed position. She was laid on her left-hand side, her arms pointing down towards her knees. It is likely that she was clothed, as two of the brooches found close to her shoulders (where they would almost certainly have been worn normally) produced textile traces, suggesting that they had been pinning together a garment of some kind. She also appears to have been wearing the tweezers and ear scoop (or ‘toilet set’) on a girdle around her waist, perhaps along with the iron knife in its leather sheath.10 At the back of her body, the four vessels (three pots11 and one bronze pan) were arranged in a line, right up against the side of the grave, along with a shoulder of mutton. In addition, the bones from several joints of pork were scattered in a line in front of the body. Finally, the mirror was placed (seemingly quite precariously) on top of the body at her hip, its decorated side facing upwards. Pinned through the handle of the mirror was the third brooch (which during the mirror’s lifetime probably held a cloth or bag in place around the mirror). No signs of any such cover were detectable archaeologically, and so we can only guess as to whether at the point of burial the mirror was actually visible, or remained hidden within its bag. The grave would then have been backfilled, the woman and her accompanying objects laid to rest. Due to the fact that only a very small area was excavated around it, we do not know whether this grave formed part of a larger cemetery; it is, however, quite likely, given the presence of a substantial contemporary settlement nearby and the fact that ‘Durotrigian’ burials are usually found together in small groups (Fitzpatrick 1997: 68). Whatever the case, as people continued to go about their business in the settlement and fields nearby, her presence – and that of the objects chosen to accompany her – would no doubt have been keenly felt, changing the local landscape and its associations irrevocably.

10

The precise location of the knife within the grave is unknown (Fitzpatrick 1997a: 54). 11 It is most likely, although not certain, that the third ceramic vessel (which was fragmented when recovered) was originally complete, placed along with the others in the grave (Fitzpatrick 1997a: 54).

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Object and Human Histories The woman within the grave was, as already discussed, fairly old for the time when she died. Her skeleton provided several clues as to the fact that she had lived a long, and by our own standards hard, life: she had lost four of her teeth, had a large abscess in one, and showed signs of vitamin deficiency and lesions in others; she also had both osteoarthritis and degenerative disc disease in her back (McKinley in Fitzpatrick 1997: 54). Like another older woman buried with a mirror several centuries earlier at Wetwang village, East Yorkshire, the fact that she had lived with these physical difficulties, and to this advanced age, may have ensured that she was ‘a rare and valued repository of knowledge and lore’, ‘an important, powerful elder’ within her community (Giles and Joy 2007: 26 and 27). Whether or not she actually ‘owned’ the objects deposited is, as ever, an impossible issue to resolve. Both Fitzpatrick and Joy noted that they can essentially be divided into two categories: those associated with eating and drinking (pots, pan, joints of meat), and those associated with personal appearance (mirror, brooches, toilet set). The ceramic vessels were typical ‘Durotrigian’ forms, which had been made in the local region, but were probably from different parts of Dorset (Seager Smith in Fitzpatrick 1997: 55); they would have been used to prepare and serve food. Given the presence of mutton and pork joints within the grave – which, in contrast to the offerings we discussed at Kirkburn, quite possibly had not been eaten prior to going in the grave – it is conceivable that the pots had actually contained food when deposited. If so, all of these could represent offerings (from the funeral feast?) for the deceased in death. The bronze pan is slightly more complicated to interpret. It is a provincial Roman import, usually found as part of a two-part set with a strainer inside the pan. These items have been viewed as associated with the preparation of wine, but could equally have been used in other aspects of cooking (Fitzpatrick 1997: 58). No other imported Roman vessels of any sort are known from Iron Age Dorset (ibid), and so this pan may have been a ‘prestigious’ item, perhaps (like those found at Baldock) associated with access to long-distance exchange networks and ‘Romanized’ practices. The brooches that had been used to fasten this woman’s clothing are, like the pots, fairly unremarkable: ‘typical’ Colchester and Colchester-derivatives (ibid: 56). Interestingly, XRF analysis revealed

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that the first was made of brass and the second of bronze, suggesting – again like the pots – that despite their subsequent pairing in use, these objects had distinct origins and histories. It seems more than possible that the woman had often worn these brooches in life as well. The ‘toilet set’ also represents a relatively common find from the first century AD onwards (Eckhardt 2008); as Fitzpatrick suggests, she may well have worn this around the waist in life as well as death. The third brooch – the one attached to the mirror’s handle – is much more unusual, with its distinctive decoration (including the head of a zoomorphic beast), very rare form, and uncommon manufacturing technique (Fitzpatrick 1997a: 56). If the mirror was indeed a special object, it is perhaps unsurprising that this rare and elaborate brooch was chosen to fasten its covering. In years gone by, the presence of a mirror in a grave would generally have been taken as evidence that the woman buried with it was of ‘high status’ – the female equivalent of a ‘warrior’ burial (see Joy 2010). More recently, however, such simplistic assumptions – about the relationship between the person buried and the mirror, and about the former’s consequent social standing – have been called into question (e.g. Giles and Joy 2007; Joy 2008, 2009). Joy has suggested that, in their manufacture, mirrors required a complex series of material transformations, probably effected by a disparate series of people (2008: 548). This argument is certainly supported by the evidence from Portesham, where scientific analysis revealed that the mirror’s plate, edge-binding, and handle had all either been made from different ores or been smelted in different ways (Fitzpatrick 1997a: 62). Consequently, he argued, mirrors would ultimately have come to embody and signify this complicated social network. Building on this suggestion, Giles and Joy have argued that mirrors do not necessarily reflect the social status of the individual in the grave, and that rather than being ‘owned’ in a more straightforward sense, they may instead ‘be representative of the whole community and its history’ (2007: 21). It has also been argued that mirrors were tied up in political strategies or ‘techniques’ of the body whereby those with access to mirrors were able to dictate their appearance to an unprecedented degree (Joy 2009: 550), and that they may also have been viewed as possessing supernatural powers perhaps linked to the divination of the future (Giles and Joy 2007: 24). Intriguingly, given the potential powers of this object, Joy argues that given the condition of the plate and the presence of substantial wear caused by the brooch

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around the handle, this mirror had probably been kept covered – its magic under wraps – for most of its life (2009: 550).

Summary In contrast especially to our first two case studies, what the objects within this grave were asked to do may in fact have been relatively simple, particularly if we view this woman as having been an influential and valued elder member of her community. In drawing together the evidence, it is helpful to reiterate the distinction between those objects in the grave associated with eating and drinking, and those associated with personal appearance. While the grave might well be described as a relatively ‘rich’ Durotrigian burial (in terms of the number of objects in contained), most of its contents were not necessarily all that special. Those in the category of eating and drinking can easily be viewed as communal offerings from the funeral feast, either for use in the afterlife, or perhaps as a way of enabling her inclusion in the meal: everyday ceramic vessels, cuts of roast pork and mutton, and a (possibly, but not necessarily, special) bronze pan. Those in the category of personal appearance may well have been hers during life, worn often (if not necessarily always) outside the grave as well: brooches that fastened her cloak, a toilet set that perhaps she had accumulated over many years, an iron knife with which she had no doubt completed many and varied tasks. And then, of course, there is the mirror. Even this ‘beautiful, powerful and potentially terrifying or dangerous’ (Giles and Joy 2007: 27) object might, in fact, only have been performing a relatively simple function within the grave. Whether or not we believe that the woman did simply ‘own’ it, or that – as others have argued for other mirrors more generally – it was a communally owned object with a deep and complex history that had been entrusted to her, we need to ask why it should finally have been buried with her. One possible explanation is that, for some reason, this mirror had come to be so closely associated with her (and the powers she harnessed in using it?) that it simply could not be passed on to anyone else. Whatever the reasons, and whether or not her personal history and that of the mirror were associated in life or attributed only in death, they clearly came to be linked together so strongly that they were buried together on this hillside almost two thousand years ago.

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Ultimately, then, taken all together, the objects within the woman’s grave did many different things. Some of them – the knife, the ‘toilet set’, the two brooches at her shoulders – spoke of her character and personal history; others – the mirror especially – of her important standing within the community, and perhaps also her magical powers; others still – the pots, the joints of meat, the mirror again perhaps – of that broader community itself, and its relationship to her. This grave, and the networks of objects and people congealed within it, did not require large numbers of special possessions or exotic goods to work extremely effectively, as our final meaningful and powerful ‘image in death’.

CONCLUDI NG DISCUSSION As we discussed above, burial within the Iron Age can be described as having become visible in ‘pulses’, in different regions at different times. Celtic art objects might perhaps also be described as having emerged in pulses, within those burials. The intensity of the burial experience, the deliberate selection and combination of objects, and the clearly defined nature of the human–object networks within the graves, combine to provide a particularly rich context in which motivations and meanings are, arguably, clearer than usual. As with many other contexts in which Celtic art is found, such as deposits in rivers or hoards, the placement of items in a grave might have represented a moment of intense feeling and theatre. Ultimately, it was less the individual person that was being imaged in death than the connections surrounding them, leading out into the communities from which they came. Celtic art’s complexity of form and decoration made it most appropriate as a means of heightening and conveying the emotion surrounding these complex events, as well as imparting a degree of ambiguity to them. In each instance, the burial was the end point of a long process that we have tried to trace. At Kirkburn, for instance, Celtic art objects were absolutely central to the creation of the image in death. There, we saw objects doing substantial metaphorical work: through its combination of different sets of horse gear, the chariot may have represented the community; the inversion of the mail cloak may have signalled the end of a particular social position; the arrangement of

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pig bones may have symbolized the different groups gathered at the funeral feast. These material objects were reinforcing, even actively creating, the social. At Deal, again Celtic art objects were fundamental to the grave. In this case, we have suggested that each artefact buried had a complex, and probably long, history; it is probable that, as a result, they were valuable and meaningful to the people who placed them in the grave. As at Kirkburn, we argued that the Deal assemblage symbolized the community. It may even have created it: the need to construct a ‘warrior’ (perhaps as a suitable foundational burial for the cemetery to come) may have led to collaboration between different groups. Interestingly, while at Kirkburn sets of objects were disassembled during the burial, at Deal a new set appears to have been ‘made’. At Welwyn, we suggested that the objects buried had stood for a lot during their use-life – as signs of wealth, as signifiers of long-distance contacts, as functional objects that played a vital role in feasts, as stage props facilitating the performance of ‘Roman’ meals. However, rather than being used to create a new image in death, here we have argued that those objects were so bound up with the identity of a person during their lifetime that they simply had to be buried alongside them when they died. At Portesham again, we have argued that certain of the objects buried would have been closely associated with the woman during her lifetime. Others, however, seem to have been offerings from the broader community, perhaps from the funeral feast itself. The most striking object – the mirror – itself embodies the tension between individual and communal very well. It has been suggested recently that mirrors may have been communally owned (Giles and Joy 2007), and this may well have been true of the Portesham mirror. Whatever the case, we have argued that, as at Welwyn, this object and this person seem to have become so intimately associated in life that its life had to be ended with hers. Right from the start of this book, we have made clear our desire to explore the effects of objects on people, and to investigate the way in which ‘society’ was mutually constituted by objects and people. Both of these themes have featured prominently within this chapter. The power of objects to convey meaning, to represent the social materially, and to influence people’s understandings of the world, has been manifest throughout. Death was used to help create relationships between the living. The material resources used to do this changed

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over time, as continental imports came in during the late Iron Age creating new connections across space. In many ways this brought about a new set of challenges for the community. In the next chapter we look directly at the site of daily life and of the community in considering settlements.

8 Settlements ‘I little dreamt . . . into how many byways of archaeology it was to lead’ (Curle 1911: vii, reflecting on his excavation of the Roman fort at Newstead).

In stark contrast to earlier periods where settlements often prove elusive, Iron Age and Early Roman settlement sites are highly visible across large parts of Britain, both above ground as earthworks and below ground as cut features. As a result, they have formed the backbone of research into these periods for the past century and more. Hillforts, brochs, villas, and forts have all become icons of their time. Of the three categories of archaeological assemblage we have chosen to look at in detail, settlements are probably the most variable in character, especially since we have been as inclusive as possible in terms of what we take to be ‘a settlement’. Consequently, the category covers a very wide range of site types, encompassing places as varied as brochs/crannogs, hillforts, oppida, military camps/forts, villas, and ‘settlements’ (the latter essentially meaning small-scale, rural ‘domestic’ sites). There is also, of course, considerable variability even within individual site categories – ‘domestic settlements’ can often look completely different even within one small region; some ‘hillforts’ are empty of features, others are packed with roundhouses and pits, etc.. Nevertheless, despite such differences, these general categories do provide a useful starting point from which to begin a broad analysis. However they are named, or whatever material form they took, settlements were, for the most part, sites where many people spent significant parts of their lives (of course with some exceptions, such as intermittently occupied hillforts). As Curle’s quote (above) suggests,

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because of their strong spatial signature and temporal persistence, settlements represent particularly densely tangled nodes in the human/object networks, or ‘byways’, of Iron Age and Early Roman life. It is for this reason – for the insight that these sites offer in trying to understand how Celtic art fitted into these rich assemblages – that we decided to focus on them here. Due to the fact that settlements generally witnessed repeated and persistent occupation, use, and deposition, they might well be said to differ significantly from our previous assemblages – hoards and burials – which can rarely, if ever, be described as quotidian. Hoards and burials provide snapshots of actions in the past; settlements represent processes. One of the central points of discussion within the latter part of this chapter is, however, whether or not the more ‘everyday’ character of settlements necessarily meant that the deposits made on them involving Celtic art occurred in similarly everyday circumstances. In this chapter, following an initial broad-brush analysis of the patterns evident on settlements, our investigation narrows to look in detail at the Celtic art objects deposited on three specific sites: the enclosed rural settlement at Gussage All Saints, the hillfort at Bury Hill, and the Roman military fort at Newstead.

SETTLEMENTS: RECENT DISCUSSIONS Over the past two decades, there have been substantial amounts of discussion about settlement evidence within the Iron Age and Roman periods in Britain. Within the Iron Age, discussion has focused on three main themes: the geographical orientation of settlements, especially roundhouses (e.g. Hill 1989, 1995; Oswald 1997; Parker Pearson 1999; Pope 2007; Sharples 2010); the use of space in relation to both tasks and time, again especially within roundhouses (e.g. Hingley 1990; Fitzpatrick 1994; Parker Pearson 1996; Pope 2007; Webley 2007); and the role that ‘structured deposits’ on settlements may have played in determining and reasserting the world view of those who made them (e.g. Hill 1994, 1995; Parker Pearson 1996). It has been suggested that people oriented their houses towards the rising sun for ideological rather than purely functional reasons; that different parts of houses were used for different tasks at different times of

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the day; and that ‘ritual’ deposits made in and around settlements would have played a crucial role in determining people’s understanding of the world in which they lived. More recently, these approaches have been criticized from various positions. It has been suggested that they can serve to maintain an unhelpful ritual/functional opposition, and that ritual interpretations have been favoured at the expense of other more prosaic ones which work equally well (Brück 1999b; Brudenell and Cooper 2008); that their generalized application can conceal significant diversity within the archaeological record (Brück 1999b; Webley 2007); and that they are based on outmoded structuralist approaches, and ignore environmental factors to an unacceptable degree (Pope 2007). Interestingly, the most recent work on settlements has tended to shy away from the identification of broad trends, moving towards individual site-specific case studies (e.g. Webley 2007; Woodward and Hughes 2007; Brudenell and Cooper 2008). Within the Roman period, discussions of settlement have also been vigorous and wide-ranging. Key issues that have been explored include: the way in which settlement space was drawn into the constitution of complex cultural identities (e.g. Clarke 1999a; James 2001); how architecture may have been used as an ideological statement (e.g. E. Scott 1991; S. Scott 1994; Clarke 1999b); how we, as archaeologists, might use Roman buildings to approach an understanding of the complex and problematic process of ‘Romanization’ (e.g. Hingley 1989; Revell 1999; Taylor 2001, 2007; Gosden 2005); and what a comparison of finds assemblages can tell us about the variability of practice within different types of buildings (e.g. Cool 1995; Revell 1999, 2009; Allason-Jones 2001; Evans 2001; Cool and Baxter 2002; Gardner 2007). While there has been less overt criticism of these approaches within the literature than of those developed for the Iron Age, with occasional exceptions (e.g. Taylor 2007) there has been a noticeable tailing-off of settlement-focused work in recent years. Within this chapter, our main interests are the kinds of settlement contexts in which Celtic art was deposited (and used?), the effects it had on those contexts, and the human/object networks that developed as a result.

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SETTLEMENTS AND CELTIC ART: BROAD PATTERNS In total, 495 Celtic art objects have been found on settlements. This chapter therefore deals directly with 19 per cent of all those within the database. Interestingly, these figures remind us that, as we discussed briefly in Chapter Three, the deposition of Celtic art on a settlement was actually quite a rare occurrence. Celtic art objects were, for example, deposited in far greater overall numbers within landscape hoards, while all of the different settlement types combined produced fewer than twice the number of objects found in watery deposits and in burials. Once we stop to consider what these figures would be if we looked at other categories of material culture – pots, iron nails, or animal bones, for example – the full implications of these proportions become clear. In the case of these other materials, settlements would totally dominate. Thousands of nails, hundreds of thousands of pots, and probably millions of animal bones have been excavated on settlements. While these have of course all been found within graves, hoards, and so on, the numbers would be minuscule by comparison. Even taking the differential biases of recovery into account, relatively speaking, in relation both to other possible contexts of deposition and to other materials, it was an extremely rare occurrence for Celtic art to be deposited on a settlement. As a result, the objects found within them arguably deserve extra-special attention. Figure 8.1 shows the proportions of Celtic art objects deposited within settlements. As in previous chapters, since the numbers for all other contexts are depicted alongside, it is possible to see which types were actually deposited preferentially in settlements. Those items that appear most prominently are swords, tankards, and bowls/cauldrons/ buckets. Those that stand out as having been deposited more often in other contexts are arm rings and armlets (which, as we have seen, were deposited almost exclusively in burials and hoards), and torcs/ collars (almost all of which have been found in hoards). Interestingly, once these objects are divided by site type, no single place dominates: hillforts are most prominent, but Iron Age and Romano-British rural settlements and Roman camps/forts also feature significantly, and in fact all site types are fairly well represented (Fig. 8.2).

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g/ ar To mle t rc /c ol la r D ag ge r Sw or d Sh i el H d or se ge ar H or nca p M irr or Sp oo Bo n w Ta l/c n au ka ld rd O ron rn /b am uc An en ket im ta al ls /h um trip an O th fo er rm C el tic ar t

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

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rin

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Fig. 8.1 Relative proportions of each type of Celtic art object within settlements in comparison to those from all other contexts (expressed as a percentage of the total number of finds within each context) 250

No. of artefacts

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lla Vi

R ca om m a p/ n fo rt

um id pp O

ttl RB em en t se

t ttl IA em en se

t illf or H

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Fig. 8.2 Numbers of Celtic art objects found on each site type

The overall distribution of settlements where Celtic art objects have been found is also revealing (see Fig. 8.3). We touched upon the temporal attributes of this distribution in Chapter Three, where we saw how, especially towards the latter part of the first century AD, the distribution of Celtic art shifted northwards, appearing in notably large numbers within Roman forts. In addition, there is an almost total absence of finds in East Anglia – the region that produced

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263 Hillfort Broch IA settlement RB settlement Roman fort Villa Oppidum

Fig. 8.3 Distribution of Celtic art by settlement type

by far the densest distribution of finds overall (see Fig. 3.2). This discrepancy reminds us again that, in different parts of the country, the same artefacts had quite different depositional histories. There were clearly large numbers of Celtic art objects in circulation in East Anglia, but, even more than elsewhere, these did not come to be deposited in settlement contexts.

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Due to the fact that the category of ‘settlements’ is such a broad one, encompassing so many different types of site and a multitude of depositional contexts, it is arguably much more difficult to bring out meaningful patterns at this very general level than it was in the case of hoards and burials. Consequently, here more than ever, it is necessary to shift the scale of our analysis to focus on a few individual sites in detail. In selecting three settlement sites for further investigation, we were mindful of the differential distributions of objects between site types overall, where we saw that the most prevalent sites (in terms of the numbers of Celtic art objects found) were hillforts, Roman forts, and Iron Age settlements. In the sections that follow we therefore decided to focus on one each of the most prevalent site types: an Iron Age settlement at Gussage All Saints, Dorset; a hillfort at Bury Hill, Hampshire; and a first/second century AD Roman fort at Newstead in the Scottish Borders. They are considered below in chronological order.

INTRODUCTION TO CASE STUDIES 1 AND 2

Wessex in the Iron Age Since our first two case studies are of broadly similar date (Middle Iron Age) and geographical location (about 50 km/30 miles apart on the chalklands of central southern Britain), it is worth providing a little background information about the region during that period in order to set the scene before we get into the details of the two sites (see Sharples 2010 for a detailed study of this region). The chalklands of Wessex have been a key area of research and excavation for centuries, especially so prior to the advent of development-led archaeology. Many of the best-known excavations have been carried out there, by many of the best-known archaeologists. During the Middle Iron Age (c.400/300–100/50 BC), the period with which we are most concerned here, the region saw significant changes in terms of broad patterns of settlement (Sharples 2010: Ch. 2). Many hillforts, most of which had been constructed during the Early Iron Age, appear to have been abandoned. Those that did remain in use (commonly termed ‘developed’ hillforts), including Danebury and Maiden Castle, saw their boundary ditches re-sculpted on a massive

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scale, and witnessed substantially increased settlement. However, towards the end of the second century BC, the use of even these hillforts started to decline. At the same time, a small number of brand-new enclosures were constructed (including our second case study site at Bury Hill); these perhaps represented the physical manifestation of a new social and political challenge to the traditional, ‘developed’ community structure based on hillforts (Creighton 2000, Sharples 2010). As well as hillforts, the Middle–Late Iron Age landscape of Wessex would have been dotted with small, rural settlements, including our first case study site at Gussage All Saints. Those that show up best on aerial photographs – and so are best represented archaeologically – are sites which were originally surrounded by enclosure ditches; it is quite possible that other, unenclosed sites were much more numerous than they currently appear. Many of these smaller enclosed sites, like hillforts, were first constructed in the Early Iron Age. They can be isolated or grouped into small clusters, and are generally surrounded by fields that are assumed to demarcate the land farmed (and owned?) by their occupants. During the Middle Iron Age, many of the settlements in the vicinity of ‘developed’ hillforts were abandoned, presumably because their occupants moved into the hillforts themselves. However, in other areas, especially where hillforts are scarce (e.g. Cranborne Chase where Gussage All Saints is located), small enclosures continued in use throughout the Iron Age (Sharples 2010: 77). As a result especially of Hill’s work in the 1990s (Hill 1994, 1995), settlements within Wessex have been a core focus for interpretations relating to ‘structured deposition’ in the Iron Age. In short, Hill suggested that many acts of deposition within settlements at that time were symbolically meaningful. Thus, many objects (particularly those deposited within storage pits and boundary ditches) should be seen as having ‘ritual’ overtones, as well as being ‘rubbish’. Interestingly, Hill has suggested that Celtic art was usually excluded deliberately from ‘structured deposition’ events: certain materials/symbols could generally not be “presenced” [within those deposits], for example particularly impressive metalwork, weaponry and personal adornments. Those materials/symbols which were presenced were heavily redolent of the domestic and agricultural (Hill 1995: 114).

