Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-x4r87 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T01:58:52.528Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Early Bronze Age in Wessex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2014

Stuart Piggott
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The work on which this study is based was originally undertaken with a view to examining the cultures of the geographical area usually comprised in the term ‘Wessex’ in the period immediately following the Beaker phase. For a great many years a remarkable series of grave-groups have been known, incorporating elements (often spectacular in their implication of material wealth) which were peculiar to the area under discussion, and loosely assigned to the Middle Bronze Age. It was clear from the outset that a study of these groups would throw a great deal of light on trade relations, both internal and overseas, and it also seemed likely that in them might be found a culture equivalent chronologically to the Food Vessel phase of northern England, intervening (in a ceramic sense) between the beakers and the cinerary urns and forming a final phase of the Early Bronze Age—a phase which had already been postulated in the typological series of bronze implements, but which had not reached the dignity of a definite culture.

The evidence examined in this paper supports the existence of such a culture in Wessex in the final phases of the Early Bronze Age. It is a highly individual culture whose origin lies in an actual ethnic movement from N. France. The nature of the evidence,—finds from the richly-furnished graves of chieftains—presents us with a view of the material equipment of an aristocratic minority. The basic folk culture appears, from the slight evidence available, to have been similar to the food-vessel culture of the greater part of Britain north of the Thames at this time, but it becomes clear that in Wessex there was; superimposed on this somewhat uninteresting and unenterprising substratum, an intrusive ruling class whose delight in barbaric finery led them to open trade connections not only with their Breton homeland, but with central Europe and Scandinavia, and whose imports of bronze tools and almost certainly of actual craftsmen laid the foundations of the peculiarly individual metallurgical achievements of the British Middle Bronze Age.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , July 1938 , pp. 52 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1938

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 52 note 1 Arch., XLIII, 285–551Google Scholar.

page 52 note 2 B.A.P., vol. 1, 137.

page 52 note 3 L'Anthrop., XXIV, 644Google Scholar.

page 53 note 1 Ibid., X, 578; IX, 134.

page 53 note 2 Manuel, II, 360Google Scholar.

page 53 note 3 ‘Faience Beads of the British Bronze Age,’ Arch., LXXXV, 203Google Scholar.

page 53 note 4 ‘The Antiquity of the British Bronze Age,’ Amer. Anthrop., XXXIX, 1Google Scholar.

page 53 note 5 ‘The Halberd in Bronze Age Europe,’ Arch., LXXXVI, 195Google Scholar.

page 53 note 6 The Wessex material is mainly in the British Museum, at Devizes and at Dorehester. In France I have examined the collections at St. Germain, Rennes, Vannes, Carnac, Penmarc'h, Quimper, Brest, St. Brieuc and Dinan.

page 53 note 7 An excellent geographical study of North Wiltshire has been made by Brentnall, H. C. and Carter, C. C., in their Marlborough Country (Oxford, 1932)Google Scholar.

page 53 note 8 Map of Neolithic Wessex, Introduction, 14.

page 54 note 1 The segments of fossil crinoids from the limestone which have been used as beads, from barrows at Aldbourne, Winterbourne Stoke and Normanton, (Arch. LXXXV, 213–14)Google Scholar and at Manton, (Reliquary, 1907, 28)Google Scholar, may be noted in this connection.

page 54 note 2 Geog. Journ., XL (1912), 186Google Scholar.

page 54 note 3 A recent topographical study by Coghlan, H. H. has appeared in Proc. Newbury F.C., VII, 151Google Scholar.

page 54 note 4 The B1 beaker from Maidstone (Jessup, Arch. of Kent, fig. 14), the tanged dagger from Faversham and the halberd from the same locality may be cited as examples of imports from the west, probably through Wessex.

page 55 note 1 Antiquity, XI, 441Google Scholar.

page 55 note 2 Proc. Prehist. Soc. E. Anglia, VII, 373Google Scholar.

