An Early Iron Age Site at Crayford, Kent

1938 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. B. Ward Perkins

The Iron Age Site at Crayford, Kent, was discovered in 1936 during the development of the Glebe Building Estate. This Estate lies to the west of St. Paulinus' Church, between Watling Street Old Road and Manor Road, and Nos. 103, 105, 107 and 109 Watling Street Old Road now mark the site. The circumstances of the discovery did not permit of scientific excavation, but the finds were reported to Mr S. Priest, F.G.S., curator of the Dartford Public Museum, and thanks to him and to the facilities most generously afforded by Mr Roys ton Phillips, the owner of the Glebe Estate, a large quantity of pottery and other objects was preserved and is now in the possession of the Dartford Public Museum. To Mr Priest the writer is particularly indebted for the opportunity to examine and report upon the discoveries, and for help in the preparation of that report. It was Mr G. C. Dunning, F.s.A., who first drew attention to the largely unpublished comparative material, and a number of his drawings are here used. The writer is also indebted to Dr R. E. M. Wheeler, V.P.S.A., for much help and criticism.

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-87
Author(s):  
Pavel A. Gusenkov ◽  

The article examines the substrate hydronymy of the middle Oka and the Dnieper regions (ending in -va, -da, etc.) that is typically attributed to the West-Baltic toponymic stratum and associated with the language of the Moschinskaya archaeological culture and the related archaeological sites. The author analyzed its spatial distribution in the East European Plain. The study has found that: 1) the spread of names of waterbodies ending in -va correlates with the distribution scheme of substrate Baltic hydronymy in general and the monuments of the Dnieper-Dvina, Yukhnovskaya, and Late Dyakovo cultures of the Early Iron Age; 2) the spread of hydronyms with zh/z sound variation (including as a distinctive feature) correlates with the Krivich and Radimich culture areas, and the range of Russian dialects with lisping pronunciation which makes no difference between sibilants and hushing sounds; 3) Baltic hydronymy ending in -da is not attested in the area of the Moschinskaya culture and related archaeological sites; 4) among the names with the root ape-/upe- found in the same cultural milieu, only those containing Eastern Baltic variant are verifiable; 5) the hypothesis for East Baltic origination of the names with the root stab- is not inferior to the West Baltic; 6) there are no sufficient grounds for tracing some river names to the Prussian words pannean and sug since most of these hydronyms refer to a later period while the others have more plausible explanations; 7) for some hydronyms (Zerna, Opochinka, Ponya, Sezhikovka, etc.) the substrate origin is not confirmed. Based on the above observations, the hypothesis for the presence of a West-Baltic layer of hydronymy in the middle Oka region and the consequent assumption of the West-Baltic origin of the Moshinskaya culture were disputed.


Author(s):  
YU. V. BOLTRIK ◽  
E. E. FIALKO

This chapter focuses on Trakhtemirov, one of the most important ancient settlements of the Early Iron Age in the Ukraine. During the ancient period, the trade routes and caravans met at Trakhtemirov which was situated over the three crossing points of the Dneiper. Its location on the steep heights assured residents of Trakhtemirov security of settlement. On three sides it was protected by the course of the Dnieper while on the other side it was defended by the plateau of the pre-Dneiper elevation. The ancient Trakhtemirov city is located around 100 km below Kiev, on a peninsula which is jutted into the river from the west. Trakhtemirov in the Early Iron Age was important as it was the site of the Cossack capital of Ukraine. It was also the site of the most prestigious artefacts of the Scythian period and a site for various items of jewellery, tools and weaponry. The abundance of artefacts in Trakhtemirov suggests that the city is a central place among the scattered sites of the middle course of the Dneiper.


2000 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
pp. 259-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. N. Coldstream

Among over 1800 boxes of Sir Arthur Evans's finds now stored in the Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos, at least 150 contain Greek pottery from Subminoan to Classical. A systematic study of this material, in relation to its recorded find spots, throws new light on the eastern part of the early Greek town, bordering the site of the Minoan Palace. Above the Palace itself, fresh evidence is produced, and fresh interpretation offered, for the Greek sanctuary described by Evans. In its immediate surroundings, there are signs of busy domestic and industrial life in the early Greek town above the South-West Houses, the West Court, the Theatral Area, and the Pillared Hall outside the North Entrance to the Palace. Greek occupation is also noted above the House of Frescoes, the Little Palace and the Royal Villa. A wider aim of this article is to trace the limits of the early Greek town of Knossos, both of its original Early Iron Age nucleus surviving from Late Minoan times, and of its spacious extension towards the north in the late eighth and seventh centuries BC.