If this was indeed the case, it is particularly important that we investigate those sites (and the contexts within them) where Celtic art objects did come to be deposited.

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Metalworking in Wessex Sharples recently summarized the evidence for metalworking in Wessex over the course of the Iron Age (2010: 133–46). Relevant material has been found both on hillforts and smaller enclosure sites. Although overall the evidence for both ironworking and bronzeworking is slight, there are indications of different forms of metalworking on hillforts and smaller settlements, as we discussed in Chapter Four. Sharples was also able to suggest some broad temporal trends in relation to both materials. Prior to 300 BC, ironworking was carried out on a small scale at the domestic level, using local ores. However, after that date, iron appears mostly to have been imported (in the form of currency bars) from outside the region, and to have been worked in more specialized ways. Copper alloys were also worked on a relatively small scale throughout the Iron Age. As with iron, there is some evidence to suggest that, especially towards the latter part of the Iron Age, the main alloys were produced on specialist sites (including Hengistbury Head). Gussage All Saints, our first case study, represents the key metalworking site within the region, due to the amounts and quality of metalworking evidence found there.

Celtic Art in Wessex In total, 122 of the objects within our database were found on settlements in Wessex.1 Overall, this represents a relatively large proportion (26 per cent) of all the settlement finds – perhaps a reflection of the number of large-scale excavations carried out there, perhaps a consequence of depositional practice in the past, perhaps a combination of the two. The vast majority of these artefacts (99, or 81 per cent) were found on ten different hillforts, the rest on six rural settlements, two oppida (Hengistbury Head and Silchester, Hampshire), and one Roman fort (Waddon Hill, Dorset). Hillforts produced an average of 9.9 finds per site, other settlements just 1.2. In terms of the contexts in which objects have been found, no single type of context really stands out: finds have come from hillfort ditches, house gullies, and enclosures, post-holes, and storage pits; many were also found as stray finds (especially within hillfort Here we have defined ‘Wessex’ simply as the counties of Dorset, Hampshire, and Wiltshire. 1

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interiors). However, echoing the nationwide distributions in Figure 8.3, there were notable discrepancies in terms of the types of object deposited on different sites (Fig. 8.4).2 The most obvious of these is a marked bias towards swords (and sword fragments) in hillforts. Having outlined a broad context for our first two case study sites, it is time now to turn our attention to the specifics of the Celtic art found at Gussage All Saints.

CASE STUDY 1: THE MANUFACTURE OF CELTIC ART AT GUSSAGE ALL SAINTS

An Introduction to Gussage The enclosed settlement site at Gussage All Saints, on Cranborne Chase in Dorset, was excavated in 1972 on behalf of the Department of the Environment, as a rescue excavation in response to plough damage (Wainwright 1979). Three main phases of probably 2 It is important not to read too much into the Wessex-specific pattern, as we are dealing with such a small sample size (23 objects) from sites in the region that are not hillforts.

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continuous occupation were defined: pre-fourth century BC, third– first centuries BC, and late first century BC–first century AD. In Phase 1 the site consisted of a roughly D-shaped enclosure (120 x 100 m or 394 x 328 ft) with sizeable ‘antenna’ ditches outside the timber gateway entrance. Internally, large numbers of pits, post-holes (many of which formed four-post structures), and ‘working hollows’ were revealed. In Phase 2 the main enclosure ditch was recut and the ‘antenna’ ditches redefined, both on a more massive scale. Inside the enclosure, two ring-gully structures were identified towards the back. Pits and post-holes were found in smaller numbers than in Phase 1; most of these were located within the northern half of the enclosure, suggesting that the southern half may have been reserved for some other purpose at this time. In Phase 3 the main enclosure ditch was apparently allowed to silt up, and a series of smaller compounds defined within it (the ditch presumably remained visible as an earthwork or hedge). Substantial numbers of pits and a few post-holes were associated with this late phase. The site produced a massive finds assemblage, including sherds from an estimated 10,205 pottery vessels, over fifteen thousand animal bones, and numerous quernstones, chalk loom weights, and spindle-whorls, glass beads, bronze and iron brooches, tools, bone points and combs, etc.. In terms of its finds, the site is probably best known for the massive assemblage of metalworking debris (including clay moulds and crucibles for making horse gear) discussed below. In addition, human bones from a minimum of 53 individuals (38 infants, 15 adults) were recovered – one from Phase 1, seven from Phase 2, and 45 from Phase 3. The majority of these had been buried as complete inhumations in pits (see also Hill 1995). Gussage has generally been viewed as a fairly normal, agrarian settlement, although some writers have suggested that its occupants may have specialized in metalworking (an issue we discuss in detail below), and as a result may even have occupied a position of high social status. Sharples has pointed out that, like many other comparable sites in the region at that time, the enclosure at Gussage was positioned in order to look out over the immediately adjacent valley and river system (which it presumably farmed) rather than the whole of the local landscape (2010: 61). Intriguingly, following the site’s excavation, an ‘almost identical twin’ site – which appears from aerial photographs to be extremely similar in form – was identified, 2.5 km (3.5 miles) to the north (Bowen in Wainwright 1979: 181). A number

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of other, probably contemporary ditched enclosures of similar size were also found within a radius of a few kilometres (ibid, 179–83). The nearest hillfort to the site would have been Badbury Rings, 8 km (5 miles) to the south-west. Wainwright (1979: 188–191) discussed the site’s broader landscape context in some detail. He pointed out that according to much of the material culture found there, Gussage must have been firmly situated within a wide geographical network of social contact and exchange. The majority of the quernstones, for example, came from at least 8 km (5 miles) away, and some from as far afield as Dartmoor and the Isle of Wight. Similarly, analysis of inclusions within the pottery implied that most of the ceramic assemblage originated over 20 km (12 miles) away in the Wareham-Poole region. As a result, Wainwright suggested that Gussage, as (what he considered) a specialist metalworking settlement, could be seen as just one node within a wide trade and exchange network of comparable settlements that were equally specialized in other things (pottery or quernstone manufacture, weaving, etc.).

Celtic art at Gussage In terms of Celtic art at Gussage, our main point of interest lies in the substantial evidence for metalworking (of both bronze and iron) recovered, and in particular the exceptional collection of moulds – used only for making sets of horse/chariot gear – found in Pit 209 towards the front of the enclosure. Here, we are not in fact investigating Celtic art objects as such, but the ‘ghosts’ of their manufacture. While Pit 209 has attracted most of the attention within subsequent discussions, it is very important to recognize that metalworking evidence was in fact recovered in many different contexts, throughout all three phases (Fig. 8.5). While aspects of this broader evidence have been discussed in a number of papers over the years (Spratling 1979; Foster 1980; Spratling et al. 1980; Clough 1985; Fell 1988; Henderson 1991), a synthetic account of it all has yet to be produced. In addition to this manufacturing evidence, two further objects that would normally be classed as Celtic art were recovered. The first was an iron chape fragment from a sword scabbard, found in a Phase 1 pit towards the north of the enclosure; no other metal finds, or

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indeed any other small finds, are listed as having come from the same pit. The second object was a fragment of a bridle bit. This item was recovered within the same pit as the large deposit of metalworking debris (Pit 209). It was made from bronze-plated carbon steel, and was described by Spratling as being ‘old and heavily worn’ (1979: 129) as well as broken. As we saw earlier in the chapter, both swords and horse gear (even in a fragmentary state) are relatively rare in Iron Age rural settlement contexts. In his discussion of Pit 209, Spratling suggested that the fragment of bridle bit could essentially be seen as a piece of scrap metal caught up in the metalworking process. It is possible that the chape fragment was also a piece of scrap metal. However, its depositional context is not quite so suggestive of this interpretation, and so the fact that it was a chance loss, or simply an inadvertent piece of ‘rubbish’ from the site, must also be considered. The fact that, on this site which clearly produced substantial amounts of Celtic art, so little was actually found reminds us, yet again, that it was a very rare occurrence indeed for this material to be deposited.

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Metalworking Evidence Material associated with bronzeworking was recovered from 16 features across the site – four from Phase 1, seven from Phase 2, and five from Phase 3 (see Fig. 8.5; information from Spratling 1979: 146). Numerous moulds, crucibles, tuyeres, hearth fragments, pieces of slag, casting lumps, and offcuts were recovered from 39 separate contexts, most containing several of these elements in combination (Wainwright 1979: Table XIV). Significant amounts of material associated with ironworking were also found. As the evidence has not yet been discussed in any detail, without going back to examine the site archive in detail it is difficult to get a proper impression of what this consisted. The main site report features a photograph of a small bowl furnace found within a ‘working hollow’ near the main entrance of the site (Wainwright 1979: Plate XXXIII), while numerous ironworking and smithing tools – including chisels, punches, and files – were recovered (Fell 1988); two balances, which could well have been used for weighing out metal, were also found. In addition to these items, very large quantities of iron slag – over 700 kg in total – were identified (Clough 1985). Clough pointed out that some of these weighed up to 7 kg, suggesting that they were therefore ‘certainly not the by-products of a small bowl furnace [like the one which was found] as most of the pieces had a plate structure from being tapped out of a [much larger] furnace’ (1985: 184). He also made it quite clear that the ironworking evidence at Gussage was an extremely important aspect of the site that he felt had been unjustly ignored in earlier publications (ibid). Many, but by no means all of the features associated with metalworking were located towards the front of the enclosure (see Fig 8.5). While the relationship between the deposition and use of objects is often difficult to assess, the presence of tiny fragments of hammerscale in the same general area implies that metalworking probably did take place in that part of the settlement. Even without Pit 209, the assemblages of metalworking-related material from Gussage are probably the most substantial and impressive from that region in the whole of the Iron Age (Sharples 2010: 133–46).

Pit 209 Pit 209 was located immediately inside the enclosure’s elaborate entrance, to the left-hand side as you come in (see Fig. 8.5). The

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Fig. 8.6 Section of Pit 209 (Wainwright 1979: Fig. 96). Reproduced by kind permission of English Heritage

pit was assigned to Phase 2 of the site’s occupation, an attribution fully supported by subsequent radiocarbon dates that suggest a date probably in the second century BC (Garrow et al. 2010: 87). Pit 209 had a standard ‘bell-shaped’ profile, and measured approximately 2 m (6 ft 6 in) in diameter and depth (Fig. 8.6). From the surface, and throughout its upper fills, it was no different from the many other pits across the site (Spratling 1979: 126). However, towards the bottom third of its fills, its contents were certainly unusual: the lowest 70 cm (27 in; layers 10–12 in Fig. 8.6) were comprised almost entirely of ironworking and bronzeworking debris, along with small amounts of domestic refuse, all within a matrix of charcoal, ash, burnt clay, and soil. All in all, the metalworking debris consisted of over seven thousand mould fragments (from several hundred investment moulds), six hundred crucible fragments, tuyere fragments, ironworking slag, bronze and iron scrap, hammer-scale, a billet of tin-bronze, and four bone tools for modelling the clay moulds (Spratling 1979: 127; Foster 1980). Interestingly, one of the small number of fragments of disarticulated human

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Fig. 8.7 Moulds for making bridle bits (after Wainwright 1979: Fig. 104). Reproduced by kind permission of English Heritage

bone from Phase 2 (a skull) was found slightly further up the pit in Layer 6 (Keepax in Wainwright 1979: 166). The pit apparently took a whole month to excavate (Spratling 1979: 126), a fact that speaks volumes about the complexity of the deposits and the care with which they were excavated. All of the moulds found within the pit had been used for the manufacture of horse/chariot gear: bridle bits (Fig. 8.7), terrets, linchpins, strap unions, and button-and-loop fasteners. Spratling estimated that a minimum of 50 separate sets were represented; for instance, there were at least 13 clearly different styles of terret ring. Detailed post-excavation analysis of joins between crucible fragments revealed that the majority occurred between those in the same layer, or in adjacent layers (Spratling 1979: 128; see also Foster 1980: Figs. 20 and 21). On the basis of this patterning, Spratling argued that the order in which moulds had been deposited within the pit closely reflected the order in which they had been manufactured. As a result, he suggested that the occurrence of moulds for different types of object in different

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layers could be seen as significant, since it suggested that they had been made in succession. Building on Spratling’s observations and further analysis, Foster (1980: 33) subsequently added that it therefore seemed likely that the terrets (most of which were found in the lower layers) had, for example, been made before the bridle bits (most of which were found in the upper layers). It is possible to put forward two alternative scenarios in terms of the timescale over which the material in Pit 209 had accumulated. The first views the pit’s contents as the result of a single spell of metalworking, which perhaps took place over the course of a few days; in this case, it is possible that the moulds and other debris were dumped directly into the pit. The second scenario views the pit’s contents as the result of low-levels of metalworking at Gussage over a relatively long period of time, perhaps even several years; in this case, given the fact that the pit’s lower fills were very densely packed with moulds and showed no obvious signs of silting, it is most likely that the material was accumulated somewhere else (for example, on the floor of a workshop) before being dumped into the pit in one go. While the moulds were necessarily fragmentary (they had to be broken to get the bronze objects out), it is worth noting that the crucibles were also fragmentary, possibly hinting at a time delay between use and deposition. Within previous accounts, both of these scenarios have been explored. The first, short-term scenario was suggested by Spratling in his preliminary assessment of the material (Wainwright and Spratling 1973: 124–6) and by Foster (1980: 37); the second, longer-term scenario was suggested by Spratling when it came to the final publication of findings at Gussage (Spratling 1979: 145). Interestingly, both Foster and Spratling drew on broader interpretations of the site as a whole when deciding which side of the fence to come down upon. Spratling, in his 1979 discussion, argued that taken as a whole, the evidence from across the site indicated that metalworking had been a continual activity over the course of many years; he also suggested that complete chariots (not just the metal parts) had probably been made there. Given these circumstances, he went on to argue, it was much more likely that its occupants would have made one or two chariots a year, rather than dozens in one go. Foster, on the other hand, drew on the ‘high level of technical achievement’ of the bronze casting to suggest that ‘the craft [of metalworking] may not have been an out-of-season activity within the farming cycle of the Gussage

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settlement. In fact, it seems more likely that these are the products of a temporary workshop set up by itinerant metallurgists to accomplish one particular job’ (1980: 37). Given the character of Pit 209’s lower fills (which was densely packed with artefacts and showed very little evidence of silting), it does seem likely that the metalworking debris was deposited within a short space of time. In deciding whether, prior to deposition, this material was accumulated over a long or a short timescale, it is important to bear in mind two things: Foster’s observation that the moulds for different components of the horse-gear ‘set’ were differentially distributed throughout the deposit; and Spratling’s observation that the order of deposition within the pit reflected the order in which the objects had been made. Taking both observations together, it seems most likely to us that the material within Pit 209 was ‘created’ as well as deposited within a short space of time. While it is possible that terrets were made for, say, a few years, followed by bridle bits for the next few years, it seems much more likely that this pattern would have come about in the short term, with all of the terrets being made one day, for example, and all of the bridle bits the next. The latter scenario would have resulted in complete ‘sets’ of horse/chariot gear being available for distribution together, while the former would not. Once it is accepted that the deposit within Pit 209 was probably the result of a single spell of metalworking, it becomes especially interesting to consider the implications of the fact that at least 50 sets of horse/chariot gear, in at least 13 different ‘styles’, were made in one go. The fact that so many sets were manufactured at once suggests that their makers were either responding to some kind of bulk or multiple order, or that they were stockpiling material for the future; the fact that they chose to make 13 styles of terret might suggest that different groups had their own sets of styles. It is certainly possible that, as Spratling suggests, complete chariots (not just their metal accoutrements) were made at the site. It is vital to stress that in viewing the contents of Pit 209 as essentially a one-off event, we are not suggesting that metalworking itself was a one-off event at the site, perhaps undertaken by a visiting itinerant specialist. We would argue, contrary to a number of other interpretations of the site (but in line with Spratling 1979), that the broader evidence discussed above clearly indicates that Gussage was associated with metalworking throughout all three phases of its

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occupation. This is not to say that metalworking was carried out on anything like a permanent basis, or even very regularly; it could well have been fitted in alongside and in between the more regular demands of farming life. What we may actually be seeing in Pit 209, therefore, is a single ‘snapshot’ of evidence – the remains of one metalworking episode of many. In this particular case, for whatever reason, material came to be deposited within a sub-surface feature (rather than, say, being chucked onto a midden outside the enclosure) and thus preserved. As Spratling points out (1979: 141), without this kind of ‘lucky’ event, substantial metalworking activity could easily remain almost invisible archaeologically.

Summary Within previous considerations of the manufacture of Celtic art, discussions have often focused on ‘ateliers’, ‘master craftsmen’, and ‘aristocratic patrons’ (e.g. Fox 1958, Jope 2000). It is important to acknowledge, however, that for all the attention paid to ‘great works’ and the high end of the market, earlier writers were remarkably frank about the existence, and indeed our limited archaeological knowledge, of the lower end as well. Fox, for example, stated that ‘we are . . . not to suppose that all metalworkers served noble households’ (1958: xxvii), while Jope, after discussing the expertise on display at Snettisham, went on to discuss the likely existence of ‘humbler workshops’ (2000: 220). As he put it, ‘the Celtic artist’s actual working conditions are nearly as elusive as his person’ (2000: 219). With Gussage, we are therefore extremely fortunate to be able to gain insight into just one of these elusive sites. In order to reflect on the evidence for Celtic art deposited on this particular settlement site (primarily, in this case, material relating to its production), it is important to ask – as we have done in each of the two previous chapters – what those objects were ‘doing’ at Gussage. In this instance, this question has two separate, if related, meanings: (1) how and why had those particular objects come to be deposited on this particular site; and (2) through their deposition, what effects did those objects have on people making that deposit (and their understanding of the site and its materials)? In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to take a step back away from the site, to look at the broader scale of its landscape

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context, and also at wider interpretations concerning the ‘structured’ deposition of material on Iron Age sites. As discussed above, the picture we have of the Wessex landscape during the Middle Iron Age is one of dispersed settlements; a few of these potentially worked together as corporate units, but many were isolated from one another by significant distances (Sharples 2010; 62). In their discussions of this landscape, both Hill (1995: Ch. 11) and Sharples (2010: Ch. 2) have hinted at the fact that the relative isolation of settlements at this time was intentional. People appear to have had a strong sense of belonging to a particular – and, at this time, apparently quite small – social group; they were, therefore, proud of this spatial isolation and the social and economic autonomy it signified. This introspective selfidentity may well have been signalled through a special emphasis on the construction and elaboration of settlement boundaries as well (Bowden and McOmish 1987). Despite their geographical and ideological separation, as Wainwright made clear (1979: 188–91), these sites were nevertheless tied firmly into broader networks of exchange. It does seem likely that, as he suggested, different settlements may have specialized in different things – some making pottery, others weaving, others, like Gussage, making horse gear and possibly whole chariots as well. The layout of the site at Gussage can certainly be taken as evidence that the identity of its occupants was closely bound up with metalworking. Over the course of the settlement’s life, most of the metalworking activity appears to have taken place towards the east of the enclosure, just inside the main entrance (see Fig. 8.5). Spratling pointed out that this location would have been effective in functional terms, placing the heat, danger, and smell of the production process downwind of, and well away from, the main buildings (1979: 127). While these benefits probably were important, in light of more recent discussions that have highlighted the importance of deposition within Iron Age enclosure boundaries, it is worth pausing briefly to consider another, less prosaic implication of this location within the settlement. There can be little doubt that the entrance to the enclosure at Gussage was an aspect of the settlement’s architecture with which its occupants were particularly concerned, at least within the settlement’s first two phases. During Phase 1, the so-called ‘antenna’ ditches – certainly wider, and quite possibly deeper, than the main settlement enclosure itself – would have controlled movement

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towards, and highlighted architecturally, the site’s single entrance. The re-cutting of even more massive ditches and the addition of a post-built gateway structure in Phase 2 can only have served to emphasize both of these attributes. This architecture may well have served to impress or even intimidate visitors as they approached, ensuring that the settlement appeared more massive than it actually was, and focusing attention on the very fact that they were entering across a threshold. If we accept that the site was set out in order to make visitors experience it in a particular way, the fact that the metalworking zone was situated immediately inside the entrance can also be viewed as significant. As a result, the first thing visitors would have come across was metalworking – sometimes in action, but perhaps more often as a potential activity. This suggests that the occupants of Gussage wanted to convey that aspect of the site to visitors most of all – perhaps in order to impress potential customers, perhaps because it was a key attribute of their social (as well as economic) identity. Turning to structured deposition, within his in-depth study of ‘ritual’ deposits in Iron Age Wessex, Hill made the very important point that events involving the deposition of material culture in pits and ditches were actually extremely rare, perhaps occurring only as often as every few years (1995: 75). This observation actually fits very well with our argument about Pit 209: that it represents a ‘snapshot’ of a process which actually occurred on a regular basis – but mostly remained archaeologically invisible – over the lifetime of the site. In one sense, the material within the lower third of Pit 209 can certainly be described as a ‘special’ deposit. Along with the material from Weelsby Avenue, Lincolnshire (Foster 1995), it represents the best evidence we have for metalworking across Britain for the whole of the Iron Age. If Hill’s extended interpretation of pit deposits on Iron Age settlements is broadly correct, Pit 209 can also be considered ‘special’ in another way as well. He suggested that deposits like this were vitally important rituals that ‘played a central role . . . in sustaining the dominant social discourses through which Iron Age societies were constituted’ (1995: 115). Hill also suggested that people may have used explicitly ‘different’ acts of ritual deposition in order to differentiate themselves from others (1995: 116). As with the burials discussed in Chapter Seven, it is impossible to know for certain how many people witnessed the dumping of all those thousands of mould and crucible fragments into Pit 209. It is certainly

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possible to imagine this deposit representing the culmination of a longer ‘ritual’ process, witnessed perhaps by dozens of people drawn from across the local area, as Hill would argue. The making of metal items might have been an important element of Iron Age theatre. The inclusion of a valuable billet of tin-bronze and several perfectly usable bone tools in the pit could be seen as adding substance to this argument. If so, as with the location of the metalworking zone, the inclusion of the residues of metalworking could have been a specific, meaningful reference to this aspect of the site’s identity, designed to draw attention to this major difference between its occupants and those (from elsewhere) looking on. Even if only a small handful of people were involved in metalworking, its continuing presence within the settlement may have been remembered for years to come. But what was this material doing there? In answer to the first part of this question – how had those objects come to be deposited on that particular site? – we have argued that this was a metalworking site throughout its life, if not all of the time. This was, of course, the reason why the moulds came to be there. However, it could also explain the presence of fragments of bridle bit and scabbard, which may themselves have been scrap associated directly with this process. Under normal circumstances, the ‘lifeways’ of objects like these did not usually lead to their deposition on settlements. However, because their material identities had changed (to become ‘scrap’), new depositional pathways were perhaps opened up to them. In answer to the second part of our question – why was this material deposited at all? – we have argued that the site’s identity, and indeed the identity of its occupants, may well have been bound up intimately with metalworking. In making the deposit in Pit 209, the site’s occupants chose to presence this very clearly, in order to stress their difference from those looking on. Interestingly, the emphasis within the deposits at Gussage is on the moulds for making Celtic art, rather than the actual objects themselves; the identity being stressed is very much that of producer rather than consumer. In answering the first two parts of the question, we have already, in part, answered the third – through their deposition, what did these objects ‘do’? We have argued that they reflected the metalworking activity through which they had been created, and in so doing reinforced the social identity of the site’s occupants, in a world where distinguishing yourself from your neighbours seems to have been of particular importance. Overall, our discussion has emphasized just how intertwined the humans and

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the objects they made at the site were. In this case even more than most, in placing these objects in the ground, people were also placing something of themselves.