page 55 note 3 Cf. Proc. Prehist. Soc., I, 125Google Scholar. The comprehensive study of the problem of these axes, now in progress by a Committee of the South-western Museums, should do much to clarify the situation.

page 56 note 1 At Mere (Ancient Wilts., I, 44Google Scholar), Roundway, (W.A.M., III, 186Google Scholar; VI, 160) and Winterslow, (Arch., XLIII, 449)Google Scholar.

page 56 note 2 B.A.P., vol. I, 22–23.

page 57 note 1 Woodhenge, 150.

page 57 note 2 Proc. Prehist. Soc., II, 1–51Google Scholar.

page 57 note 3 Maumbury is not included by Clark in his paper, but is clearly a monument of this class. Interim reports are in Dorset F.C. Procs., 1908–14; for the pottery, Proc. Prehist. Soc., II, 200Google Scholar.

page 57 note 4 Pottery fragment illustrated in Antiquity, X, 221Google Scholar.

page 57 note 5 At Stonehenge the 1919–26 excavations revealed stoneholes of some earlier structure on and near the entrance causeway, one stonehole (that north-east of the ‘Slaughter Stone’) being earlier than and cut into by the ditch (Ant. J., IV, 32Google Scholar).

page 57 note 6 Refs. in Map of Neolithic Wessex, nos. 8, 112, 141, 143, 149, 184.

page 58 note 1 Amor. Anthrop., XXXIX, 1–22Google Scholar.

page 58 note 2 Irish Nat. J., VI, no. 3.

page 58 note 3 Arch. of Yorks., Fig. 10.

page 58 note 4 Arch., LXXXVI, 299Google Scholar.

page 59 note 1 Arch. Camb., 7S, VIII, 137–174Google Scholar.

page 61 note 1 Such a phase has been frequently postulated; it is equivalent to Montelius II (Arch., LXI). Peake, (Arch. of Berks., 1931, 49)Google Scholar suggested naming it E.B. II, and in the Handbook of Prehist. Arch. of Britain (International Congress, 1932)Google Scholar, it was described as Middle Bronze Age A. None of these writers however recognized the intrusive nature of the phase.

page 61 note 2 W.A.M., 432.

page 62 note 1 Proc. Dorset N.H. and F.C., XXVI, 7–22Google Scholar.

page 62 note 2 Ibid., LVIII, 24.

page 62 note 3 This grave lies outside our area on the edge of Dartmoor. See Ant. J., XVIII, 313Google Scholar, with refs. there given.

page 64 note 1 L'Anthrop., X, 578Google Scholar.

page 64 note 2 Ibid., XI, 159.

page 64 note 3 Manuel, II, 142Google Scholar.

page 65 note 1 The importance of the North Italian daggers as ultimate prototypes for the English ogival series was pointed out by Montelius in 1908. (Arch., LXI, 159Google Scholar).

page 65 note 2 Der Ostskandinavische Norden während der Ältesten Metallzeit Europas (Lund, 1936)Google Scholar.

page 66 note 1 In the British Museum. Horae Ferales, pl. VII, 19.

page 66 note 2 Montelius quoted the ornament on the base of blades such as those of Pitcaithly (Evans, , Bronze, 246Google Scholar), Levens, Westmorland (Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd ser., II, 370—wrongly located as Helsington), and Undley, Suffolk (Evans Coll., Ashmolean) in this same connection, but their affinities seem to lie rather with the Irish group (Evans, loc. cit., Coffey, , Bronze Age in Ireland, 58Google Scholar), although these may themselves derive from an Italian source.

page 68 note 1 Arch., LVIII, 3Google Scholar.

page 69 note 1 Ant. J., VII, 459Google Scholar n.

page 69 note 2 Studier öfver den Yngre Stenäldern norden och Västeuropa (1912), 53Google Scholar. Cf. those from Oakley Down (Wessex from the Air, fig. 41) and from Barrows on Ridgeway Hill, near Dorchester, (Barrow-Diggers, 1839, pl. II, p. 75)Google Scholar. The angularity of those from Everly, Barrow 7 (Stourhead Cat., 105–107) and from Lambourn (Peake, Arch. of Berks., fig. 15) may be significant.