1932 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 371-374
Author(s):  
C. F. Tebbutt

In January, 1930, my brother started work on a garage on the west side of the Great North Road between Baldock and Stevenage, in the parish of Great Wymondley, and 180 yards south of the milestone indicating 34 miles to London. A hole in the chalk containing black soil and pottery was found in sinking a petrol tank.It was a bowl-shaped pit (see Plate XXXV., Pit 1), showing in section on the chalk wall just dug, its greatest width being 8 ft., and the depth 5 ft. from the surface. Above the solid chalk was 2 ft. of soil, shading evenly from yellow at the base to dark yellow at the surface, and showing no variation or disturbance over the pit, as if the whole top-soil had been laid down after the pit had been filled in. I was fortunate in having Mr. T. C. Lethbridge, F.S.A., to help me clear this and the other pits, and on the first day we had the help and advice of Dr. Cyril Fox. F.S.A., and Mr. Louis Clarke, F.S.A.By digging down from the surface we found that the pit was irregular in shape and extended 6 ½ ft. back from the chalk face. The filling was of dark soil varying in colour.There were three layers which, from the quantity of wood ash in them, might have been hearths. In the filling were numerous brook pebbles cracked and blackened by fire (potboilers probably), and many potsherds.


Author(s):  
David Abulafia

Whether the early Greeks possessed as powerful a sense of identity as the Phoenicians is far from clear. Only when a massive Persian threat appeared to loom from the east, in the sixth century, did the diverse Greek-speakers of the Peloponnese, Attika and the Aegean begin to lay a heavy emphasis on what they had in common; the sense of a Hellenic identity was further strengthened by bitter conflicts with Etruscan and Carthaginian navies in the west. They knew themselves as distinct groups of Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians and Arcadians, rather than as Hellenes. There were the Spartans, proud inheritors of the Dorian name, who saw themselves as recent immigrants from the north. There were the Athenians, who insisted they were the unconquered descendants of more ancient Greeks. There were the Ionians, thriving in the new settlements across the Aegean, in Chios, Lesbos and on the Asian coast. The ‘Greeks’ cannot be identified simply as those who took delight in tales of the Greek gods and heroes, which were common currency elsewhere, especially among the Etruscans; nor would the Greeks have wished to recognize as fellow- Greeks all inhabitants of what we now call Greece, since they identified among the population of the islands and coasts strange remnants of earlier peoples, generically called ‘Pelasgians’ or ‘Tyrsenians’; besides, the Greek-speakers were themselves moving outwards from the Aegean and Peloponnese towards Asia Minor, where they would remain for over two and a half millennia, and towards Sicily, Italy and North Africa. How, when and why this great diaspora was created remains one of the big puzzles about the early Iron Age Mediterranean. What is certain is that it transformed the area, bringing goods and gods, styles and ideas, as well as people, as far west as Spain and as far east as Syria. The Greeks remembered these movements of people and things by way of often complex and contradictory tales of ancient ancestors who spread their seed across the Mediterranean: whole peoples at times reportedly boarded ships to be carried across distances of many hundreds of miles.


1969 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 414-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. P. S. Peacock

The Early Iron Age pottery of the Herefordshire-Cotswold region is marked by a predominance of the well-known duck-stamped ware associated with a thinner spread of pottery ornamented with tooled lines. It has been customary to equate the former with the presence of an intrusive culture now generally labelled Western Third B, while the linear-tooled pottery has been referred to the Western Second B culture and is held to represent the indigeneous population. However, this is based on the unwritten assumption that the pottery was produced in or near the home and hence can be used as a cultural type-fossil. Petrological examination suggests that this is unwarranted since it appears that the pottery was the object of a well organized trade involving specialist potters based in the Malvern district. The distribution could thus be due to purely commercial factors, and this necessitates a reassessment of the cultural interpretation. The object of this paper is to present the new evidence and to discuss briefly its implications.Although concerned mainly with the stamp ornamented and linear tooled ware of the west Midland and Cotswold regions, this paper deals occasionally with undecorated pieces. The ornamented vessel from Pen Dinas, Aberystwyth has been included because of its obvious resemblance to some of the pots from Bredon Hill, Worcestershire, but other stamped sherds such as that from Methyr Mawr, Glamorgan or the Cornish duck-stamped pottery have been excluded on typological grounds.


1974 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. W. Phillipson

Developments since 1968 in the study of the Zambian Early Iron Age are discussed, with emphasis both on the Lubusi site near Kaoma, which provides the first dated occurrence of Early Iron Age artefacts from western Zambia, and on material from the Eastern Province, which is closely related to contemporary finds from Malawi. Knowledge of the post-Early Iron Age archaeology of Zambia has hitherto been largely restricted to the Southern Province; here, for the first time, an archaeological evaluation of the later Iron Age of other regions has been attempted, and three major pottery traditions are described. In the northern and eastern areas the Luangwa tradition appears to have been established by the eleventh or twelfth century A.D., making a sharp typological break with the preceding Early Iron Age traditions. In the west, the Lungwebungu tradition shows a greater degree of continuity from the Early Iron Age, but in much of the Zambezi valley and adjacent areas it has been supplanted by the sharply-contrasting Linyanti tradition for which a Kololo origin is postulated. The inception of the Luangwa tradition is attributed to the arrival of a new population element ancestral to most of the peoples who inhabit northern and eastern Zambia today, but there is in the archaeological record of this region little discernible trace of later migrations associated with the state-formation process recalled in the extant oral traditions. The implications of these observations for the interpretation of both archaeological data and of oral traditions are discussed and tentative conclusions are proposed concerning the inter-relationship of these two methodologies.


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