CASE STUDY 2: HORSE GEAR (AND HORSES) AT BURY HILL

An Introduction to Bury Hill The hillfort at Bury Hill, located immediately south-west of Andover in Hampshire, was first excavated in 1939 (Hawkes 1940), and then again as part of the research-led Danebury Environs Programme in 1990 (Cunliffe and Poole 2000). The site consists of a roughly circular inner rampart (300 m/984 ft in diameter) and an outer rampart (extending 100 m/328 ft to the north-west) (Fig. 8.8); the latter is thought to be an Early Iron Age enclosure that the main hillfort subsequently replaced during the late second or early first centuries BC (ibid, 79). While Hawkes’ excavation focused only on the ramparts, Cunliffe and Poole chose to look at a sizeable chunk of the interior. Their team excavated two separate trenches on the western side of the fort: Area 1 (36 x 10 m/118 x 33 ft) immediately outside the main rampart but within the earlier enclosure, and Area 2 (50 x 36 m/164 x 118 ft) immediately inside the rampart within the main fort (see Fig 8.8). Area 1 exposed the tail of the earthwork and a few ephemeral post-holes. Area 2, however, produced substantial amounts of archaeology, including two potential house structures, numerous storage pits and post-holes (Fig. 8.9). Despite the relatively small scale of the excavations carried out there, the site produced a sizeable finds assemblage, including several thousand sherds of pottery, over five thousand animal bones, four fragments of disarticulated human bone, quernstones, oven bricks and loom weights, bone tools, various iron tools (including knives, files, etc.), and the horse/chariot-related copper alloy Celtic art objects that form the main focus of our interest here. Not a great deal is known about the character of the site in the Early Iron Age. However, due in part to its close geographical association with the hillfort at Danebury, its role during the Middle Iron Age – the period with which we are primarily concerned – has been considered in some detail. The main (second) phase of construction

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at Bury Hill appears to have been roughly contemporary with the last phases of occupation at Danebury, which lies nearly 8 km (5 miles) to the south-west (Cunliffe 2000: 100). As mentioned in our introduction to the first two case studies, Cunliffe has suggested that ‘Bury Hill II, by virtue of its massive defences and adoption of a location already legitimized by defensive earthwork, was set up as a rival focus to Danebury’; we might therefore be witnessing ‘the final stage in a power struggle between a long-established polity and a newly emerging faction’ (ibid).

Celtic Art at Bury Hill As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, hillforts dominate the picture amongst ‘settlements’ in terms of the amounts of Celtic art they have produced. In terms of the artefact types represented on

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Fig. 8.9 Features in Area 2, Bury Hill. Pits 23 and 24 are adjacent to the northern edge of excavation, Pits 45 and 57 are close to the south-west corner (Cunliffe and Poole 2000: Fig. 2.7)

hillforts, horse gear (44 per cent) and swords/scabbards (24 per cent) stand out to an even greater extent than they do in the database as a whole (see Fig. 3.1). Unfortunately for our purposes, over half of these hillfort finds had little or no contextual information associated with them: 30 per cent of the total were recorded as ‘stray finds’, and a further 21 per cent had no determinable context. In contrast to many other hillfort assemblages, Bury Hill therefore presents us with an opportunity to investigate an assemblage from a series of wellexcavated and well-recorded archaeological contexts. The Celtic art objects found at Bury Hill include a single scabbard suspension loop found during Hawkes’ excavations (Stead 2006: no. 65), and an impressive series of horse gear from Cunliffe’s excavations: two bridle bits, six terrets, five nave bonds, three strap unions, three linch pins, and a single cheek-piece. All of the horse gear came from two pairs of intercutting pits within Area 2: P23 and P24 to the north and P45 and P57 to the west (see Fig. 8.9). As with the metalworking evidence at Gussage, these might well be described

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as ‘unusual’ or ‘special’ deposits. An additional strap union and a large fragment of a bridle bit were also found as stray finds on the site.

Pits P23, P24, P45, and P57 Given that so much of this material was recovered from just two pairs of pits, and that those pairs were only 30 m (98 ft) apart, it is important to consider the nature of the relationship between pits P23/P24 and pits P45/57, as well as their contents, in more detail. In terms of the number of horse/chariot-related artefacts within them, each pair had a primary pit (P24 with ten items, P45 with seven) and a secondary pit (P23 with two items, P57 with one). Notably, in terms of the character of their fills, the two ‘primary’ pits were also remarkably similar: both contained a basal deposit that included large charred timbers and other metal items along with the horse/chariot gear; a middle section comprised of multiple layers with very few finds; and an upper section containing further horse/chariot gear within a few dumped deposits (Cunliffe and Poole 2000: 80). Intriguingly, once their assemblages are considered together, it becomes clear that the two ‘primary’ pits contained what appears to be a complete ‘set’ of horse/chariot gear: two bridle bits, five terrets, four nave bonds, two linch pins, two strap unions, and a single antler and copper alloy cheek-piece (although only one was found, the fact that it was very heavily burnt suggests that there may originally have been two, the second of which did not survive). The bridle bits and linch pins (both undecorated) were both matching pairs. The five terrets were decorated in two different styles (with berried rosettes and a ‘crested’ design), and while one strap union was decorated (with berried rosettes similar to those on two of the terrets), the other was plain. Although several multiple deposits across Britain have suggested that complete matching sets of horse/chariot gear were made, it is certainly conceivable that non-matching items were sometimes brought together and used in combination (as seen in the Kirkburn chariot burial, Chapter Seven). In addition to this potential ‘set’, the ‘primary’ pits also contained a small number of iron rings – possible nave bonds and/or bridle-bit rings (Cunliffe and Poole 2000: 56–7). The ‘secondary’ pits produced a ‘lipped’ terret entirely different from any of the others, and a plain strap union very similar to the one in P24 (in P23); and an iron and

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copper alloy linch pin (decorated with triskeles and dot motifs), which was totally different from the pair found in P24 (in P57). Following on from this discussion of the metalwork within P24 and P45, it is important to consider one further attribute of the deposits within them: the fact that the charred timbers at the bottom of both pits may actually represent the remains of a burnt chariot. This idea was not discussed within the main text of Cunliffe and Poole’s published report, but was considered within the detailed feature descriptions presented in microfiche (Section 2: B7). There, it was pointed out that at least one of the largest timbers was joined to another by a dowel or tenon, and that another appeared to have been part of a plank/board, features which imply that these certainly belonged to a construction of some kind. Given the close association between the timbers and the full set of horse/chariot gear described above, it seems very likely that pits P24 and P45 did indeed contain the burnt remains of an entire chariot.

Special Deposits? The fact that pits P24 and P45 both contained multiple ‘small finds’ would certainly qualify them for inclusion as ‘exceptional deposits’ in Hill’s terms, like the one described at Gussage above. He states that ‘where several small finds were recovered, particularly three or more, it is clear that these were not simply accidentally “lost” or “broken” and so thrown away, but deliberately deposited, probably after curation/provisional discard’ (1995: 40). Equally, in the context of our own broader study of settlement finds, the presence of so many items within a settlement context is undeniably a rare, and in that sense special, occurrence. Furthermore, if we are actually talking about the deposition of a complete but burnt chariot within the two pits, there is little doubt that this does represent a highly unusual deposit. However, in describing P24, for example, Cunliffe and Poole pointed out that ‘the sequence of layers produced an array of horse gear and other material’ (2000: 79, emphasis added). Along with the horse/ chariot gear we have been discussing up until now, there was actually a huge amount of ‘other material’. In the case of P24, this included 949 pieces of animal bone (sheep, cattle, horse), 404 sherds of pottery, 17 flint flakes, and a number of other iron artefacts (including a knife, a spearhead, and an adze); the assemblages in P23, P45, and P57 were

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closely comparable. It is very difficult to establish a direct connection between the deposits of horse gear (and probably a complete chariot) in these pits and the broader assemblage of material culture they were in amongst. However, as Hill’s (1995) study made clear, what he would term ‘ritual’ or ‘special’ deposits such as these are in fact usually found in association with what appears to be ‘background’ material without any obvious connections to them. Equally, he also showed that small finds with no clear functional association are often found together within specific pits (ibid, 115). Ultimately, as with the deposits at Gussage, in order to understand this material fully we need to take a step back. It is important to look at what it was ‘doing’ in terms of the site as a whole, and also at how the site fitted into the broader social and economic landscape.

Summary We have already seen that, in terms of the broader landscape context of the site, Bury Hill may have represented a new seat of social and political power, perhaps a challenge to the established authority of Danebury. Intriguingly, within both of the accounts to have discussed this political landscape in detail (Creighton 2000, Cunliffe and Poole 2000), the apparently substantial presence of horses there has been heavily implicated in this social transformation. At Bury Hill, horse bones comprised 48.2 per cent of the total animal-bone assemblage. Relative to other sites nearby, and indeed across the whole country, this figure is extremely high: at Danebury, for example, the proportion of horse bones reached a peak at 7.3 per cent in the site’s latest phase (Creighton 2000: Table 1.2). In her specialist discussion of the animal bone at Bury Hill, Hamilton (in Cunliffe and Poole 2000: 70) also reflected on another unusual aspect of the horse-bone assemblage: 45 per cent of the aged individual animals had died between five and seven years old. She went on to point out that, if horses were being bred on site or exploited for their meat, you would expect to see a much higher percentage of young animals; similarly, if they were wild horses that had been hunted, you would expect to see greater numbers of young and older animals. As a result, she put forward a relatively complex scenario to explain the unusual age profile: ‘another possibility is that the horse population, while semi-feral, was managed. This could have been done by

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periodic, perhaps annual, round-ups, at which some horses were selected and kept for various purposes, others culled, and the rest released. In this case, the mortality pattern would indicate a cull of young adults, quite possibly stallions if the sex data are reliable; the mares would be released to maintain the herd’ (ibid, 72). Drawing on this faunal evidence, as well as the high artefactual representation of horses/chariots, Cunliffe and Poole suggested in their final discussion that ‘the community may have developed the chariot as a symbol of prestige. It is quite possible that vehicles were manufactured within the fort and the bronze trappings cast by craftsmen working in the entourages of the local elite’ (Cunliffe and Poole 2000: 81). Similarly, in his extended discussion of social changes at the Middle–Late Iron Age transition, Creighton described the period as a ‘violent time’ in which the old social order was disrupted by a new one based on the use of horses, and the import of gold and prestige goods (2000: 20). He suggested that one specific way in which members of the elite may have exerted their will was through the creation and retention of a comitatus, a loyal body of horsemen (ibid, 14). Drawing on the evidence from Bury Hill, and Cunliffe’s observation that as Danebury was abandoned Bury Hill had been reoccupied, he suggested that the latter, with its very high proportion of horse remains and chariot gear, could possibly have been the power base of one member of this newly powerful class and their accompanying comitatus (ibid, 14–16). Turning back to the deposits themselves, it must be admitted that, like Pit 209 at Gussage, it is ultimately very difficult to understand their meaning in an immediate sense. The placement of a possibly complete, burnt chariot (and its associated fittings) within four pits is a difficult event to explain at various different levels. It is also important to note its context, in amongst what might be termed more usual ‘special’ deposits (Cunliffe and Poole 2000: 63–5). However, we saw above that Hill’s argument that certain deposits may have been used to highlight differences between sites (1995: 116) was potentially supported by the evidence at Gussage. At Bury Hill it is also possible to see something similar going on. In the context of a social struggle during which the construction of a new hillfort earthwork took place, possibly in direct confrontation to the one at Danebury, it is conceivable that, again, deposits were used to emphasize these differences. This flouting of the rules – according to which, Hill has argued, metalwork such as this was not usually allowed to

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be deposited – could certainly be viewed as a comparable challenge to established tradition and authority. Equally, the conspicuous burning and subsequent burial of a chariot would have been a dramatic event, used to impress and even intimidate those looking on. By the same token, it is also possible to see this group of deposits as being related to the stabilization of the self-identity of Bury Hill’s occupants – confirmation of their (newly acquired?) material wealth, and the main mechanism (horses/chariots) through which this was expressed. Either way, it is interesting to note that, again much like the material at Gussage, in trying to understand this deposit we have ended up arguing that both the political standing and the social identity of the site’s inhabitants were intimately and deeply bound up with material objects, and that ultimately it was for this reason that the latter came to be deposited.

INTRODUCTION TO CASE STUDY 3: NEWSTEAD ROMAN FORT Occupied Scotland during the late first century AD – the place and time of our third case-study site, the Roman military fort at Newstead – was a very different place indeed to Wessex in the Middle Iron Age. It is therefore important first of all to provide a little background information about this region during that period and to discuss some recent interpretations of its archaeology, just as we did for the first two case studies. Following the Roman invasion of southern England in AD 43, and a fairly lengthy process through which imperial power was consolidated there and in the west, the Roman army moved northwards into Scotland during the late 70s and early 80s AD. The Roman general Agricola pursued a campaign of annual ‘pushes’ into the region, whose success ultimately led to the material consolidation of power that the construction of Hadrian’s Wall (during the 120s) and the Antonine Wall (in the late 130s) represented (Mattingly 2006: 146–60). The fact that Scotland was never completely conquered is well known; following initial forays to the far north, Roman troops had withdrawn back down south to Hadrian’s Wall by the 160s. It is probable that a combination of native resistance, a lack of will on

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the part of Rome, and military demands on other frontiers prevented the unrelenting geographical spread of the Roman empire into this region (Mattingly 2006: 119–22). Over the course of Britain’s occupation, Rome’s military presence, especially in the north, was very substantial. It has been estimated that, at its maximum, the number of soldiers amounted to fifty thousand, or one-eighth of the entire Roman army (James 2001: 77). Across northern England and Scotland, networks of military forts were set up in addition to those spaced regularly along the two main northern walls, primarily along the main routes of communication. Newstead, which was first constructed during the 80s AD approximately halfway between Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall on the banks of the River Tweed, represents one such fort; it was a key strategic site and major military base (Mattingly 2006: 150–2). Accounts of the Roman conquest traditionally focused attention almost exclusively on the invading force. However, since the early 1990s (and especially the publication of Millett 1990), much greater weight has been given to the indigenous population’s role in the ‘Romanization’ of Britain. Certainly, when the Roman army arrived, the first-century AD landscapes we are considering here would have been dotted with ‘native’ settlements (of varied character) and indeed hillforts, many of which continued in use for longer in this region than in the south. It is now thought that the native inhabitants of northern Britain, or at least certain elements of the population, probably interacted with the Roman military to a significant degree. Although the role of the vicus settlements surrounding many forts is still not well understood, many seem to have housed locals as well as foreign specialists imported along with the army. In many cases, the inhabitants appear to have enjoyed emotional as well as economic relationships with the soldiers, and as a consequence it is now suggested that the boundaries of most forts were much more socially porous than previously thought, with wives, children, and others moving regularly between the two spheres (Mattingly 2006: 170–4). A proportion of the native population further afield would also have been implicated in the life of the Roman army, albeit in a slightly less immediate sense, as a result of supplying at least a proportion of the animals, crops, pottery, and other goods required to sustain the occupying force (see, for example, Clarke 1999b: 42). It is important to realize, as Hunter (2001) has made clear, that the flow of

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goods between military and non-military sites was by no means unidirectional, since many hundreds of stylistically ‘Roman’ artefacts have been found on ‘native’ settlements across northern Britain. As a consequence of the broader realization that there were probably strong links between the Roman army and the native population, there has been a dramatic shift in the kinds of question archaeologists have asked, and the themes they have chosen to pursue. A number of writers have suggested that, in this light, it is actually very difficult to draw a clear distinction between ‘military’ and ‘civilian’ spheres (see especially Gardner 2007). It has also been argued that in Roman military forts – but also beyond more widely in Romano-British life – it is very difficult to identify ‘Roman’ material culture at all (Freeman 1993: 443; Gardner 2007). Alongside these discussions, people have also begun to look much more closely at the composition of the ‘Roman’ army. It seems, on detailed inspection, that the army would not necessarily have been very ‘Roman’ at all in terms of the ethnicity of its personnel. Many auxiliary troops may have been recruited from Britain, but the native population was not large enough to provide all of the soldiers required, and so foreigners were also drafted in, primarily from Germany, Gaul, and Spain (Mattingly 2006: 166). As a consequence of this realization, archaeologists have begun to consider the complex ‘composite’ or ‘hybrid’ identities that might therefore have emerged out of this fusion of cultures (Woolf 1995: 247; James 2001: 86; Gardner 2007). James has described the gradual ‘barbarianization’ of the Roman military over time, whereby essentially non-Roman dress codes and even bodily movements came to be viewed as the military norm (1999: 2123). Hunter has suggested that Celtic art objects probably played a direct role in this process, arguing that both ‘Romans’ and ‘natives’ would have been acutely aware of the differences of style that ‘Celtic’ objects represented in comparison to ‘Roman’ ones. He has also suggested that people within the military may not even have seen what we term Celtic art as having native associations at all, but rather as a northern British ‘frontier’ style (2008: 135). This latter suggestion fits comfortably alongside James’ observation that members of the Roman army often incorporated artefacts of local origin in the constitution of their own material identities (James 2001: 86). Ultimately, the main thrust of this recent work has been to deconstruct the Roman military as a bounded and coherent entity. It was itself a heterogeneous entity, which interacted – socially and

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materially – with the native population around it to a significant extent. In this light, the presence of Celtic art objects in Roman forts represents perhaps a little less surprising, but certainly no less intriguing, subject to investigate.

Celtic Art in Roman Forts In total, 62 of the objects within our database were found on Roman forts in northern Britain (13 per cent of all settlement finds). These came from 22 different sites, with totals varying from single pieces to the collection of 15 objects found at Newstead (discussed below). As many of these finds were recovered during excavations carried out many years ago, it is not easy to say a great deal about the more immediate archaeological contexts in which they were found; the available evidence suggests, in any case, that these were variable. Figure 8.10 shows clearly that the broad category of ‘horse gear’ dominates the assemblage of Celtic art found in forts to a significant extent, with ‘other Celtic art’ (including mounts, fittings, etc.) a distant second, and ‘swords’ third; all of the other categories that feature at all do so only in very low numbers.