page 69 note 3 Arch. J., XXV, 50Google Scholar; Arch., XLIII, 339Google Scholar.

page 70 note 1 Intro. to Arch. of Wilts. (1934), 95Google Scholar.

page 71 note 1 Ant. J., VII, 459 nGoogle Scholar.

page 72 note 1 Bull. Soc. Préhist. Franc., XXVII, 268–78Google Scholar.

page 72 note 2 du Chatellier, La Poterie Préhistorique, pl. VII, no. 9.

page 73 note 1 Forde, , in Amer. Anthrop., XXXII, 89Google Scholar.

page 73 note 2 Man, XXIX, 51Google Scholar.

page 77 note 1 du Chatellier, op. cit., pl. VII, nos. 5 and 6.

page 82 note 1 Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., LXIII, 164Google Scholar.

page 83 note 1 Arch., LXXXV, 77Google Scholar.

page 83 note 2 Elgee, Early Man in N.E. Yorks., pl. XVIII, fig. 2.

page 84 note 1 Copenhagen Mus., no. 4359.

page 84 note 2 Montelius, , Swedish Antiquities (1922), 639Google Scholar.

page 84 note 3 Forssander, Ost. Norden., Taf. XXIII–IV.

page 84 note 4 Reallexikon, XI, Taf. 119.

page 84 note 5 Bursch, , Bull. Anthrop. Soc. Bruxelles, XLIII, 173Google Scholar; Oud. Med., 1936, 62Google Scholar.

page 85 note 1 In Bristol Museum.

page 85 note 2 Arch., LII, 55Google Scholar.

page 85 note 3 In the British Museum.

page 88 note 1 P.R.I.A., XLI, 232–284.

page 88 note 2 Arch., LXXV, 213Google Scholar.

page 88 note 3 Arch., XXXVI, 326–331Google Scholar.

page 89 note 1 Arch. J., LVIII, 93Google Scholar.

page 89 note 2 Dorchester Museum.

page 92 note 1 Arch. J., XXV, 296Google Scholar; XXIX, 42.

page 92 note 2 Proc. Prehist. Soc., III, 457Google Scholar.

page 92 note 3 Arch., LII, 72Google Scholar.

page 92 note 4 Arch., XLIII, 454Google Scholar etc.

page 92 note 5 Ibid., 525.

page 92 note 6 Ant. J., XV, 61Google Scholar.

page 92 note 7 Pollit, , Arch. of S.E. Essex (1935), 43Google Scholar.

page 92 note 8 Curwen, , Arch. of Sussex, 162Google Scholar.

page 92 note 9 Mortimer, , Forty Years, 3–8Google Scholar.

page 96 note 1 For the Mycenae daggers see Karo, Die Schachtgräber von Mykenai, pl. LXXXVII, 435; LXXXIX, 396; for the gold cups, pl. CIV, 392-393.

page 98 note 1 Arch. Camb., LXXX.

page 98 note 2 Warne, Celtic Tumuli, pt. III, 70.

page 98 note 3 Castillo, La Cultura del Vasi Campaniforme, pl. CLVII, 9, 10; pl. CLXVIII, 8.

page 98 note 4 Ant. Journ., XVI, 97Google Scholar.

page 98 note 5 Hoare, Colt, Ancient Wilts., 237Google Scholar, pl. XXXIII.

page 98 note 6 Proc. Prehist. Soc., 1935, 147Google Scholar, pl. XVI; Antiquity X, 423Google Scholar.

page 100 note 1 Cf. Montelius, , Civ. prim. en Italie, IGoogle Scholar, pl. 16, no. 6; II, pl. 126 passim.

page 100 note 2 Some of these daggers were claimed as halberds by Déchelette, , but Childe, (Danube, 244Google Scholar n.) first pointed out that this was not the case.