40

No. of artefacts

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

t

r

le

m Ar

rin

r

lla

rm

a g/

co

To

/ rc

ge

ag

D

t r d n d et trip rd ar ap irro rm ar or hiel oo ck s ka c fo ge n-c M lti S Sw n e r bu tal Sp Tan / e s a o C H or on en um er H dr am l/h ul th n a a r O O im l/c w An Bo

Fig. 8.10 Numbers of each type of Celtic art object found within Roman forts in northern Britain

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CASE STUDY 3: CELTIC ART AND ROMAN IDENTITIES AT NEWSTEAD

An Introduction to Newstead The military fort and its adjacent ‘annexes’ at Newstead, near Melrose in the Scottish Borders, was initially excavated over the course of five and a half years between 1905 and 1910. The excavation, undertaken for research purposes at the initiation of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, was overseen by James Curle, under whose authorship it was fully published just one year later (Curle 1911). Other than an absence of plans to indicate exactly where trenches had been dug, the site was written up to an impressively high standard for the time. Since Curle’s excavation, there have been a number of other interventions at the site. Richmond dug a small-scale test trench to check key stratigraphic relationships in 1947 (Richmond 1950), while Clarke and Jones led a much larger research programme from 1989 to 1993; although the latter has yet to be fully published, their preliminary findings have been aired in a series of interpretive papers (Clarke 1995, 1997, 1999b, 2000; Clarke and Jones 1998). The phasing of Newstead has been the subject of some debate (Clarke and Jones 1998; Manning 2006). Nevertheless, everyone essentially agrees that there were two main periods of occupation: the first during the late first century AD (possibly c.80 to c.105), the second during the mid-second century AD (possibly c.140 to c.180, with a probable period of abandonment during the late 150s). Initially, the fort may have consisted only of a single timber building. However, it soon saw subsequent building on a massive scale, leading to the construction of all of the typical fort features, including huge boundary earthworks, barrack blocks, and even a bathhouse. For much if its life, Newstead represented one of the largest Roman military bases north of Hadrian’s Wall, serving as a major supply and command centre (Clarke and Jones 1998: 109). The military ‘fort’ (as it would normally be defined) appears to have been surrounded on at least three sides by extramural settlement that incorporated both industrial and domestic buildings (Clarke 1997: 79). In addition, numerous pits, many of them massive in scale (and so generally viewed, not necessarily unproblematically, as having been wells), were identified both within and outside the fort. As Curle put it, ‘no feature of the excavations gave more valuable results than the clearing

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out of these. They produced a collection of objects interesting no less for their variety than for their wonderful state of preservation’ (1911: 106).

Artefact Assemblages and Interpretations The quality of the artefact assemblages recovered at Newstead has ensured that the site remains at the centre of debate to this day. The finds assemblage that Curle’s excavations produced is undeniably, as he pointed out, remarkable. A quick browse through the numerous plates within his report reveals complete stone altars, decorated leatherwork, and whole shoes, sections of armour (of several different types), complete swords, metal cooking vessels, wooden tent pegs, tools and horse gear, multitudes of Samian and other pottery, elaborate brooches, decorated glass beads, bone gaming pieces, combs and hairpins, styli and preserved wooden writing tablets; and, perhaps most famously of all, a number of bronze and iron parade helmets (one with a complete face mask). Importantly for our purposes, amongst this myriad of ‘Roman’ finds, a number of Celtic art objects were also discovered. The circumstances under which these remarkable assemblages of material culture came to be deposited have occasioned considerable debate over the years, particularly in relation to the pits/wells. In his original report, Curle viewed the latter essentially as convenient receptacles for ‘rubbish’ (1911: 108), some of which may have been filled by the ‘natives’ as they overthrew the fort (cf. Clarke 1997: 73). Writing many decades later, Ross and Feacham took a very different view, choosing to interpret the deposits as the continuation of a ‘panCeltic custom, attested by the archaeological, literary, and folklore records, of making votive offerings into holes in the ground’ (1976: 230). In putting forward this argument, they described Newstead as ‘one of the most fascinating, presumptively votive sites in the British Isles’ (ibid). Unfortunately, their interpretation comes across as very subjective and impressionistic, with little substantial analysis presented in support. Essentially, the argument relies on the – admittedly very interesting – fact that the deposits in the pits were indeed highly unusual, with complete human skeletons, altars, and other such things found within them.

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Twenty years later – and, perhaps significantly, after the publication of Hill’s (1995) work on Iron Age ritual deposition – Clarke and Jones (1998) put forward a similar argument in a rather more considered way. They too drew direct comparisons with the Iron Age (referring specifically to deposits at Danebury and Gussage All Saints), suggesting that the pits at Newstead might also be viewed as containing ‘special’ or ‘ritual’ deposits. In making their case, they suggested that the Newstead pits could be divided into two categories: those associated with the fort’s defences and specifically dug as ritual shafts, and those that had originally been dug as wells but subsequently became associated with ‘symbolic acts’ at the end of their use-lives (ibid: 122; Clarke 1997: 80). Clarke concluded that ‘a high proportion of Roman period site finds [at Newstead] were not the result of casual discard or accidental loss, but were the product of deliberate choices in which symbolism and ritual were key considerations’ (2000: 22). Importantly in terms of our own understanding of the site (see below), Clarke and Jones have consistently made the point that much of this material would have been accumulated as rubbish, even if it eventually came to take on more meaning and symbolism on deposition. In direct contrast to these arguments, Manning (originally in 1972, and then again in more detail in 2006) has argued vehemently against a wholesale ‘ritual’ interpretation. Following his own detailed analysis of the pits’ contents, he concluded that most of the metal objects deposited could in fact basically be viewed as ‘rubbish’, accumulated as scrap metal for recycling. In making his case, he highlighted the fact that Curle had actually reconstructed many of the artefacts in advance of publication; consequently, on excavation (and so also on original deposition) much of the metalwork had actually been far more damaged that it appeared in the report (Manning 2006: 18). This scrap material was, he argued, simply dumped into the pits to clear the site when it was abandoned on two separate occasions (ibid: 27). As he himself admits, this fairly functional interpretation is not completely watertight, given the unexplained presence of human and animal skeletons within the pits (ibid: 31). Without significant further analysis of their contents – perhaps something along the lines of Hill’s work (e.g. 1995) – it is very difficult to know what to think of these pits and their contents. At first glance, and in fact even on closer inspection, many of the deposits do undeniably seem slightly ‘odd’. Aspects of both Clarke and Jones’

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and Manning’s arguments are attractive, and it is just possible that elements of both could be combined convincingly within one overarching interpretation; scrap metal could, for example, have been drawn upon as a ‘symbolic’ resource during meaningful and considered acts of ‘ritual’ deposition. In addition to these arguments concerning the ‘ritual’ deposition of artefacts, the topic of military/civilian interaction and identity has also been investigated specifically in relation to Newstead. Clarke especially (e.g. 1999) has addressed the issue, looking in particular at the identity of those living in the extramural settlement adjacent to the fort, as reflected in the material culture found there. He pointed out that certainly local pottery and probably locally sourced barley within the fort indicate that there was a significant degree of interaction between its military occupants and the native inhabitants living around it. He went on to consider the architectural and material culture preferences of those living next to the fort (who he took to have been drawn largely from the local population) in comparison to native settlements further afield. On the basis of this evidence, he suggested that those living immediately next to the fort had intentionally stressed their links to the army and ‘Roman’ way of life materially (through use of Samian pottery, construction of rectangular buildings, etc.) in order to distinguish themselves from other, less ‘Roman’ ‘natives’ further afield (ibid: 43). Again, if this was indeed the case, the presence of Celtic art objects within and around the fort becomes a particularly important pattern to investigate.

Celtic Art at Newstead Interestingly, Curle himself discussed the presence of Celtic-style objects in the fort in several different sections of his report. As he put it, ‘it is natural to enquire whether any trace of the native sword is to be distinguished among the fragments of broken weapons’, adding that ‘the answer is probably in the affirmative’ (Curle 1911: 185). In her study of Early Celtic Art in North Britain, MacGregor (1976) listed 16 items from Newstead, drawing directly on information from Curle’s report. Although her work was published prior to the most recent excavations, no further Celtic art has been found there since (Simon Clarke, personal communication). Even once a couple of items on MacGregor’s list (nos. 254 and 290) are excluded on the

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Table 8.1. Celtic art objects from Newstead Object type

Condition

Location

Curle plate

MacG no.

Horse bit Linch pin Strap junction Strap junction Terret Terret Sword Sword Hilt guard Hilt guard Hilt guard Mount Mount Mount Arm ring

fragment large fragment complete near complete complete near complete near complete complete, bent fragment fragment fragment fragment fragment fragment complete, bent

Praetentura Pit 58 Barracks, Praetentura Barracks, Praetentura Barracks, Praetentura ? Pit 57 Pit 58 Pit 58 Praetentura ? ? Pit 58 Pit 58 Base of early fort ditch

LXXV, 6 LXXXIV, 2 LXXV, 1 LXXV, 3 LXXV, 2 n/a XXXIV, 10 XXXIV, 8 XXXV, 11 n/a n/a LXXXI, 18 LXXV, 5 LXXXIV, 7 XC

7 130 24 25 63 73 152 151 153 154 n/a 339 338 340 221

grounds that they would not necessarily be categorized as ‘Celtic’ by others, the total of 15 pieces3 represents the largest from any fort excavated so far (Table 8.1). Overall, four broad categories of Celtic art object were represented: horse gear, swords, ‘mounts’, and a single arm ring.4 The fact that both horse gear and swords were present is unsurprising, given the prevalence of these object types in forts generally, in both ‘Celtic’ (see Fig. 8.10) and of course also ‘Roman’ styles. The mounts’ function is hard to ascertain, and for that reason their presence is difficult to discuss. The arm ring is perhaps the most unexpected object to have been recovered on a military fort. Interestingly, those Celtic art objects that could actually be attributed to a specific context came from only four locations within the fort: the general area of the praetentura (the front part of the fort interior), Pit 57 (a large pit in the vicinity of the bathhouse outside the western entrance), Pit 58 (a very deep pit outside the northern entrance), and, in the case of the arm ring, the base of the earliest fort ditch. As discussed above, the specific circumstances in which

3 This total includes a hilt guard (Stead 2006: no. 258), which MacGregor does not have, found as a stray find within the fort (Fraser Hunter, personal communication). 4 Curle described this as a torc, but MacGregor thinks it is more likely to have been a spiral arm ring.

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these objects were deposited have been the subject of much debate. The items in Pits 57 and 58 would certainly be considered ‘special’ deposits by some. Equally, a strong case could be made that the single arm ring in the base of the fort ditch was not deposited accidentally. For those objects found within the praetentura, it is difficult to say a great deal given the absence of detailed contextual information. It is important to think carefully about the reasons why quite so many of the Celtic art objects at Newstead ended up in just two contexts, each of which produced five finds: the praetentura (firmly inside the fort) and Pit 58 (just outside it). If the artefacts within the praetentura had all been found together, it would be tempting to view this collection as potentially being a hoard. However, if they had been located within, say, a single pit, it seems likely that Curle would have noted it. In the absence of any such evidence, we must assume that they were found scattered throughout that general area. The number of ‘Celtic’ artefacts within Pit 58 also requires explanation. Given the recovery of five out of our 12 objects with a context in this one feature, the possibility of some form of deliberate burial of ‘Celtic’ items springs to mind. However, this idea becomes rather less convincing once the pit’s other contents – a series of apparently random, and certainly very ‘Roman’, artefacts – are noted: a ‘dropped bar’ (i.e. Roman-style) terret, a lead cup, a medallion with an eagle on it, a Flavian coin, and a selection of broken Roman pottery (Curle 1911: 129). In light of the fact that the majority of the Celtic art objects were found together in just two places, it is interesting to note Manning’s observation that many of the large pits/wells appear to have contained specific object categories in disproportionately high numbers (2006: 22–6). Although he does not reflect on this patterning in detail, he appears to be suggesting that certain object types had been grouped together intentionally prior to recycling. Equally, it might also be argued that themed object groups could have accumulated inadvertently in one specific location as a result of being derived from one part of the fort, or even that this group of ‘Celtic’ objects had been intentionally selected for deposition together as a consequence of their ‘symbolic’ associations. In seeking to gain a better understanding of what these Celtic art objects were doing within the fort, it is important to look beyond the event(s) of their deposition towards their actual use. In order to do so, in the following sections we consider what it is possible to tell about

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this from their general condition, and look at the wider object networks within which they may have been used.

Fragmentation, Attrition, and Wear The ‘condition’ column in Table 8.1 is very revealing. It makes clear that the majority of the Celtic art objects found at Newstead were in a damaged, broken, or highly fragmented condition; almost all of them also appeared to have been heavily used. Only four of the 15 objects could be described as ‘complete’, and, revealingly, two of these had been bent (quite possibly on purpose) prior to deposition. The fragmentary and worn state of the assemblage as a whole shows very clearly that these objects had seen substantial use prior to deposition. The terrets, for example, were worn where harness straps would have run; the bridle bit appeared to have snapped, a fairly common occurrence amongst this artefact type due to the stresses and strains of use; one of the strap junction’s attachment loops had broken as a result of what MacGregor described as ‘excessive use’; a sword had broken off close to its tip. Although it is impossible to know for certain where these items were actually used, given their condition and the broader assemblages in which they were found (see below), there is no good reason to think that they had not been incorporated into the everyday material world of ‘military’ life at Newstead. Notably, the fact that so many objects were in a fragmentary condition could be seen as fitting well with Manning’s argument that much of the metalwork had been accumulated as scrap for recycling prior to deposition. This interpretation does not, however, fit quite so well in relation to the two objects that appeared to have been purposefully bent before being deposited. The mangled condition of the sword (Fig. 8.11, no. 8) seems highly unlikely to have come about through normal use, even in battle; it is worth noting that another, similarly contorted ‘Roman’ sword (Fig. 8.11, no. 13) was found in a pit nearby. The condition of these two swords is in fact strongly reminiscent of those bent and damaged Bronze and Iron Age swords that have been viewed as having been ‘killed’ as part of the process of ritual deposition (see Chapter Five and Bradley 2005: Ch. 5). The presence of the armlet – which was described by MacGregor as being ‘doubled up and folded when found’ (1976: 221) – in the base of the fort ditch could also easily be interpreted as a similar ‘special’ deposit of some kind.

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2

1

4

3

8

12

9

13

6

5

10

7

11

14

Fig. 8.11 A selection of swords and shield mountings from Newstead (Curle 1911: Plate 34). Numbers within the figure refer to the original object catalogue within Curle (1911)

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Broader Assemblages One way in which to understand how these finds fitted into broader material networks on the site is to consider their depositional locations in relation to comparable ‘Roman’ artefacts. Interestingly, all of the Celtic-style objects were recovered in first-century AD features;5 importantly for our analysis, all but two pieces of the Roman horse gear (Figs. 8.12 and 8.13), and all but two of the Roman swords (Fig. 8.14), were also found in first-century features, ensuring that it is possible to draw meaningful comparisons.6 During Curle’s excavations, a wide variety of horse gear was recovered, as might be expected in a fort where substantial numbers of cavalry troops had been stationed. Bridle bits, linch pins, terrets, strap ends, and strap junctions were all represented in both Celtic and Roman styles (see Fig. 8.12). As already discussed, four of the five Celtic-style pieces of horse gear were recovered from the praetentura; importantly, at least one Roman-style strap end was also found in that area (Curle 1911: Plate LXXVI, no. 10). In addition, a Celtic-style linch pin was recovered from Pit 58; interestingly, it too was found along with a Roman-style terret in the same feature. In addition to these finds, a varied (but not especially numerous) selection of Roman-style horse gear was found within six further pits to the south and north of the fort. Excavations recovered a total of six complete (or near-complete) swords and five sword fragments, from first century contexts. Of the complete/near-complete examples, two were Celtic and four Roman; and of the fragments, three Celtic and two Roman. In this case, there was again a notable overlap in the distribution of the two types (see Fig. 8.14). In Pit 57 two Roman swords and a large fragment of a Celtic sword were found together, while in Pit 58 a near-complete (but bent) Celtic-style sword and a Celtic-style hilt guard were found along with sheath edgings from a Roman-style scabbard. In addition to these, another Celtic-style hilt guard was recovered from the praetentura area, and two Roman ‘spatha’ swords were found in two pits in the southern annexe.

5 This is the case even if Clarke and Jones’s (1996) phasing is used, which is weighted much more towards the second century AD than Curle’s. 6 In order to ensure that we are comparing like with like, second century AD finds are not included in the following analysis.

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2 1

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Fig. 8.12 A selection of horse gear from Newstead (Curle 1911: Plate 75). Numbers within the figure refer to the original object catalogue within Curle (1911)

Summary Our analysis has brought out a number of revealing aspects in terms of our understanding of the place of ‘Celtic’ Art at Newstead. Firstly, it has become clear that much of the material was found in what might be considered ‘special’ deposits, Celtic art objects included; if we are to understand the circumstances of its deposition fully therefore, substantial further work is needed. Secondly, it is has become

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Celtic Roman Both Pits Rampart Ditch Road Road ? 0

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Fig. 8.13 Locations of features producing Celtic and Roman horse gear (plan based on Clarke and Jones 1998: Fig. 2). The finds within the praetentura (whose location was not accurately recorded) are represented within that general area (in the eastern part of the fort interior)

clear that most of the Celtic art objects found there had been heavily used prior to deposition, and that many of them had broken as a result; consequently, it is possible, as Manning has argued, that these were essentially items of scrap metal. Finally, we have seen that the types of ‘Celtic’-style object found at Newstead fit in directly alongside the ‘Roman’ material assemblages. The latter contained the same types of objects, and were in some cases deposited in exactly the same places.

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Celtic Roman Both Pits Rampart Ditch Road Road ? 0

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Fig. 8.14 Locations of features producing Celtic and Roman swords (plan based on Clarke and Jones 1998: Fig. 2)

Given the fact that Celtic art objects were found both inside and outside the fort’s main boundary ditches, it is very difficult to tell who was actually using these items. Since there was in any case a certain fluidity of movement of materials between ‘military’ and ‘civilian’ parts of the fort complex, it is difficult to say – on this basis – whether these objects had been used by army or local ‘natives’ or both. The character of the ‘Celtic’-style artefacts as a group is arguably more revealing in this regard. The dominance of horse gear and swords links the assemblage closely with the military, especially when the prevalence of Roman-style artefacts of the same type, deposited in

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similar or exactly the same places, is taken into account. If the Roman military was indeed using ‘Celtic’-style material culture – weapons and cavalry equipment no less – at Newstead, this represents a very interesting finding. These were certainly not the standard military-issue items that would have been provided by Rome. This suggests that the material boundaries between military and civilian were perhaps even more porous than people have recently argued. On the basis of this evidence, it is very difficult to say how what we categorize broadly as ‘native’-style artefacts were actually perceived. It is possible that, as Hunter (2008) has argued, the Roman soldiers and cavalry who used these objects were acutely aware of their ‘different’ appearance; they may even have drawn on this attribute specifically in creating their own ‘frontier’ style. However, it is equally possible, because of the hybrid character of the fort’s population, and of the social and material flow between fort and associated ‘civilian’ settlement, that differences between ‘Roman’ and ‘native’ objects were not even recognized as such, or at least were not seen as important. Gardner (e.g. 2007: 261) has made it clear that in the Late Roman period, the very idea of a ‘military’ material assemblage might be viewed as problematic. However, at Newstead, this appears to fit rather better than any attribution of either ‘Celtic’ or ‘Roman’ status to the material culture that people were using. James has argued that within the ‘Roman’ army there was no simple acculturation in either direction, but elements of the active creation of a new Roman identity by the multi-ethnic soldiery themselves, through selective adoption of some Italian ways . . . and the redeployment and relabeling as “Roman” (military) of many aspects of their own, and each other’s, provincial or “barbarian” culture . . . These are examples of Terrenato’s process of “cultural bricolage” (James 2001: 86).

The Celtic art objects found at Newstead appear to have been used alongside, and were certainly deposited alongside, their ‘Roman’ counterparts. These two ‘styles’ cannot therefore be considered as having been in opposition in any meaningful sense. Given their place within the wider material networks in evidence, the Celtic art objects in this fort might well therefore be viewed as objects of material ‘bricolage’ in this sense. In asking what they were ‘doing’ there, our answer is twofold. At one level, they appear to have been assisting directly with the functioning of the military machine, equipping infantry and cavalry for battle. However, on another level, they were

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doing something quite different as well, helping to create a novel and hybrid material identity, neither fully military nor fully civilian, neither straightforwardly Celtic nor straightforwardly Roman.

CONCLUDI NG DISCUSSION We have dealt with two sites close in space and time – Gussage and Bury Hill, with Newstead more distant. On the two former sites, chariots and chariot gear were made and destroyed in a particularly spectacular manner, involving the use of fire. Both the making and destruction of chariots were part of the broader theatre of Iron Age life, marked and consequential acts that stayed in the memory of those who witnessed them and were perhaps passed on to subsequent generations. The sheer variety of the terrets made at Gussage indicate that minor differences were important, possibly in marking out various kinship groups, so that when terrets of different types were brought together, as at Polden Hill (Chapter six) and Kirkburn (Chapter seven), they brought with them the presence of the groups to which they were connected. Newstead represents a very different cultural locale where people of many backgrounds and origins met and tried to develop new links and forms of identity. The culturally marked nature of Celtic art, now different in type to that found at Gussage or Bury Hill, helped negotiate this world partly because Celtic art maintained some older associations as well as novelties of form, decoration, and colour. At Gussage All Saints we were for the most part not discussing Celtic art objects themselves, but their ‘ghosts’ – in the form of moulds that had been used to make horse gear. We suggested that horse gear had actually been made throughout the life of the settlement, if intermittently. The deposition, and subsequent recovery, of that material in Pit 209 – rather than in, say, an archaeologically invisible context – was therefore exceptional in that sense; it was much more usual for it not to be preserved. The deposit in Pit 209 can certainly be considered exceptional in Hill’s (1995) terms as well, as what was perhaps a rare and special event of ‘ritual’ deposition. It is just possible that the two actual examples of Celtic art objects from the site (a fragment of a bridle bit and one of a sword chape) themselves came to be deposited because their status had changed –

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from that of artefact to that of scrap metal. Building on the evidence recovered across the site, we argued that the identity and social position of the site’s occupants were very closely bound up with metalworking – the production of Celtic art objects rather than their consumption. At Bury Hill the deposition of a complete, burnt chariot and its accoutrements in two pairs of pits can certainly be described as out of the ordinary. Its burning and subsequent burial must have been an extraordinary spectacle in itself, while as we have discussed the fact that this pit deposit included metalwork at all was also unusual. As at Gussage, we have argued that the material culture deposited at Bury Hill was intimately bound up with the identity and social standing of the hillfort’s occupants – a newly established elite whose power was based on, and signified by, the ownership of horses and chariots. At Newstead substantial further analysis is required if the ‘specialness’ (or not) of all the deposits there is to be fully understood. Certainly, many of the artefact assemblages found there are unusual. Again, as at the other two sites, it is possible to learn a lot through the Celtic art objects deposited there. On one level, the material identity of the site’s occupants appears straightforward. This was a military base with cavalry; the assemblage is dominated by swords and horse gear. However, in discussing the very presence of Celtic art in a Roman military fort, we had to confront another element of the site’s material identity – ‘Celtic’ and ‘Roman’ are usually fundamentally opposed adjectives (at least at a superficial level). At Newstead, however, we have seen that there are no real grounds to support such an opposition. Celtic and Roman objects were used alongside one another and were essentially interchangeable. Just as the ‘Roman’ army was neither ‘Roman’ nor ‘non-Roman’ in any straightforward sense, the material identity expressed at Newstead was neither Celtic nor Roman but a mixture of the two. Over the course of the last three chapters we have looked at key archaeological contexts in which Celtic art was found, immersing it within a set of networks of archaeological features and other forms of material culture. This thick description of contexts has allowed us to see that Celtic art was consequential in the ever-present need to create and negotiate community links. Obviously, the nature of community changed radically between 400 BC and AD 100, as did the forms of Celtic art. However, the role of fine metalwork as an ingredient of

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high importance within social networks and transformations formed a relative constant. In the final chapter we will consider the broader context in which Celtic art played a role, looking further at the links between people and things within the ontologies of the Late Iron Age and Early Romano-British periods.

9 The Art of Community A number of themes recur in discussions of Celtic art, whether in Britain or elsewhere in Europe. These include: the difficulty of finding a singular or satisfactory origin for Celtic art; the ambiguous shapeshifting character of its decoration; its religious or ritual dimension; its links with an elite. We have touched on all of these themes, being least critical of the first two, while attempting to re-situate notions of ritual and being little convinced about links to an elite, in Britain at least. In developing our view of these themes, or our critique of them, we have attempted a twofold recontextualization: first, by situating Celtic art within longer-term developments of metalwork from the Bronze Age to the Roman period, noting a relative decline in metal use from c.800–400 BC. We have argued that the appearance of Celtic art around 400 BC marked a revaluation of metals that involved decoration of unprecedented complexity and difficulty for the maker and viewer alike. Secondly, we have immersed Celtic art within its contemporary archaeological contexts – from making to deposition – focusing on three types of artefact (swords, torcs, and coins) and three types of context (hoards, burials, and settlements). Artefacts from these contexts made up 56 per cent of the items in our database. Celtic art is found across temperate Europe in a broad band from Ireland, through Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, northern Italy, Austria, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, with some outliers north and south. Motifs are shared and move geographically. Forms vary, but are also linked, so that swords, scabbards, torcs, and fibulae are widespread (although not the same everywhere). Britain can be picked out through its notable emphasis on horse and chariot gear and the development of decorated mirrors. Outside Britain much of this material is found in

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graves, although the distribution of these is patchy, as shown by the distribution of flat cemeteries of La Tène B from the Hunsrück-Eifel through southern Germany and Austria into Bohemia and Moravia (Waldhauser 1987). We saw in Chapter One that the initial arrival in Britain, around 400 BC, of objects that we now term ‘Celtic art’ was part of a much broader change, whereby metalwork in general witnessed a resurgence, following a period of four centuries or so when metal objects appear not to have been present in large numbers. We have discussed at length elsewhere (Garrow et al. 2010) that, despite previous assumptions about the British and Irish material being largely ‘derivative’ of continental ‘prototypes’, the early dates for some items actually suggest that Britain was in step with the rest of continental Europe in the initial production of this novel style of metalwork. The ‘origins’ of the Celtic art style is, somewhat unusually, not an issue we have chosen to address in this book. This decision was intentional, made partly because origins have been discussed at great length elsewhere, and partly because it was not a subject in which we were specifically interested. We also wanted to keep the focus of our investigation geographically tight, looking at how the manifestations of what was in some senses a pan-European phenomenon were played out over the course of five centuries or so in Britain – no small subject in itself, as we have seen. A general shift is taking place within the archaeologies of Europe from an understanding of burial assemblages to a deeper knowledge of settlements. Such a shift derives from moves within universitybased archaeology towards interest in practice and daily life, but more particularly from development-led excavations. Sophisticated work on houses and settlements is now emphasizing regional distinctions, allowing us also to understand the varied manners in which people created time and space. For instance, Gerritsen (2008) has focused on the long houses of the Netherlands, northern Germany, and southern Scandinavia, which were built all of a piece, but then abandoned when a new house was built in a new location. Long houses ‘wandered’ across the landscape, tethered to some extent by cemeteries shared by a number of settlements (Gerritsen 2008: 158). By contrast, in northern France, and south and central Germany, smaller rectangular structures were built, added to in piecemeal fashion, so that neither a house nor a settlement had a clear beginning or an end. In Britain, Bradley (2007: 252–61) has recognized ‘wandering’ settlements in the

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east, based on circular houses, which moved across the landscape in a similar manner to the northern European long houses. These can be contrasted with the more enclosed settlements and hillforts seen across southern and central Britain and small defended settlements in the Atlantic west (Bradley 2007: Fig. 5.14). There may in fact be geographical overlap between these types, but there remains a contrast between settlements where houses are rebuilt on the spot or added to and those that move across the landscape in the course of generations. In this light, it is also worth noting Sharples’s point (2010: 222–35) that houses from the Late Bronze Age onwards in places like Wessex were abandoned more quickly than they needed to be for functional reasons, being either rebuilt on the same spot or a new one constructed. Such regular rebuilding might have been due to the life cycle of the community in the house, influenced by the death of a key inhabitant (e.g. Brück 1999a). Settlement evidence reinforces the impression, given by burials, of wide variety, and this variety often derives from links to the past and to ancestry. Given that much material culture, such as everyday pottery industries, also shows local variability across Britain (Cunliffe 2005), aspects of material culture that are widespread, such as Celtic art, stand out as especially interesting. As we saw in Chapter Three, Celtic art is found across Britain from the Scilly Isles to Shetland, with a denser band of finds from East Anglia across the Midlands and southern England to Somerset in the period from c.400 to 20 BC, and in northern England and southern Scotland from AD 50 onwards (see Fig. 3.11). Items with restricted distribution, like massive armlets found in the north, are rare and unusual. Much of the earliest Celtic art in Britain is found across a broad spectrum of contexts (see Fig. 3.12). This variability perhaps reflects its novelty. This material appears to have been accepted right across Britain early on, but was taken up by different communities in regionalized ways. In what was a rapidly changing society, this new material repertoire was readily incorporated, and put to a broad spectrum of uses in a variety of contexts. Given the huge variety of traditions of practice in other spheres of life (settlement patterns, economy, etc.), differences such as these are hardly surprising. However, it is also important to recognize that the very existence of such objects would have created new desires, new aesthetics, and new avenues for social/material display.

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In all areas, it is interesting to note that Celtic art is found in sites that seem consequential within a region.1 In the south-west and south-east items are found in burials (e.g. Bryher, Isles of Scilly, and Mill Hill, Deal); in central Britain in hillforts, such as the chariot in Bury Hill and swords in places such as Maiden Castle and South Cadbury; in eastern England swords and shields are placed in rivers, possibly accompanying human bones; and in East Yorkshire swords and chariots are found in some burials under square barrows. There is a paradox evident in the regional variety of practices in which Celtic art was involved on the one hand, and the relative lack of regional typological variety across Britain on the other. Celtic art played a key part in events of local importance, but did so in a manner that helped link distant communities into a broader cultural universe, which ultimately linked to some degree to Europe more widely. In many instances this metalwork seems to have been deposited as part of a series of activities in which theatre, display, and heightened sensibilities were evident. Such events would have had a very considerable emotional and sensory impact, heightening an awareness of the relationships lying behind such events, making these more present and real for the participants. For people of the Iron Age, as indeed for people anywhere, community was an issue. Recent anthropological work on kinship (e.g. Carsten 2000), for example, emphasizes not just connections of blood or marriage, but also the manner in which kinship is realized through groups working together, exchanging gifts, or combining to bury their dead. The rhetoric of kinship relies on its practice and this is key for historians of prehistory who have access to physical evidence but no words. The constituents of the community may not have been restricted to living humans, with the dead and other spiritual forces, animals, landscape features, and artefacts all part of the never-ending process of community construction. Communities extended out from the settlement to include fields and herds, rivers and hills, or distant landscapes known mainly through rumour. The group also needed constant replenishment through food and materials. Houses, fences, and ramparts needed maintenance and mending; babies were born 1 There is a danger of circularity here – sites are defined as important because they have Celtic art in them and we then conclude that all important sites have Celtic art. However, we feel that most sites we consider to be important are defined as such on grounds other than the presence of Celtic art.

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and people died. The material and human worlds were created, used up, and decayed to create conditions for new life. Replacement involves transformation, so that each new generation of people, plants, animals, and things are modified descendents of the previous one. The nature of transformation can itself be transformed in revolutionary ways, so that from the first century BC in Britain quite new sets of relationships come into being, putting at risk older relationships and values. At the start of the inquiry that led to the writing of this book we were somewhat sceptical about the true importance of Celtic art in these cycles of reproduction and transformation. Its attractiveness to us now may have made us, artificially, attribute it with an importance at the outset. Perhaps fine metalwork was just art as we might understand it today: a series of pretty things to be contemplated and displayed, but rather apart from the really important business of living. Such scepticism has disappeared, and not just because we have spent so much time working on the material that we feel the need to argue for its importance. In pulling together the threads of the book we have argued for the integral role of fine metalwork in cycles of cultural transformation and in the difficult process of negotiating changing identities from the Late Iron Age onwards. This material was, in a multitude of different ways, and of course to different degrees, special.

DISPERSED COMMUNITIES From the Bronze Age onwards small groups came together periodically into larger ones. Of course, this would always have been the case, but from the end of the second millennium BC these agglomerations often appear to have resulted in a different quality, or magnitude, of effects. The extensive laying out of ditched field systems in the Middle Bronze Age would have required considerable coordinated labour, as would the digging and maintenance of linear ditches from the Late Bronze Age onwards (Bradley et al. 1994). The large midden sites of the Bronze Age–Iron Age transition were created through considerable aggregations of people, cattle, and materials (Needham 1991; McOmish 1996; Lawson 2000). A century or two later, hillforts with considerable ditches and ramparts required labour power, extensive

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amounts of timber and other materials. The need for regular labour is emphasized by the periodic reworking of ramparts at hillforts like Maiden Castle (Sharples 1991) and Segsbury (Lock et al. 2005). Indeed minor changes to some ramparts were so frequent (also using a range of non-local materials) that the regular work done on them seems to have been aimed more at producing communities rather than actually making the ramparts (Sharples 2010: 116–24). Larger communities were actualized through sizable work projects, bringing together the labour of a larger group, who would also have eaten together and socialized in many ways, carrying back a series of memories or links to their own smaller settlements. Sharples (2010: Ch. 3) has emphasized the unprecedented nature of hillfort communities, the first time in Britain that large numbers of people lived together for any length of time. These communities would have required in themselves a new set of cultural mechanisms to mediate the strains and stresses of mass living. On the face of it, hoards or burials with grave goods appear to have little in common with projects such as these communal building works. However, we have seen that, in fact, many of the material assemblages containing Celtic art which we have looked at in detail might, like the earthworks and field systems described above, be considered communal ‘works’ of a sort. Burial assemblages – such as those at Kirkburn and Mill Hill – may well have been collected together and composed by a wide social group, the wider extended process of ‘burial’ bringing disparate communities together, and helping to re-establish social networks and roles. Hoard assemblages – such as those at Ringstead and Polden Hill – could also have been communal endeavours. The latter especially, and other hoards like it during the middle decades of the first century AD, may have been a subtle act of resistance, a means again of reinforcing community cohesion and solidarity in the fast-changing and threatening new ‘Romano-British’ world. As we have seen, the human dead from the Iron Age are scarcely to be found and even when they are evident, such as in East Yorkshire or the very Late Iron Age cremation burials of the south-east, they do not constitute sufficient numbers to represent a whole population. The scarcity of evidence of the dead is due to the complexity of their social lives after death. A whole dead body is an even rarer thing in any period of the Iron Age. The dead often circulated after death, as parts of bodies that end up in pits, ditches, or rivers, or as ash after

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cremation. It seems rare that so-called cremation burials contain all of the burnt remains of a single body. From at least the Late Bronze Age onwards complicated decisions were made on someone’s death as to what to do with the body. Dead bodies were not disposed of, but used. They were unmade and circulated in complex ways. The exact requirements of the dead may well have derived from the manner of death, its place and time, or the nature of connections the dead enjoyed with other artefacts, people, animals, spirits, and places. Bodies were distributed in death, presumably in ways influenced by the pattern of activities and connections during life. Just as with the assembly of items for a hoard, or ‘sets’ of material culture for a burial, the distribution of body parts may have helped reinforce the communities from which the person came. In creating hoards or complex burial assemblages, a broader group might have been mobilized – coming from a range of settlements and areas, bringing with them artefacts with some history, which were also striking in terms of their form and decoration. The production of horse gear was strikingly varied, as indicated by the great range of forms made at Gussage (see Chapter Eight), probably over a short period of time. These may have been dispersed into the countryside as sets, but then moved and mixed over time on occasions of marriage, alliance, gift exchange, or death. Two qualities of form were desired: things should be different, but also similar enough to be combined into new sets of resembling types. We have argued throughout for the variety of Celtic art objects and their complex, non-sequential changes. Creating similarity within difference seems key to these assemblages; it is part of the shift we have discussed from a Late Bronze Age emphasis on quantity to an Iron Age stress on quality in metalwork.

THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE Throughout later prehistory we get hints of dramatic events, many of which may have ended in deposition. For the earlier Iron Age the causeways at Fiskerton (Field and Parker Pearson 2003) and Flag Fen (Pryor 2001), or the bridges at Eton and Dorney (Booth et al. 2007: 17), were sites of procession followed by the deposition of fine metalwork and probably also bodies. For later periods, Creighton (2006:

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124–30) envisages processions back and forth across many of the oppida sites, including Colchester and Silchester. In Verulamium people moved between the burial and temple at Folly Lane and the main town in the valley. In this last case a probable Late Iron Age occupation at Folly Lane was succeeded by a cremation in a sunken funerary chamber around AD 55 that was destroyed as part of the broader burial process. There are indications of a complex sequence of events, probably including the laying out of the body in a subterranean wooden mortuary chamber, with a range of artefacts, including amphorae, Samian pottery, chain mail, hobnail boots, and a range of horse fittings with glass inlays. These objects were broken and many put on the funeral pyre. The hole of the mortuary chamber was infilled with turves that were brought from a number of different places, along with some of the pyre debris, more of which was put in a pit on the northern side of the shaft (Creighton 2000). After an unknown (but relatively short) period of time a Romano-British temple was erected on the site that lasted until the third century AD. As we discussed in Chapter Seven, Iron Age burials would also often have involved a number of phases – of feasting, constructing the grave, laying out the body and its grave goods, and backfilling the hole. These would have taken place over days or weeks, involving people in a whole range of archaeologically invisible activities, such as speech-making, singing, and dancing. Materials – including Celtic art – were key to these activities, from the careful laying out of pig bones in Kirkburn and Mill Hill to the display of imported wares in the Welwyn-type burials. Celtic art is known as art by virtue of its decoration. Making art might well have involved dramatic performance, with heat, light, red hot or molten metal, and careful disposal of the remains from these activities, as Pit 209 from Gussage (see Chapter Eight) amply demonstrates. But the viewing and appreciation of decoration and form might also have involved moments of drama. We have commented on the strongly three-dimensional nature of pieces like the Wandsworth mask shield, with its surfaces and angles mobile in firelight or torchlight. The engraved decoration on the Bugthorpe scabbard or the Desborough mirror may have been the objects of minute attention, following the curves and connections of the moving line, never quite the same from one area to the next and opening up endless possibilities for story, song, and exegesis. The rhythmic movement of these lines may have been similar to the unfolding of music, with each

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section containing an anticipation of the next and gaining power through what has already been seen. As we saw in Chapter Seven, when a sword or mirror was placed in a grave there would have been performances within performances, as the memories triggered by the artefact and its decoration added depth to the internment of a whole dead body, itself an unusual and dramatic act. These objects were intimately involved in the ongoing social negotiations that surround any death. Occasionally moments of great theatre may have been staged. The spectacular burning of a chariot on the hilltop at Bury Hill would have been impressive for those in the near vicinity, but could have been an event visible over a considerable area, especially if it happened at night. There are echoes here of the production of chariot gear through firelight at nearby Gussage a few miles away. At Bury Hill the moments of burning were then followed a day or two later once things had cooled, by the division of burnt timbers and metalwork between a number of pits within the hillfort. Many individual items of Celtic art were special and unusual. The realization of this ‘specialness’ reminds us once again of the fact that the vast majority of Celtic art objects came to be deposited in unusual circumstances. The material we have represents a tiny subset of a tiny subset of the Iron Age and Romano-British material world. However, as we argued in Chapter Three, it is important not to worry about that minimal sample, but to celebrate it. These are fascinating and amazing deposits, and we should be glad when we are sometimes able to obtain the space and time to think about them. In Chapter Six we saw that early hoards contained a fairly specific set of materials and objects which could well be described as special. We have argued that, from around 200 BC when these hoards appear, the Celtic art objects (and indeed other types) in them – as with those in burials discussed above – were already caught up in the social dynamics of power and community: torcs, coins, ingots, etc.. We have also discussed the fact that the ways in which power was made manifest through those objects was itself complicated. While torcs clearly acted as an impressive ‘costume’ at times, they may also have worked as stores of wealth and raw materials, which could be broken up and combined in new ways. The same might also be said for coins, whose role prior to the late first century BC is also ambiguous. The realization that, despite their apparent power as objects in life, these items came to be deposited in hoards reminds us again that we

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are dealing with a very different ontology to our own. We have suggested that, as has been argued for the Bronze Age, the very act of deposition may itself have enabled these artefacts to intervene in (and to create) social life – perhaps through conspicuous consumption, perhaps as gifts to curry favour from the gods. This latter possibility, especially, brings us back to the potentially ‘magical’ power of Celtic art objects discussed in Chapter One, and specifically, again, to Gell’s idea that ‘the power of art objects stems from the technical processes they objectively embody: the technology of enchantment is founded on the enchantment of technology’ (1992: 44, original emphasis). The skill brought to bear in making them was again tied up directly with their deposition; the magic had to be there from the beginning for it to be efficacious at the end. Everyday life was made up of work in the fields and settlements of a mundane and repetitive nature, punctuated occasionally by events of heightened sensory impact and emotion, which helped fix values and relationships in individual minds and in the memory of the group generally. Celtic art played its part in adding to the complex sensory and emotional nature of these experiences.

MULTIPLE MEANINGS AND CUMULATIVE STYLES In Chapter One we also discussed one clear difference between Late Bronze Age and Iron Age metalwork, suggesting that whereas the former can be characterized as concerned with quantity, the latter was concerned with quality. Later on in this chapter we will see that, from the very late first century BC onwards, there was arguably a return to an emphasis on quantity again. It is actually quite hard to define exactly what we mean by ‘quality’ in this context. Certainly, many Celtic art objects were quality items, in the modern sense – they were made from valuable materials with immense skill, and may have been ‘worth’ a great deal. However, this was not always the case. Certain objects would not necessarily have been very hard to make (assuming a basic knowledge of metallurgy). Nevertheless, even those items that fit into this latter category – the horse gear made at Gussage All Saints, for example – display a clear element of individuality. The decoration on many Celtic art objects also adds to this sense of individuality, or, to put it another way, the absence of mass or

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standardized production techniques. Ultimately, we have come to understand the different ‘styles’ or ‘stages’ of Celtic art as cumulative rather that successive (see also Garrow et al. 2010). As a result, decoration arguably became more complex over time. Equally, there may not actually have been a sense of any need for originality, as there is surrounding modern art today, and which has mostly been assumed by past, art-historical approaches to the Iron Age material. As we saw in Chapter Three, many of the most important ‘decorative’ features within Celtic art are line and conjunctive motifs. The latter include keeled volutes and roundels, which take a line around a curve or circle, bringing it out the other side. The key aspect of much engraved Celtic art is the interaction between lines and circles (see, for example, Joy 2008). The effect on the eye is to keep it moving. There is no simple beginning or end to decorations. This is especially true of the elaborately decorated mirrors of the first centuries BC and AD, but also of linear decoration on earlier scabbards, etc., whose motifs resist beginnings and endings. In addition to these engraved motifs, threedimensional decoration (through casting or repoussé) opens up the possibility of an equivalent ‘mobility’ through the play of light and shadow. The sculptural qualities of the Wandsworth mask shield or the Grotesque torc from Snettisham, for example, ensure varied impressions as a result of movement around the object, or indeed its movement around an observer, but in a slightly different manner than the engraved decorations. There is also the ambiguity of many motifs. The Llyn Cerrig Bach plaque, for example, might be seen to have puffin heads on it, but this is not certain or the only way of looking at it (see Spratling 2008: 195). Equally, the ‘faces’ on the Battersea shield (Fig. 9.1) can be read as horses, people with headdresses, or animals in their own right. There is often a deliberate ambiguity to this art, opening it up to varying perceptions and readings. There are also different possible scales of seeing. As Spratling has noted, you could not have seen much of the harness of a horse without proffering it an apple nor much of a chariot’s fittings as it sped by at a maximum speed of about 20 m.p.h., nor much of a brooch’s design or a torc’s ornament without being invited to come close, so close as would otherwise transgress private space (2008: 189).

On something like the Battersea shield, for example, one can either try and take in the decoration of all three roundels, look at one, or

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Fig. 9.1 Battersea shield (detail) # Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum

follow a single line within each one. The same is true for mirror decoration. Differences in scalar appreciation increase the likelihood that there was no one definitive way of seeing.

NEGOTIATING IDENTITIES Creighton (2006) has pointed out the processual nature of social and political change from the first century BC to the early second century AD in which it would be wrong to privilege key events, such as the incursions by Julius Caesar in 55 and 54 BC and the Claudian invasion of AD 43. This helps get rid of the dichotomy of native versus Roman, as many of the key changes after AD 43 have obvious roots in the preceding century or more. If we were to take a dichotomized view, Iron Age and Roman ontologies might appear simple to characterize: an holistic approach in the earlier period combined with what we have come to characterize as magic, religion, and science, which later came to confront a more functional logic deriving from the Roman market economy, state apparatus, and military machine, which

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stripped the world of magic through a desire for conquest, profit, and power. The Celtic art evidence we have been discussing appears to be more difficult to pigeon-hole. Horse gear, figurines, and ornamental work are found in rich graves such as Lexden and Folly Lane, but are absent from graves with fewer goods, such as those at King Harry Lane. The six simple disc mirrors found there were of Roman type rather than of decorated Iron Age type. No horse gear or decorated metalwork (apart from fibulae) were found in the 455 cremations and 17 inhumations excavated (Stead and Rigby 1989). Of the 237 brooches found in 150 graves, most were types common in the period AD 1–60 (although this dating might be pushed back to 20 BC–AD 43; Niblett 2001: 44). These included bronze and iron versions of types from simple onepiece and Gallic brooches through to Aucissa, Hod Hill, and plate types (Stead and Rigby 1989: Table 5). No weapons were found. In the south and south-east the older curvilinear styles drop out around this time, and it is especially striking that items of these types are completely absent from the oppida. Fig. 9.2 shows items in our database from these sites and they are confined to figures of animals or people, bowls, buckets, openwork discs, and horse gear in geometric styles. The other weaponry, torcs, and ornaments have been given up, on these sites at least. 18

No. of artefacts

16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

t t t ) r r r r d n d p d rm ring cke g e cap bi ral p i n irro tri he iel oo or ar rre lla u ag rn- rse ne ch M al s Ot Sh Sp Sw ank Te /co m b t D o Ho (ge L i n rc T Ar on/ H en To r um m ar ld /h a e l u n g a a r O im l/c se w or An H Bo an

fo

Fig. 9.2 The occurrence of Celtic art on large Late Iron Age sites known as oppida

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However, these absences in the south and south-east contrast with the well-known hoards of often newly coloured horse fittings in south-west England (Polden Hill), southern Wales (Seven Sisters), East Anglia (Saham Toney, Westhall), or northern England and southern Scotland (Newstead – see Chapter Eight). In a recent reanalysis of the Seven Sisters hoard, Davis and Gwilt (2008) looked at both the style and metallurgical composition of the 37 pieces of metalwork discovered in 1875. In addition to metalworking debris, such as ingots, weights, two casting jets, and scrap, they identify three styles of metalwork: ‘Roman’ military gear, items decorated in a ‘geometric’ style, and those with a curvilinear ornament (Davis and Gwilt 2008: 149). These accord with three metal compositions: the objects with curvilinear ornaments (five tankard handles, a helmet crest, three folded sheets – originally vessels and a metalworking tool) are made of unleaded tin bronze; those of geometric ornament (two bridle bits, two terrets, a strap union, and miscellaneous metalworking accessories) are made of brass; and the Roman-style gear (varied horse gear, two casting jets, and an ingot) is made of much more various materials of bronze, brass, and leaded versions of these two alloys (Davis and Gwilt 2008: Appendix 1). The artefacts with curvilinear decoration have red and yellow glass inlays with high copper and lead content, whereas the geometric inlays are enamel (powdered glass fused within cells on the object) in red, yellow, white, and blue, with high zinc content (Davis and Gwilt 2008: 155–8). The Roman military equipment was sometimes decorated with niello derived from silver, giving a black appearance to inlay. The composition of the bronze artefacts from Seven Sisters is similar to those from Camerton in Somerset, Melsonby (Stanwick), North Yorkshire, and the brass materials are also the same. In all of these ‘mixed’ hoards the Roman material has much more varied composition. All of these hoards were deposited between AD 50 and 75, at the same time that the Roman army was campaigning in Wales and the north. It is worth thinking about the metals used in these hoards before looking at form and decoration. There seems to be a shift from a relative homogeneity of bronze and early brass alloys through to around AD 50 in south-east England and around 25 years later west and north. More analytical work needs to be done to establish this pattern fully, but if it is substantiated, the homogeneity of alloys may link to the structure of production and the importance of origins. The

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so-called oppida of the south and south-east show both a concentration and structuring of production, which unifies an earlier distributed pattern whereby metalworking took place in both hillforts and smaller settlements. The place(s) where metals were fashioned into finished items may have been consequential, and so too may have been the sources (real or imagined) from which metals came. This interest in sources perhaps broke down in the later first century AD, as metalworking was reorganized around mass production and the recycling of items deriving from the Roman military. Hunter (2008) has developed the concept of ‘frontier art’ in relation to this material. He designates a zone north of the Humber and south of the Forth as one where polychrome styles (like those from Seven Sisters) occur together with a loss of style of threedimensional character. A third style also exists of ‘sinuous floral trumpets, berried rosettes, swash-N motifs, broken-back scrolls, and die-stamping’ (Hunter 2008: 135), which is found in famous pieces such as the Stichill collar, the Aesica brooch, the Meyrick helmet, and the Balmaclellan mirror. Most of these pieces are worked in sheet metal, whereas the polychrome and boss styles are predominantly cast (Hunter 2008: 135), echoing the distinction we have noted between cast and sheet for the earlier Iron Age. Such new styles represent not the breakdown or degradation of previous traditions but the creation of something quite new, with the fusion of older local and incoming ways of doing things. They exist within a new Roman world in which forms, decorations, and materials proliferate, creating ‘a marked visual inflation in the Roman period in terms of viewers’ expectations and domains for their attention’ (Hunter 2008: 132). As we saw at Newstead (Chapter 8), items such as these did not exist within a simple binary opposition of native to Roman, but were found across a variety of contexts, changing some meanings and substantiating others. Elsewhere on the frontier, similar complexity is found. Davis and Gwilt (2008) note a number of stylistic traits of the Seven Sisters (and related) material, including an emphasis on creating boundaries and borders through wire and cable motifs, the separated insets for polychrome work not just on horse gear but also on late northern swords like Asby Scar and Embleton (Davis and Gwilt 2008: 167–8). This leads once-flowing designs to become isolated and fragmented into discrete motifs, such as petals, which were earlier incorporated into more continuous designs (Davis and Gwilt 2008: 171–4). It is

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interesting to speculate whether this change in the construction of designs echoed people’s own feelings about their social position and relations to others in the fast-evolving and violent world of the first century AD. Geometric polychrome art is not purely found on the obvious borders of Roman Britain, but also in places with less military activity such as Somerset and East Anglia. The latter is the centre of the Boudiccan revolt, an area of intense negotiations and eruptions of violence. Davis and Gwilt (2008: 177) call this ‘Native Campaigning Art’ rather than frontier art. War has been described as politics by other means. We wonder whether art could sometimes be war by other means? Over southern, central, and into northern Britain, temples and sanctuary sites are found (Taylor 2007); these start in the middle first century BC (with Hayling Island), become more common in the first century AD, flourish into the third and fourth centuries, and maybe beyond in some cases (Smith 2001: Figs. 4.5 and 5.11). Because these sites vary in any case and have had variable degrees of excavation and reporting, generalizations must be made cautiously. But it is safe to say that most have circular, or more commonly, rectangular structures within an enclosure (temenos) surrounded by pits and other features. Those that start in the Iron Age (e.g. Hayling Island, Uley, Frilford/Marcham) are often rebuilt in stone in the later first century AD. From the Late Iron Age onwards they witness considerable deposition of coins, sometimes in large hoards such as at Harlow (Haselgrove 1987: 126; Smith 2001: 69) where a cluster of early gold is found beneath the later cella. Hayling Island has not only coins, but spearheads, shield bindings, sword chapes, horse gear, tankard handles, and currency bars (Smith 2001: 172). As the first century AD progresses, evidence for particular hotspots for the deposition of coins, brooches, and pins decreases, often clustered within temple areas and along pathways (Kamash et al. 2010). Many of these were deposited singularly, indicating reported acts of individual placement of items. Further north and west there is less evidence of formalized deposition in temples and shrines. There is a complementarity between the distributions of temples on the one hand and forts on the other. These might seem to us quite different types of site: one religious, the other military. However, both temples and forts concern power. This was especially true in a world in which the ultimate source of all power and legitimacy was the divine. In both cases, the Flavian

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period was key to establishing the forts of Wales, the south-west, and northern England or southern Scotland, and also founding or monumentalizing temples further south and east. The conquest of Britain was most obviously achieved by military means, but it was also secured by control of sacred power. The weapons (often in miniature) found on temple sites reinforce this notion and bear comparison with the deposits of weaponry and horse gear at Newstead (see Chapter Eight) and elsewhere. More positive comparison between the deposits in Newstead (around the front area of the fort and then gathered into pit deposits) and temples might be of interest, helping us to rethink the categories of war and religion, fort and temple. In general, Celtic art helps challenge fixed categories, a role it may well have played two thousand years ago. For us, it has become a window into a different world, one in which making, using, and depositing were embedded in a series of relationships between people and the physical and spiritual powers of the universe. These relations encompass those we would currently label as religion and science, virtuoso craftwork and magic. What Celtic art demanded of people was highly skilled performance, not just in making items in the first place, but in creating moments of theatre that were socially powerful in binding or dividing communities, and in deposition, itself a major prehistoric science.

The Dinnington Torc We began this book with a description of the torcs from Snettisham, and will now give the last word to one final object, a neck ring of a different sort. This object is not especially spectacular, but it does demonstrate considerable internal variability; it also reminds us that Celtic art continued well into the Roman period, to reappear in the often-enamelled metalwork of the Early Medieval period. In 1984, in a wood near Dinnington in South Yorkshire, a metal detectorist found a neck ring (Beswick et al. 1990). It probably came from within the area of a sub-rectangular enclosure that has produced other finds dating to between the first and fourth centuries AD. The piece itself is likely to have been made during the second century AD. The torc is small (Fig. 9.3), being 375 mm (43/4 in) in inner diameter and 480 mm (83/4 in) on the outside. It has a hinge at the back, allowing it to open out and when fully extended has a gap at the

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Seam

Seam

River Grooves The horizontal 0

15cm

0

6ins

RS

Fig. 9.3 Dinnington torc (Beswick et al. 1990: Fig. 2)

front of 160 mm (⅝ in). It is heavy, being 758 g, but marks of polish and damage show that it was worn regularly. The torc is made from six sections, four of which are cast tubes. Two of these tubes are at the front with cast-on beads as decoration. Two shorter tubes are at the back with similar decoration and are joined by a hinge. Between the front and back cast tubes are two tubular sheets, which were made as flat sheets of metal and then rolled. These were inserted into the ends of the cast tubes, which had v-shapes cut into them to facilitate this insertion. These rolled sheets were around lead cores, which helps account for the weight of the torc (Beswick et al. 1990). This complex object creates a series of associations linking it to other items. The bead decorations on the cast sections connects this

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item to a broader class of beaded torcs, some of which have beads cast into their shape, as here, and others have beads as additions (Beswick et al. 1990). In general they fit within the emphasis on plastic decoration found in many British pieces. Beaded torcs have a northern British distribution, being found north of a line between the Humber and Mersey and south of one joining the Forth and the Clyde, so that the Dinnington torc is just to the south of its main distribution. Temporally it fits well into the main period of use of beaded torcs within the first and second centuries AD. The hinge on the Dinnington piece links it with the so-called Wraxall torcs, which have a predominant distribution in the southwest of Britain from Somerset to Cornwall, far to the south of its find spot. The most mysterious link is that provided by the rolled tubular sheets, which are mainly found in gold, such as that from Hoard A at Snettisham or from Dorchester, Devon (Beswick et al. 1990); these objects are generally much earlier than the Dinnington torc. The hatched triangular decoration on these tubes have their best parallels at an early date, such as the scabbard from Fovant in Wiltshire that dates to the third or second centuries BC (Beswick et al. 1990: 28). The complexities of the Dinnington torc are augmented by the results of metallurgical analysis. Its various aspects are made generally of brass and gun metal, due to the addition of zinc, metals which probably only came into Britain after the Roman conquest in AD 43, although a small number of imported fibulae in brass may be found before that (Beswick et al. 1990: 22). Interestingly, each of the components of the torc was of a different metallurgical composition, so that even the two pieces of tubular sheet varied (ibid). However, they were different also from the cast sections of the torc and may have been tinned on their surface, giving them a much whiter colour than the deeper brown of the cast tubes. Play with colour was an important aspect of this piece, important to its overall effects, and variability of visual effect was added to in a minor way by the fact that the triangular decoration on one side was infilled with dots, while the other was left empty. In all this was a most complex piece. Intriguingly, it references objects known to have had a very different spatial distribution (the Wraxall-type torcs of the West Country) and temporal currency (in echoing the forms of various tubular torcs that were probably made three to four hundred years before it). In its complex ‘gathering’ of different places and different times, different styles and different

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materials, the Dinnington torc might well be viewed as very representative of Celtic art in general. It is difficult to ‘read’ – for us now, and perhaps also for them then – and one wonders whether, in fact, that was part of its point. It draws on material elements from the distant past, and accumulates a variety of different object ‘styles’ within its form. But it also looks forward; it is in some ways a new and very different kind of object. Its varied chemical compounds, and its mixture of manufacturing techniques, speak of a complex sequence of events – and, no doubt, people – that were combined in its making. It is intriguing, yet difficult to comprehend. People of the later Iron Age and Romano-British periods attempted a systematic understanding of matter and its transformations. The world was not static or singular, but grew, changed, and decayed, always eluding human systematization. Many of the powers in the world were enigmatic, ambiguous, and hard to harness. An item like the Dinnington torc represented a series of small experiments with form, decoration, and materials. Highly developed skills of making and appreciation are in evidence here, drawing on many centuries of work aimed at decorating the human body, interceding with the gods, and linking with human neighbours. It is in the tension between history and experimentation that Celtic art emerged, evolved, and was sustained.

APPENDIX 1

Artefacts illustrated in some of the main works on Celtic art

Fox 1958 Aldborough terret Amerden scabbard Arras Barrow 43 bracelet Arras mirror Ashmolean triskele Aston mirror Aust-by-Severn statuette Aylesford bucket Baldock bucket mount Baldock fire-dog Balmaclellan collar Balmaclellan mirror Barn Elms sheath Battersea scabbard Battersea shield Bigbury animal figure Billericay mirror Birdlip mirror Borough Green bracelet Brentford horn cap Bugthorpe scabbard Bugthorpe enamelled disk Bulbury chariot fitting Bunrannoch armlet Burton Fleming bracelet Cairnmuir torc terminal Camerton boar Capel Garmon fire-dog Cardigan spoon Castle New armlets Cerrigydrudion ‘crown’ Chelsea sheath Cheltenham harness mount Chepstow horse mount Chertsey shield

Stead 1985b

Green 1996

Megaws 2001

Harding 2007

X X X X X X X

X

X

X

X X X

X

X

X

X

X

X X

X

X X

X X

X X X X X X X X X

X

X

X

X

X X

X X X X

X X

X X X

X X X X

X

X X

X X X (continued)

328

Appendix 1 Fox 1958

Chiswell Green knives Clevedon torc terminal Colchester mirror Cotterdale sword Cowlam bracelet Crosby Ravensworth spoons Culbin Sands armlet Dane’s Grave bracelet Dane’s Grave bronze pin Danebury disc Desborough mirror Deskford carnyx Dinnington torc Disney mirror Dinorben bucket mount Ditchley terret Dowgate London plaque Drummond Castle armlet Elmswell plaque Elveden tankard Embleton scabbard Felmersham fish/cowhead Fiskerton sword Fovant scabbard Gibbs mirror Glencotho scabbard Great Chesterford mirror Great Chesterford Aesica Grimthorpe bronze roundel Grimthorpe scabbard Grimthorpe shield boss Ham Hill bucket mount Ham Hill scabbard Hammersmith scabbard Hammersmith sword Harpenden ram’s head Hertford Warren sheath High Cross, Leicester Holcombe mirror Hounslow boars Hunsbury scabbard Ingleton mirror Ipswich torc Isleham scabbard Ixworth enamelled disk Kew tankard King’s Barrow horse gear Kings Langley linch pin Kirkburn scabbard Lady’s Barrow mirror

X X X X

Stead 1985b

Green 1996

X X

Megaws 2001

Harding 2007

X

X X

X

X

X

X

X X

X X

X X

X X X X

X X

X X X X X X X X X X X

X X X X

X

X X

X X X X X X

X X X

X

X X

X

X X X X X X X X X X

X X X

X

X X

X X

X

X X

X X X X

X X X

X

X

X

Artefacts Illustrated in Some of the Main Works on Celtic Art 329 Fox 1958 Little Wittenham chape Little Wittenham scabbard Llandysul collar Llechwedd-ddu mirror Llyn Cerrig bridle bit Llyn Cerrig plaque Llyn Cerrig shield boss Llyn Cerrig yoke terminal Lochar Moss collar London spoon Lord’s Bridge fire-dog Marlborough bucket Mayer mirror Meare scabbard Mill Hill crown Mill Hill scabbard Moel Hirraddug plaque Mortonhall scabbard Mount Batten mirror/bracelets Needwood Forest torc Newnham Croft bracelets Nijmegen mirror North Grimston sword Old Warden mirror Penbryn spoon Polden Hills hoard Portland collar Queen’s Barrow glass beads Queen’s Barrow gold ring Rainsborough harness mount Ratcliffe shield-boss Richmond Bridge sheath Ringstead horse bit Rise horse bit Rivenhall mirror River Medway torc Rodborough strips St Keverne mirror St Mawgan shield mount Sadberge scabbard Salisbury hoard shield Santon horse gear Santon strip Sedgeford torc Seven Sisters hoard Shapwick Heath tankard Snailwell bracelet Snettisham gold bracelet Snettisham torcs

Stead 1985b

Green 1996

X X X X X X X X X X X X X

X

X X

X

X

X

X

X X

X

X X X X X X X X

Harding 2007

X X

X X X X

Megaws 2001

X X

X X X

X X

X X X X X X X

X

X

X

X X

X

X X X X

X X X X X X X

X

X X X

X

X

X X X X X X X X

X X X

X (continued)

330

Appendix 1 Fox 1958

Snowdon bowl Spettisbury scabbard Stamford Hill mirror Standlake scabbard Standsbury fire-dog Stanwick horse mask Stanwick linch pin and terret Stichhill collar Sudeley Castle horse mount Suffolk hame Suffolk terret Sutton Reach scabbard Tal-y-Llyn shield mount Thames bridle bit Thames spear Thorpe Hall sword Torrs chamfrein Trawsfynydd tankard Trelan Bahow Ulceby horse bit Unknown helmet Wandsworth chape Wandsworth mask shield Wandsworth round shield Wandsworth sheath Waterloo helmet Welwyn bronze masks Welwyn fire-dog Welwyn glass game pieces Welwyn iron frame Welwyn mount West Coker bit ring Westhall terret Westruther scabbard Wetwang ‘bean can’ Wetwang Slack scabbards Wisbech sheath Witham scabbard Witham shield Wood Eaton disk Wood Eaton scabbard Wraxall collar

Stead 1985b

Green 1996

Megaws 2001

Harding 2007

X X X X X X X X

X X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X X X X

X

X

X X

X X X X X X X

X X X X

X X X X X X X X X X

X X X

X X X X X X X X X X

X

X

X X

X X

X

X

X X

X X

X

X

X X X X X X

X X

X X X X X X

X X X

APPENDIX 2

List of objects used in motif analysis

Place

County (modern)

Object

Jope (2000) reference

Amerden, Taplow Auchendolly

scabbard terret (flat ring)

208 a–d 293 a–b

mirror

252 e, 253 f

Bapchild Battersea Birdlip Brentford? Bugthorpe

Buckinghamshire Dumfries & Galloway Dumfries & Galloway Kent London Gloucestershire London Yorkshire E

293 d 76–81 244–247 302 a–c 202–203 h

?

Cadbury Castle

Somerset

91 a–d

y

Canterbury

Kent

297 c

y

Cerrigydrudion

Conwy

terret (flat ring) shield mirror horn-cap sword + scabbard shield (boss and spine) strap junction/ harness mount ‘crown’

Clevedon Colchester Colchester (Lexden Grange) Colne Fen

Somerset Essex Essex

torc (tubular) terret (flat ring) mirror

Cambridgeshire

29 b–c, 30 a–e, 31 a 120–121 a–g 292 g, 293 h 237 b–c, 238 a–b, 239 a, g 300 b, d

Colne Fen

Cambridgeshire

300 a, c

Balmaclellan

Crosby Ravensworth Deal Desborough

linch pin (crescentic) linch pin (crescentic) Cumbria spoon Kent scabbard mount Northamptonshire mirror

Dorton Elmswell, Driffield Elveden Fovant Great Chesterford

Buckinghamshire Yorkshire E Suffolk Wiltshire Essex

mirror fitting tankard scabbard mirror

232 a 205 o 240–241 c–d, 243 239 b 222 a–b 226 e–f 204 l 238 c–d, 239 c–f

Berried Rosette

Bird TrisHeads keles

y ?

FatHatch- Cusp-Held WaveBodied ing Roundel line S Tendril

y

y y y

y

y

y y y

y y

Impact 1

y y

y

y y

y

3D Keeled Roundel/ Volute

y y

y

y y

Impact 2

y

y y y

?

y

y

y y y y y y

y

y y

y

y y ? y

y y

y y

y

? y

y y

?

y y ? y

y y

y y y y

y

y y

?

y

y

y

y y

y

y y

y

y ?

Impact 3

y

y y

y y y

y ? y y

y y y

y y y ?

y y y y y

Grimthorpe, Millington Grimthorpe, Millington Hammersmith Henley upon Thames

London Oxfordshire

Holcombe, Uplyme

Devon

Hunsbury, Northampton Isleham

Northamptonshire sword + scabbard Cambridgeshire sword + scabbard Suffolk terret (flat ring) Oxfordshire sword + scabbard Anglesey mount Anglesey carnyx Anglesey shield (boss and spine) London mount Somerset scabbard Denbighshire shield mount? Devon mirror

Lakenheath Little Wittenham Llyn Cerrig Bach Llyn Cerrig Bach Llyn Cerrig Bach

Yorkshire E

roundel

93 b

Yorkshire E

shield (boss and spine) scabbard sword + scabbard mirror

92, 93 a–b

London Meare Moel Hiraddug Mount Batten (Stamford Hill), Plymouth Netherhampton, Salisbury Netherurd, Blyth Bridge Newnham Croft, Cambridge Norton Old Warden Owmby Polden Hill Polden Hill Polden Hill

Somerset

Wiltshire

y

y y

?

y

y

y

y

y

? y

184 103 f–h 90 a–d

y

297 d 207 e 94 a–b 253 i

?

Cambridgeshire

arm ring

40 a–d, 41 a–d

Suffolk Bedfordshire Lincolnshire Somerset Somerset

mount mirror terret (flat ring) horse gear strap junction/ harness mount strap junction/ harness mount

297 e 248 a–f 293 i 298 d, 299 a 297 b

y

? y

y ?

y

y

y

y

y

y

y

y

y y

y y

y y

y

y

y

y

?

y y ? y

y

y

y y y y y y y

y y

y y

y ? ? ? y

y

y

y y ?

99 f–h

299 b

y y

y y

y

292 d–e 205 m–n

110 a–d

y y

206 h–k, 207 h

Borders

y

y

52 e 208 g–h, 209a–e 240–241 a–b, 242 204 b

shield (miniature) torc

y

y y

y

y y

y

y

y y

y

y

y y y y y y

y y y y y y

(continued)

Place

County (modern)

Object

Jope (2000) reference

Polden Hill Ratcliffe-on-Soar

Somerset Nottinghamshire

89 b 68 g–j

Richborough Ringstead

Kent Norfolk

shield (boss) shield (boss and spine) terret (flat ring) horse bit (3 link)

Ringstead River Thames Runnymead, Egham Santon

Norfolk London Surrey Norfolk

Santon

Norfolk

Santon

Norfolk

Sedgeford Snettisham Snettisham (Hoard A) Snowdon St Stephen, St Albans Staines Standlake

Norfolk Norfolk Norfolk Gwynedd Hertfordshire Surrey Oxfordshire

Stichill

Borders

Sudeley, Cheltenham

Gloucestershire

Sutton Reach, N of Newark Tal-y-Llyn

Nottinghamshire

Tal-y-Llyn Torrs, Kelton

Gwynedd Dumfries & Galloway

Torrs, Kelton

Gwynedd

293 e 274 d–h, 275 h horse bit (3 link) 127 c spearhead 217 a–c terret (flat ring) 293 g strap junction/ 296 a harness mount strap junction/ 296 b, 297 a harness mount ornamental 223 j strip torc 114 e–f, 115 arm ring 111 torc 108–9 bowl 295 a–d knife? 89 d terret (flat ring) 293 c sword + 48 a–e, 49 a–b scabbard torc (heavy 260 a–e collar) strap junction/ 270 a–f harness mount scabbard 52 a–d, 53 a

Berried Rosette

Bird TrisHeads keles

Hatch- Cusp-Held Waveing Roundel line Tendril

3D Keeled Roundel/ Volute

Impact 1

y

y y

y

y y

y y

y y

y ? y

y y y y

y

y y

? ?

y y

y

y y ? y

y y ?

y y y y

?

y y y

y y y y

y

y y

y y y y y y y

y y y y

y y ?

y y y y y

y

y y

y

y

y

y

y

y

y y y

chamfrain?

y

y

y

y

y

y y y

y y

y

y

Impact 3

y

y

?

Impact 2

y

y

shield (boss and 96 spine) shield mount 98 a–d horns 58–59 d 100–101

FatBodied S

y

y y y y

Dumfries & Galloway Gwynedd Cornwall

Trawsfynydd Trelan Bahow, St Keverne Trenoweth, St Stephen Cornwall in Brannel Wandsworth London Wandsworth London

tankard mirror

228–229 a–d 252 a–c

torc (heavy collar) shield (boss) shield (boss and spine) shield sword + scabbard helmet

259 a 82–89 70–75

y

y

y

y

y

y y

y

y

y

y

y y

y

y y

y y

y

y

y

y

y

? y

y y

y y

y y y

y y

y y y

y y y

y

y

y

y

y y y

y y

y y

Washingborough Washingborough

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire

Waterloo Bridge

London

West Coker? Westhall

Somerset Suffolk

Westhall Westhall Wetwang Slack

Suffolk Suffolk Yorkshire E

Weybread Wisbech (?) ?? (The ‘Gibb’s mirror’) ?? (The ‘jockey cap’ helmet) ?? (The ‘Mayer’ mirror) ??

Suffolk Cambridgeshire N/A

122–125, 126 a–c horse bit (3 link) 274 a–c strap junction/ 296 c–e harness mount terret (flat ring) 292 b terret (flat ring) 292 c canister (‘bean 52 f tin’) terret (flat ring) 292 f scabbard 28 a–b mirror 250 a–b

N/A

helmet

220–221 a–e

London

mirror

251

?

N/A

terret (flat ring)

293 f

?

y y

60–69 a 50 h–j, 51 l

y y y

y ?

? ? ?

y y y y y

y y

y

y

? y

y

y y

y y

y

Y

y

y y

APPENDIX 3

Hoards containing Celtic art Hoard name

County

Reference(s)

Aboyne Attleborough Balmaclellan

Aberdeenshire Norfolk Dumfries & Galloway Norfolk Aberdeenshire Dumfries & Galloway Borders

Jope 2000 Hutcheson 2004 Simpson 1860–2

Bawsey Belhelvie (or Drumside) Birtley (Carry House Camp) Blackburn Mill, Cockburnspath Bunrannoch, Kinloch Rannoch Carlingwark Loch, Castle Douglas Castle Newe, Strathdon Clevedon Colne Fen Crosby Ravensworth Eckford (Wooden Farm) Embleton, Cockermouth Essendon Eye and Dunsden Fetlar Fring Gaytonthorpe Roman villa Greenhill, Weymouth Hagbourne Hill, West Hagbourne Hengistbury Head Honley Hounslow Ipswich (Belstead) Lamberton Moor Llanaber Llechwedd-du Bach, Harlech Llyn Cerrig Bach Middlebie Muircleugh, Lauder Narford Nether Denton Netherhampton, Salisbury

Wake 1942; Clarke 1951b MacGregor 1976 Hall 1880 Piggott 1952–3

Perth & Kinross

MacGregor 1976

Dumfries & Galloway Aberdeenshire Somerset Cambridgeshire Cumbria Borders Cumbria Hertfordshire Oxfordshire Shetland Norfolk Norfolk Dorset Oxfordshire

Piggott 1952–3

Hampshire West Yorkshire London Suffolk Borders Gwynedd Gwynedd Anglesey Dumfries & Galloway Borders Norfolk Cumbria Wiltshire

Anon. 1864–5 Clarke 1954 Tebbutt & Fox 1961 MacGregor 1976 Piggott 1952–3 MacGregor 1976; Stead 2006 Not published. See Stead 2006, 51 Stead 2006 Hunter 2006 Hutcheson 2004 De Bootman 1998 Megaw 1971 King 1812 Bushe-Fox 1915; Cunliffe 1987 MacGregor 1976 Franks 1865 Brailsford & Stapley 1972 Anderson 1905 Fox 1925a Fox 1925a & b MacDonald 2006 Wilson 1863; Anon. 1893–4 Anon. 1920–1; MacGregor 1976 Hutcheson 2004 MacGregor 1976 Stead 1998

Hoards Containing Celtic Art Netherurd, Blyth Bridge New Mains, Whitekirk Old Down Farm, Andover Pitkelloney, Muthill Polden Hill Rickinghall Inferior Ringstead Rodborough Common Saham Toney (Ovington) Saham Toney (Quidney Farm ‘A’) Saham Toney (Quidney Farm ‘B’) Santon Seven Sisters, Neath Skerne Snettisham (Hoard A) Snettisham (Hoard B/C) Snettisham (Hoard D) Snettisham (Hoard E) Snettisham (Hoard F) Snettisham (Hoard G) Snettisham (Hoard H) Snettisham (Hoard J) Snettisham (Hoard K) Snettisham (Hoard L) South Cave Springfield Stanhope, Stobo Stanton Stanwick Stichill Tal-y-Llyn Thirlmire Tillychetly, Alford Torrs, Kelton Ulceby Waltham Abbey Walthamstow Westhall Weston, Bath Winchester

337

Borders East Lothian Hampshire Perth & Kinross Somerset Suffolk Norfolk Gloucestershire Norfolk Norfolk

Feacham 1960 MacGregor 1976 Davies 1981 Smith 1881 Harford 1803; Brailsford 1975 Spratling 1972 Clarke 1951a Smith 1925 Anon. 1849 Bates 2000

Norfolk

Bates 2000

Norfolk Neath/Port Talbot East Yorkshire Norfolk Norfolk Norfolk Norfolk Norfolk Norfolk Norfolk Norfolk Norfolk Norfolk East Yorkshire Essex Borders Suffolk North Yorkshire Borders Gwynedd Cumbria Aberdeenshire Dumfries & Galloway Lincolnshire Essex London Suffolk Somerset Hampshire

Smith 1909b; Spratling 1966b Romilly Allen 1905 MacGregor 1976 Clarke 1954; Stead 1991d Clarke 1954; Stead 1991d Clarke 1954; Stead 1991d Clarke 1954; Stead 1991d Stead 1991d Stead 1991d Stead 1991d Stead 1991d Stead 1991d Stead 1991d Faulkner 2003 Stead 2006 Smith 1881 Spratling 1972 MacGregor 1962 Anderson 1903–4; MacGregor 1976 Savory 1964 Collingwood 1904 MacGregor 1976 Atkinson & Piggott 1955; MacGregor 1976 Cuming 1859 Manning 1980 Stead 2006 Harrod 1855 Way 1869 Hill et al. 2004

APPENDIX 4

Burials containing Celtic art

Site

County

Burial category

Type

Sex

Age

Reference(s)

Aylesford (bucket) Aylesford (tankard) Baldock Folly Lane, St Albans Hertford Heath, Hertford Lexden tumulus, Colchester Mount Bures Stanfordbury, Southill Welwyn A Welwyn B Snailwell Arras (charioteer) Arras (king) Beverley Cawthorn Camps Dane’s Graves, Driffield Ferrybridge Garton Slack (chariot) Garton Station (GS6) Hunmanby Kirkburn (K5) Newbridge Pexton Moor, Pickering Arras (lady) Wetwang Slack 2 Wetwang Village Wetwang Slack 1 Wetwang Slack 3 Arras (2nd mirror burial) Aston

Kent Kent Hertfordshire Essex Hertfordshire Essex Essex Bedfordshire Hertfordshire Hertfordshire Cambridgeshire Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Yorkshire N Yorkshire E Yorkshire W Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Yorkshire N Yorkshire E Midlothian Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Hertfordshire

Aylesford Aylesford Aylesford Aylesford Aylesford Aylesford Aylesford Aylesford Aylesford Aylesford Aylesford/warrior chariot chariot chariot chariot chariot chariot chariot chariot chariot chariot chariot chariot chariot/mirror chariot/mirror chariot/mirror chariot/warrior chariot/warrior mirror mirror

cremation cremation cremation cremation cremation cremation cremation cremation cremation cremation cremation inhumation inhumation ? inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation ? ? inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation cremation

? ? ? ? ? M ? ? ? ? ? M M ? ? M M M M ? M ? ? F F F M ? ? F

? ? ? ? adult? mature ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 30s 30-ish 35–45 ? 25–35 ? ? ? young adult mature young adult young adult ? older adult

Evans 1890 Evans 1890 Stead & Rigby 1986 Niblett 1999 Holmes & Frend 1964 Foster 1986 Jope 2000 Spratling 1976 Stead 1967 Stead 1967 Lethbridge 1954 Stead 1979 Stead 1979 Stead 1965 Stead 1965 Stead 1965 Brown 2008 Brewster 1971 Stead 1991b Stead 1965 Stead 1991b Carter & Hunter 2005 Stead 1965 Stead 1979 Dent 1985 Hill 2002 Dent 1985 Dent 1985 Stead 1979 Rook et al. 1982

Site

County

Burial category

Type

Sex

Age

Reference(s)

Birdlip (mirror, etc.) Brecon

Gloucestershire Powys

mirror mirror

inhumation cremation

F ?

? ?

Bridport Chilham Castle Colchester (Lexden Grange) Dorton Garton Slack (mirror) Latchmere Green, Bramley, Silchester Pegsdon, Shillington Portesham Trelan Bahow, St Keverne Bryher, Isles of Scilly Acklam Alloa Birdlip (bucket + sword) Bradford Peverell Brisley Farm, Ashford 1 Brisley Farm, Ashford 2 Bugthorpe Camelon 1922 Camelon 1975 Coleford (High Nash) Deal (Grave 112) Eastburn Gelliniog Wen, Llangeinwen, Dwyran Grimthorpe, Millington Kelvedon Kirkburn (K3) North Grimston

Dorset Kent Essex Buckinghamshire Yorkshire E Hampshire Bedfordshire Dorset Cornwall Isles of Scilly Yorkshire N Clackmannanshire Gloucestershire Dorset Kent Kent Yorkshire E Falkirk Falkirk Gloucestershire Kent Yorkshire E Anglesey Yorkshire E Essex Yorkshire E Yorkshire N

mirror mirror mirror mirror mirror mirror mirror mirror mirror mirror/weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons

inhumation cremation cremation cremation inhumation cremation cremation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation ? inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation ? inhumation inhumation

F F ? ? F ? ? F ? ? ? M M ? M M ? ? ? ? M ? ? M ? M M

elderly 30 + ? ? 25–30 adult + child ? 26–45 ? 20–25 ? 25–35 old ? young young ? adult adult x2 ? 30–35 ? ? young ? 17–25 40–50

Bellows 1881; Staelens 1982 Adam Gwilt, personal communication Farrar 1956 Parfitt 1998 Fox & Hull 1948 Farley 1983 Brewster 1971 Fulford & Creighton 1998 Burleigh & Megaw 2007 Fitzpatrick 1997a Jope-Rogers 1873 Johns 2006 Stead 2006 Mills 2004 Bellows 1881; Staelens 1982 Stead 2006 Stevenson & Johnson 2004 Stevenson & Johnson 2004 Stead 2006 Buchanan & Callander 1923 Breeze et al. 1976 Stead 2006 Parfitt 1995 Sheppard 1939 Hughes 1909 Mortimer 1869 Stead 2006 Stead 1991b Stead 2006

Owslebury Rudston (107) Rudston (139) Rudston (144) Rudston (146) Rudston (163) Rudston (174) Rudston (182) Rudston (24) Rudston (57) Shouldham South Cave St Lawrence Thorpe Hall, Rudston Whitcombe Boverton

Hampshire Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Yorkshire E Norfolk Yorkshire E Isle of Wight Yorkshire E Dorset Vale of Glamorgan

weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons weapons other

inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation inhumation

M M ? M M F M ? M ? ? ? ? ? M F

40–50 45 + 17–25 25–35 25–35 25–35 17–25 25–35 17–25 25–35 ? ? ? ? 25–30 ?

Burnmouth Cerrigydrudion Cowlam Deal (spoons) Letchworth Marlborough Newnham Croft, Cambridge Welshpool

Borders Conwy Yorkshire E Kent Hertfordshire Wiltshire Cambridgeshire Powys

other other other other other other other other

inhumation ? inhumation inhumation cremation cremation inhumation ?

M ? F ? ? ? ? ?

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

Collis 1968 Stead 1991b Stead 1991b Stead 1991b Stead 1991b Stead 1991b Stead 1991b Stead 1991b Stead 1991b Stead 1991b Clarke & Hawkes 1955 Stead 2006 Jones & Stead 1969 Stead 2006 Aitken & Aitken 1990 Adam Gwilt, personal communication MacGregor 1976 Stead 1982 Greenwell 1877 Parfitt 1995 Smith 1914 Nylen 1958 Fox 1923 Boon 1961

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Index abandonment of houses 8, 11–13, 31, 134, 153, 308–9 abstraction of coin decoration 147, 148, 151, 153 agency vs. art 25, 42 ambiguity in decoration 2, 5, 20, 42, 59, 317 amphora 242, 243 Anderson, J. 229–30 animal bones 207, 242, 250, 251, 256 horse bones 116, 285–6 pig bones in Kirkburn chariot burial 213, 220–21, 224, 225 animism 23 annular tubular torcs 137 anthropological art 45 approaches to Celtic art 50–55 arm rings 64, 69, 169, 174, 202, 261 context of distributions 70 at Newstead Roman fort 295–6 see also bracelets art 38–9 definition 55, 61 mythological approach 41–2 perception in 44–6 prehistoric 39–43 and war 322 artworks as technology 25–6 assemblages 218, 312–13 burials as 196, 206, 209 at Bury Hill, Hampshire 280–85 connections within 243, 246, 248 at Gussage All Saints 268–9, 271 in Mill Hill warrior burial (G112) 235–6 at Newstead Roman fort 292, 297, 299–305 settlements as 258–9 see also hoards Aylesford burials 146, 195, 199, 202–3, 204, 208, 243–4 and sexes 207–8 Aylesford-Swarling rite 11, 32 Badbury Rings 269 Baldock 32, 207

Welwyn-type burial 241–8, 244, 245 Barrett, J. 194, 209 Battersea Bridge 124 Battersea shield 57, 83–4, 103, 104, 109, 317–18, 318 Bayley, J. and S. Butcher 95 beaded torcs 325 beating bronze 94–5 vs. casting 87–9 and deposition 97–100 and motifs 104 berried rosettes 103, 223 Beswick, P. et al. 323–5 Bevan, B. 211 Biel, J. 93 body vs. mind 24 bones, human 10, 198, 268 cremated 199, 241–2, 247 deposition in rivers 124–5 signs of trauma 230 thrown away as rubbish 194 see also animal bones; burials Bowden, M. and D. McOmish 277 Bowen 268 bracelets 61, 140, 145, 186–9 see also arm rings Bradley, R. 9, 10, 39, 42–3, 123, 173, 248, 308–9 and A. Ellison 90 R. Entwhistle, and F. Raymond 311 and K. Gordon 124 Brailsford, J. W. 187, 189 brass 95–6, 320 breaking of swords, deliberate 126–32 bridle bits 175–6, 179–80, 181, 182–3, 213, 221, 275 at Bury Hill 283 at Gussage All Saints 270 moulds 273–4, 273 at Polden Hill 186, 187, 188 see also horse gear; terrets broken objects 174 brooches 177–8, 189 cauldrons 177

368

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broken objects (cont.) horse gear 176 swords 126–32, 297 torcs 175 bronze 98–9 in brooches 319 in coins 144–5, 148 cookware 242–3, 251, 252–3, 254 ‘crown’ 228, 236 deposition 98 vs. iron 14–17, 20, 89, 91–2 found at Polden Hill 188–9 found at Ringstead, Norfolk 179–83, 181 in scabbards 131, 133 in shields 83, 240 in torcs 134, 140, 142 Bronze Age 9, 18–20, 40–41, 58, 113, 123, 153 communities 311–12 hoards in 155, 158, 172 weaponry 115–17, 128, 297 see also Early Bronze Age; Middle Bronze Age; Late Bronze Age bronzeworking 28, 31, 91–2, 93–6, 107–8, 135–6 at Gussage All Saints 271, 272, 274 brooches 62, 96 at Baldock 32 in burials 199, 319 damage to 177–8, 189 Dragonesque 33, 34 horse brooches 186, 189 Iron Age 67, 95 Mill Hill warrior (G112) 228, 235, 236 Portesham mirror burial 249, 251–5 Roman 95–6 Brück, J. 7, 13, 238, 309 buckets in Welwyn-type burial 243, 245 Bugthorpe scabbard 83–4, 109, 127, 314 sword 149 burials animals in see animal bones and community 312–13 connections between graves 222–4 connections between humans and objects 206–8, 214–19, 246–7, 254–7 connections between objects 167–9, 205–6 inhumation vs. cremation 9–11 in the Iron Age 194–5, 197–9

Kirkburn chariot burial (K5) 210–26, 211, 212 Mill Hill warrior burial (G112) 226–41, 227, 229, 230, 232, 233, 234, 235 and notion of individuality 238–9 and performance 314–15 Portesham mirror burial 249–55, 249–50 positions of bodies 218–19 practices 195 types 202 Welwyn-type, Baldock 241–8, 244, 245 Burnett Tylor, E. 21 burning objects and performance 315 Bury Hill, Hampshire 280–87, 281, 282, 305, 315 carburization 91–2 Carlingwark Loch 178 Carsten, J. 310 casting vs. beating 87–9 bronze 93–4 and deposition 97–100 and motifs 104 categorization boundaries 47–8 of Celtic art 47–8, 55–6, 295 cauldrons 93, 116 damage to 177 in Welwyn-type burial 242–3 ‘Celtic’ as style rather than ethnicity 46–7 Celtic art 6 advent 16–17, 29 complexity 58 contexts 309–10 defining 61 discussions of 50–55 early discoveries 49–50, 158–9 geographical range 307–8, 309 hoards vs. iron hoards 192–3 influences 40 phases 33–5 in Roman forts 290–97, 298, 300–301 stylistic change 80–84 types in oppida 319 ‘Celtic feast’ represented in Welwyn-type burial 243 Celtic-style objects and Roman-style objects 299, 303, 305, 321

Index Cerrigydrudion ‘crown’ 56, 80, 82–3, 84 change in coin decoration 147, 151, 152–3 timescales for 113–14 Channel crossing (of coins) 145–6 chapes 126 Chapman, J. 172 chariot burials 195, 203, 310 Bury Hill 283–7, 305 Kirkburn, East Yorkshire 210–22, 211, 212, 224–6, 255 and sexes 207 chariot burning and performance 315 chariots 116, 143, 274, 275 see also Gussage All Saints, Dorset chronology of Celtic Art distributions 70–79 of stylistic change 79–84 cist burial 195, 197 Clarke, D. 26 Clarke, R. R. 179–82 Clarke, S. 293, 294 and R. Jones 291, 293–4, 299fn, 302 Claudian invasion (AD 43) 33 Clough, R. E. 271 coins 30, 36, 49, 143–9, 151, 152–4 absence at Ringstead 183 catalogued 62, 68 deposition 322 Gallo-Belgic 143–7, 144, 148 iconography 80 moulds 32 Roman 95 stylistic change 81–2 typological change 113–14 Coles, J. and S. Minnitt 96 Collis, J. R. 229fn, 237 colour in coins 145–6 comitatus 286 communal building works 312 community 310–11 and burials 312–13 coming together 311–13 complexity 106 in Celtic art 58, 320–22 of metalwork 20 conjunctive motifs 80 connections between graves 222–4 between humans and objects 206–8, 214–19, 246–7, 254–7 between objects 167–9, 188, 205–6

369

consumption and production 7 contexts of Celtic art 309–10 depositional 65, 66, 69, 70, 71 contextualization of art 43 cookware 242–3, 251, 252–3, 254 copper alloy objects 96, 130, 215, 218, 223, 228, 249, 266 deposition 99 found in hoards 170–71 horse gear 283–4 ‘core’ zones of deposits 159–60 Creighton, J. 144, 145–7, 148, 265, 285, 286, 313–14, 318 cremation 32, 195, 197, 201, 313 prior to burial 242 vs. burial 9–11 and metalworking 96 see also Aylesford-type burials Crowfoot 213 crowns Cerrigydrudion 56, 80, 82–3, 84 with Mill Hill warrior (G112) 228, 230, 231, 232, 233 crucibles 95 cultural transformation 311 culture vs. nature 24, 27 Cuming, H. 124 Cunliffe, B. 9, 281, 282, 286, 309 and C. Poole 280–84, 285, 286 Cunobelin’s coins 95 Curle, J. 258, 291–2, 293, 294, 296, 298–300 curvilinear engraved motifs 103 cusp-held roundels 102–3 cycles of transformation 7–8, 27 daggers vs. swords 119 damage, deliberate 174 to horse gear 176 to objects at Newstead Roman fort 297–8 to a shield 235 to swords 126–32, 297 to tools 177 to torcs 175 database inclusions 61–2 information provided in 63–6 sources 62–3 website 60fn

370

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dating of objects 63, 71 Celtic art 80–84 hoards 165 dating stylistic change 79–80 Davies, J. 183 Davis, M. 186–7, 188, 190 and A. Gwilt 190, 191, 320, 321–2 dead bodies disposal 7–8, 9–11, 13 treatment 32–3, 312–13 see also burials decoration vs. art 39–40 change on coins 147 detail and performance 314–15 effects 317 partial 147, 149–51, 153–4 performative aspect 110 production techniques 87–9 surface 40 on torcs 5 two-dimensional 88 and variety of forms 82–4 see also three-dimensional decoration Dent, J. 221 deposition 27–8, 58 of bronze and iron 16 of coins 147–9 of material 6–7, 9–10 of metalwork 183 and performance 313–16 in Pit 209, Gussage All Saints 274–6 purpose 191, 279–80, 310 ritual 278–9, 293–5, 297–301, 304 in Roman forts 291–7 of rubbish, ritual significance 293–5, 300–301 in settlements 261–4, 265, 267 of swords 123–7, 133–4 around temples 322 over time 112–13 vs. use 66–8, 72–3 in water vs. land 89, 97–100 Desborough mirror 30 Descola, P. 23, 24 detail in decoration 314–15, 317 Deverel-Rimbury styles 8 Dewey, J. 43–4 dies and relative size of coins 147 Dinnington torc 323–6, 324 distribution of objects Celtic art types 319–20

spatial 68–70, 71 temporal 70–79 Dover Archaeological Group 229 Dragonesque brooch 33, 34 dramatic performance 314 Dressel 1A amphora in Welwyn-type burial 243 D-shaped box in Kirkburn chariot burial 221–2, 222 Dungworth, D. 94–5 Durotrigian inhumation 197 Durotrigian objects 252 Early Bronze Age 115, 128, 226, 246 burials 238–9 see also Bronze Age East Yorkshire burials 207 see also Kirkburn chariot burial (K5) eastern influences on Celtic art 40 Eckhardt, H. 76fn, 253 Ehrenberg, M. 124 elements and disposal of dead bodies 13 Ellison, A. 8 enamel found in hoards 170, 171 enchantment of technology 25–6, 45, 316 Eogan, G. 143 Essendon sword 130 Evans, A. J. 49–50, 197 Evans, J. 14 Ewart Park phase 17 excarnation 10 exchanges 8–9 of gifts 6–7, 111 between settlements 277 experience, human 43–4 faces in decoration 2, 4, 317 Ferrybridge sword 130 fibulae, typological change 113 findspots 64, 65, 76 fire damage to horse gear 176 fire-dogs in Welwyn-type burial 243–4, 245 Fitzpatrick, A. P. 140, 198, 204, 219, 241fn, 243, 247, 248, 249–53 Flag Fen 10 Flavian period (AD 69–96) 96 flow 83 Fontijn, D. R. 158 food offerings in burials 220, 252 forging 91 form links with motifs 100–105

Index production techniques 87–9 Foster, J. 272, 274–5, 278 founder’s hoards 172 Fox, C. 50–51, 61, 180, 276 fragmentation in hoards 172–4, 178 of horse gear 175–7 fragments at Newstead Roman fort 297–9 at Ringstead, Norfolk 179–83, 181 of tools 177 of torcs 175 Freeman, P. 289 ‘frontier art’ 321–2 Fulford, M. and J. Timby 96 G112 see Mill Hill warrior burial Gallo-Belgic coins 143–7, 144, 148 Gardner, A. 289, 303 Garrow, D. et al. 81, 143, 272, 308, 317 Gaydarska, B. I. 172 Gell, A. 25–6, 45–6, 111, 147, 196, 316 geographical range of Celtic art 68–70, 71, 307–8, 309 Gerritsen, F. 308 gift exchanges 6–7, 111 Giles, M. 26, 115, 198–9, 210, 215, 218, 219–20, 224–5, 237, 239 and J. P. Joy 252, 253, 254 glass to decorate horse gear 188 gold 110, 146 in coins 114, 145, 148, in hoards 171, 183, 192, 322 Roman 95 in torcs 1–5, 87, 114, 134–5, 137, 141, 143 Gold Fields at Snettisham 138 see also Snettisham torcs Gosden, C. and L. Head 61 and J. D. Hill 66 Great torc, Snettisham 139, 141, 142 see also torcs Green, M. 42, 55 Gregory, A. K. 96 Grotesque torc, Snettisham 1, 2–5, 3, 4, 80–81, 140, 142 see also torcs Gussage All Saints, Dorset 81, 91, 93, 267–78, 272, 304, 315 Gwilt, A. 201

371

Haarer, P. 15 Hadrian’s Wall 287–8 Hamilton, S. 285–6 handles of swords 117 Harding, D. W. 55 Harford, C. J. 185, 189 Harlow 322 Haselgrove, C. 143–4, 149, 151 and R. Hingley 16, 156–7, 159–60, 162 and M. Millett 96 hatching 102, 103 Hautenauve, H. 134, 136, 138 Hawkes, C. 280, 282 Hayling Island 322 heads, observed in decoration 151, 317 Helsdon, V. 179 Hill, J. D. 71fn, 142, 219, 246–7, 248, 265, 277, 278–9, 284–5, 286–7, 293, 304 hillforts 12–13, 33, 59, 65 at Bury Hill, Hampshire 280–87, 281, 282, 305, 315 communities 28–9, 312 Danebury 16 iron hoards in 192 metalworking in 93–6, 99, 108 swords deposited in 125–7, 133, 153 in Wessex 265–7 hilting 115 Hines, C. 179 Hingley, R. 20 hoards 159 of Celtic art, records of 160–63 change over time 192 connections between objects 167–9 dating of 165 definition 156–7 earliest 158–9 fragments in 172–4, 178 materials found in 170–72 vs. multiple deposits 162–3 object types in 164–5, 166–7 Polden Hill, Somerset 161, 177, 185–91, 187 research on 154–6 Ringstead, Norfolk 179–83, 181 Welwyn-type burials as 247 Hoare, Colt 197 horse bones 116, 285–6 horse gear 88, 116, 161 at Bury Hill, Hampshire 280–87 context of distribution 70

372

Index

horse gear (cont.) fragments 175–7 at Gussage All Saints 275 in Kirkburn chariot burial 215, 217–18 at Newstead Roman fort 295, 299, 300–301 at Polden Hill, Somerset 185–91, 187, 188 see also bridle bits; terrets horse iconography on coins 146 houses abandonment 8, 11–13, 31, 134, 153, 308–9 building styles 308–9 in ring works 59 Howard, H. 95 human, what it means to be 43–4 Hunter, F. 137, 159, 162fn, 190fn, 196, 198, 206fn, 237, 288–9, 295fn, 303, 321 Hutcheson, N. 183, 193 identity in Britain after Roman invasion 289 and individuality 238–9 and settlements 277, 279 ‘image in death’ 225, 237–8, 240 impact of objects on people 42–3 visual 106–7 imported objects 243, 245, 246–7 incomplete items see fragments individuality, notion of 238–9 Ingold, T. 24, 27, 44 ingot ‘cake’ 181 inhumation burials 10–11, 195, 197–8 inter-artefactual domain 26 Ipswich torcs 135, 141–2 see also torcs Iron Age 7–12, 29–33, 108, 152–4 brooches 67, 95 coins 68, 114, 147–9 communities 310 deposition 112, 123–5, 322 hoards 158–9 horses 146 imports 243 metalworking 20, 27, 90–1, 94–6, 184, 278 ontologies 89, 318 swords 92, 115–17, 119–25 technologies of enchantment 26 torcs 5, 137 understanding of ‘art’ 47 iron objects 171–2

vs. bronze objects 14–17, 20 vs. Celtic art hoards 192–3 deposition 99 ironworking 89–93 at Gussage All Saints 271, 272 Italian imports 243 Jacobsthal, P. 40, 50, 51, 54, 109 James, S. 289, 303 Jope, M. 51–2, 55, 61, 62, 82, 102, 119, 142, 243, 276 Joy, J. 140fn, 198, 239, 250, 252, 253, 317 Kamash, Z. et al. 322 Kaul, F. 41 keeled roundels/volutes 102–3 Keepax 273 Kemble, J. M. et al. 49 Keynes, John Maynard 21–2 kinship 310 Kirkburn chariot burial (K5) 210–26, 211, 212 Kirkburn scabbard 149 Kirkburn sword 128–30, 129, 133 Kirkburn warrior (K4) 224 Kristiansen, K. 14 and T. Larsson 14, 41 La Tène 232, 233 burial practices 197 culture 40, 48–50 land deposition vs. water deposition 89, 97–100 landscape hoards 162fn Lang, J. 92 Late Bronze Age 10, 12, 16, 94, 113, 309 see also Bronze Age Late Iron Age 9, 11, 34, 108, 114, 149, 243, 314, 319, 322 swords 119–23 variety of metals 95–6 see also Iron Age Latour, B. 26–7 leaded bronze 94 Legge 220 lifespans of objects 113–14 linch pins 18, 216 linear distributions 69 Llyn Cerrig Bach plaque 157fn, 317 Llyn Fawr phase 17, 18 Lock, G. et al. 90 lost-wax casting 93

Index Macdonald, P. 26, 81, 236 MacGregor, M. 61, 62, 294–5, 297 magic, science and religion 21–2, 38–9, 318–19 mail cloaks 220 Malafouris, L. 115 Manning, W. H. 154, 291, 293–4, 296, 301 Marx, K. 7 massive armlets, context of distribution 71 materials in hoards 170–72 Mattingly, D. 195, 287, 288, 289 Mauss, M. 111 McKinley, J. 242fn, 252 meaning in art 42–3 Megaw, R. and V. Megaw 47, 54–5, 61 metal content of coins 145–6 of torcs 141 metal deposition 6–7, 10, 183 metalwork 13–14 bronze 91–2, 93–6 centres 8 composition 320–21 deposit at Bury Hill, Hampshire 286–7 and deposition 305 of Dinnington torc 325 diversity of types 17–20 dominance in hoards 170–72 at Gussage All Saints 269–76, 277–8 iron 89–93 and mythology 42 surface decoration 40 in swords 92–3 in Wessex 266 metalworker’s hoard at Ringstead, Norfolk 182–3 Middle Bronze Age 8, 9, 11–12, 28, 311 see also Bronze Age Middle Iron Age 12, 20, 280 Wessex settlements in 264–5 see also Iron Age military, Roman 289, 302–3 Mill Hill warrior burial (G112) 226–41, 227, 229, 230, 232, 233, 234, 235 Millett, M. 288 mind vs. body 24 mirror burials 198, 204, 205 Portesham, Dorset 249–55, 249–50 and sexes 207–8 mirrors 56, 80, 200, 319

373

decoration on 102–3, 108, 317–18 Desborough 30 Trelan Bahow 88 Mitchell, W. J. T. 44 Mortimer, J. 197 motifs links with form 100–105 and visual impact 106–7 moulds 31, 81, 95, 269 coins 32 horse gear 273–5, 273, 279, 304 swords 12 multiple deposits 156–7, 159–60, 162, 163 vs. hoards 162–3 see also hoards mythological approach to art 41–2 ‘Native Campaigning Art’ 322 naturalism 23 nature vs. culture 24, 27 Nebelsick, L. 172–3 neck rings see torcs Needham, S. et al. 17 networks of objects 156, 157–8, 167, 168, 188 Newark torc 142 Newstead Roman fort 287, 290–305, 298, 300, 301, 302, 323 Newton, I. 22 Niblett, R. 96 Norfolk, powerbase in 184 Northover, P. 93, 96 object connections 167–9, 188, 205–6 objects and people 26–7, 152–3, 184 connections in burials 206–8, 214–19, 246–7, 254–7 distinction 13 O’Connor, B. 117 ontology 22–4 oppida 30, 319 ownership of objects, and burials 246–7, 254 Owslebury warrior burial 229fn Parfitt, K. 226–30, 235 partial decoration of coins 147, 153–4 of scabbards 149–51 patterns in Celtic art 51, 53 people and objects 26–7, 152–3, 184

374

Index

people and objects (cont.) connections in burials 206–8, 214–19, 246–7, 254–7 distinction 13 perception of objects 42 in art 44–6 performance and deposition 313–16 performative aspect of decoration 110 perspectivism 23 phases of Celtic art 33–5 Piggott, S. 177 plates found at Ringstead, Norfolk 181 Polden Hill, Somerset 161, 177, 185–91, 187 Pope, R. 16 Portesham mirror burial 249–55, 249–50 pottery in Late Iron Age 29, 31 Powell, T. 39 power base in Norfolk 184 power of objects 25, 59, 109, 191, 253–4, 256, 315–16 significance in metalworking 99–100 swords 114–15, 133 praetentura, Newstead Roman fort 295–6, 299 precious metals see gold; silver prehistoric art 39–43 prestige objects 184, 246–7 ‘primitive’ art 42 ‘principle of least difference’ 147 processions and deposition 313–14 production and consumption 7 production techniques 87–9 ‘pulses’ of burial practices 195 quality of Celtic art 316–17 quenching 91 ramparts, communities building 311–12 reciprocity 6–7, 24 refractory materials 95 regularization of changes 152 relationship between people and objects see people and objects religion, science and magic 21–2, 38–9, 318–19 repoussé decoration 29, 56, 83, 103, 104, 138, 146, 180, 232 on torcs 142 ribbon torcs 137 Richmond 291 Ringstead, Norfolk 179–83, 181

ring works 12, 59 ritual deposition 278–9, 293–5, 297–301, 304 rivers, depositions of swords in 123–5, 126 Roman burial practices 195 Roman invasion influence on pottery and metalworking 33 of Scotland 287–8 Roman-style objects and Celtic-style objects 299, 303, 305, 321 Ross, A. and R. Feacham 292 roundels on the Battersea shield 83 Rowlands, M. J. 8 Roymans, N. 152 rubbish, taking on ritual significance 293–5, 300–301 sacred powers 34–5 Salter, C. and M. Ehrenreich 90 sanctuary sites 322 Santon 177 scabbards 118 Bugthorpe 83–4 in burials, Mill Hill Warrior (G112) 233, 234 missing 174fn partial decoration 149–51 and swords 117, 119, 126–7, 130–31, 132 scale 111 Scandinavia, mythological art 41 science, religion and magic 21–2, 38–9, 318–19 Scotland, Roman occupation 287–8 scrap hoards 172 Segsbury Camp 90, 312 settlements 29, 267–306 approaches to 258–60 Celtic art in 261–4 house styles 308–9 and social identity 277, 279 Wessex, Celtic art in 267 Seven Sisters hoard 320, 321 sexes of buried people and object types 207–8 Sharples, N. 9fn, 11, 12, 91, 93, 134, 264, 265, 266, 277, 309, 312 shield bosses found at Polden Hill, Somerset 187 shields in burials interpretation 237 Mill Hill warrior (G112) 228, 234–5

Index shrines 31 Silchester 30–32, 96 silver 31 in coins 145, 148 found in hoards 171 in torcs 1–5, 114, 134–5, 140 skull and crown of Mill Hill warrior 230 smelting 90 Smith, A. 322 Smith, R. A. 155 smithing 91 snapshots, research focus 157–8 Snettisham hoards 160, 161, 184 Snettisham torcs 1–5, 2, 3, 4, 136–42, 139, 142 fragments 175 Snodgrass, A. 15 social identity and settlements 277, 279 social prominence 184 social status and mirror burials 253 socketed axes 19 Srensen, M. L. S. 19fn sources for the database 62–3 spatial distribution of objects 68–70, 71, 307–8, 309 special deposits 293–5, 297–301, 305 Spettisbury hillfort 126 Spratling, M. 52, 61, 62, 175, 177, 270, 272, 273–6, 317 Springfield sword 130–31 St Michael’s enclosure 32 status and mirror burials 253 Stead, I. M. 53–4, 56, 79, 80–81, 108–9, 116, 119–23, 128–9, 132, 138–42, 160, 175, 197, 198, 212, 215, 231–6, 295fn and V. Rigby 242, 244, 319 Stevenson, J. and C. Johnson 197 strap end in Mill Hill warrior burial (G112) 235 Strathern, M. 111 stylistic change 79–84 suspension ring in Mill Hill warrior burial (G112) 235 Sutton scabbard 149, 150 sword-making 92–3 swords 219 in burials 124–5, 228, 231–3, 237 vs. daggers 119 deliberate damage 126–32, 297 deposition 123–7, 133–4

375 length 119–23 at Newstead Roman fort 298, 299–300, 302 typological change 114–18

Taylor, J. 322 Taylor, T. 40 Tebbutt, C. F. and C. Fox 176 techniques in production 87–9 technology of enchantment 25–6, 45, 316 tempering 91 temples 322 temporal distribution of objects 70–79 terrets 17, 31 incomplete sets 176 in Kirkburn chariot burial 215–18, 217 at Newstead Roman fort 297 at Polden Hill, Somerset 188 see also bridle bits; horse gear Thames, River depositions in 123–5, 128 scabbard 130 theme groups 296 three-dimensional decoration 88, 102, 104–5 and performative aspect 110 torcs as 138 timescales for change 113–14 tin bronze 94 toilet sets in burials, Portesham mirror burial 253 tools, damage to 177 torcs 134–6, 135, 143, 315 connections with other objects 169 Dinnington torc 323–6, 324 distribution 136, 137 dominance in hoards 166 found as fragments 175 Iron Age 5 Snettisham 1–5, 2, 3, 4, 136–42, 139, 142 totemism 23 Tower Hill hoard 19 transformations 7–8, 20, 27, 311 of Celtic art 48 and metalworking 13–14 trisceles 103 Trobriand Islands, canoe prows 25–6 trumpet voids 81 two-dimensional decoration 88 typological change 113–14 and coins 143 swords 114–18

376

Index

use vs. deposition 66–8, 72–3 vagueness in defining Celtic art 61 value of bronze 15–16 Verulamium (St Albans) 32–3, 96, 314 visual impact 106–7 Vivieros de Castro, E. 23, 24 volutes/keeled roundels 102–3 Wainwright, G. J. 267, 269, 272, 277 Waltham Abbey 178 Wandsworth Mask Shield 142 war and art 322 warrior burials 11, 219–20 interpretation of swords 237 Mill Hill, Deal, Kent (G112) 226–37, 227, 229, 230, 232, 233, 234, 235, 240–41 water deposition vs. land deposition 89, 97–100 wave lines 102 weapon burials 198, 203–4 and sexes 207–8 weapons, deposition 323

Weber, M. 21 Weelsby Avenue, Lincolnshire 278 Wells, P. 40, 42 Welsh Marches 90 Welwyn-type burials, Baldock, Hertfordshire 241–8, 244, 245 Wessex coverage 266fn metalworking in 266 settlements 264–5, 267 Wessex Archaeology 249 Weston, Bath 189 Wetwang Slack 118, 133 swords 149 Whimster, R. P. 194, 197–8, 202 wholeness and human experience 44 Wigley, A. 90 Wilburton phase 17, 116 Wild, J. P. 180 Witham scabbard 52, 54 Wraxall torcs 325 Yates, D. 9 York , J. 128