VII.—Pre-Roman Remains at Scarborough

Archaeologia ◽  
1928 ◽  
Vol 77 ◽  
pp. 179-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reginald A. Smith

At the eastward extremity of Castle Hill, Scarborough, below medieval and Anglo-Saxon chapels and the foundations of a Roman signal-station, have been found several filled-up pits containing pottery fragments of a date long anterior to the work of about a.d. 370, as the Roman walls had been carried over some of them with no precautions against settlement, and the contents showed no admixture of Roman date. In fact there must have been an interval of several centuries, as the potsherds can hardly be later than La Tène I, and belong more probably to the first part of the Early Iron Age, generally named after Hallstatt, the typical site in Upper Austria. About half an acre has been excavated by Mr. F. G. Simpson, now Director of Romano-British Field-studies at Durham University, on behalf of the Scarborough Corporation, with the active co-operation of H. M. Office of Works; and a preliminary report on the Roman building has been written by our Fellow Mr. R. G. Collingwood for the Corporation (see also Archaeological Journal, lxxix, 390).

1959 ◽  
Vol 39 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 19-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Piggott

One of the most spectacular pieces of martial equipment in use among the Celtic peoples in the later stages of the La Tène culture was the animal-headed war-trumpet, the name of which, in Greek versions, has been preserved variously as karnon or karnyx. In the latter form, the name carnyx has been applied by archaeologists to the fairly plentiful representations and the very few surviving fragments of such instruments. Of the latter, the best-known is that represented today only by drawings and engravings, dredged from the river Witham at Tattershall Ferry in 1768. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss this object once again, and also to put forward the suggestion that the sheet-bronze object in the form of a boar's head, found at the beginning of the nineteenth century at Deskford in Banffshire and fortunately still surviving, is in fact the mouthpiece of another carnyx.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-23
Author(s):  
Bíborka Vass ◽  
F. Zsófia Sörös

At the end of the 4th century BC, and the beginning of the 3rd century BC a Celtic population wave reached the eastern parts of the Carpathian Basin, including Northeastern Hungary. The elements of the funerary rite and the archaeological finds attest to the presence of the newly arrived communities in the cemeteries of the region. The present study serves as a preliminary report on the research results of a Celtic cemetery in the Hernád valley excavated in 2019. The site of Novajidrány–Sárvár-erdészház was in use between the late 4th century BC the earliest and the 3rd century BC and it fits well into the row of Late Iron Age cemeteries in the region. Both cremated and inhumated burials were documented with richly accompanied metal and pottery grave goods. Appearing next to the typically La Tène-styled finds, the graves also contained – mainly in the ceramic assemblages – Scythian-influenced forms which can be explained by the Celtic and Scythian cohabitation in the region during the Late Iron Age.


Archaeologia ◽  
1927 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 1-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garnet R. Wolseley ◽  
Reginald A. Smith ◽  
William Hawley

In a paper describing the discovery and partial excavation of an Early Iron Age settlement on Park Brow Hill near Cissbury, published in the Antiquaries Journal, vol. iv, mention was made of the location of two other habitation sites on the hill—one Roman, and another probably occupied during the Bronze Age of Britain. It was to this latter site that I decided to attend in 1924, the object being to examine the relation between this settlement and that attributed to the Hallstatt–La Tène I period found on the top of the hill (see fig. a). The new site consists of a series of disturbed areas roughly circular, and lying on the slope of the hill facing south-west, about a furlong from the Hallstatt settlement (see fig. b).


Radiocarbon ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bogomil Obelić ◽  
Marija Šmalcelj ◽  
Nada Horvatinčič ◽  
Romana Bistrovič ◽  
Adela Sliepčević

During the 1989–1994 renovation of the Zagreb Town Museum, it became obvious that the area was inhabited in prehistoric times. We 14C dated 40 samples to determine various settlement periods. The ages of the samples span a much longer time than expected, from the Early Iron Age (Hallstatt period) to the 19th century ad. 14C dates on charcoal samples placed the remains of dwelling pits in the Hallstatt period, 8th to 4th century bc. A late La Tène settlement dated between the 4th century bc and the 2nd century ad. Medieval fortifications were identified in the western part of the complex, consisting of a well-preserved wooden structure used for construction of the royal castrum. 14C measurements on wooden planks and posts date the construction of the fortification between the 13th and 15th centuries ad and branches, beams, and tools found below the basement of the Convent of St. Clare span the 16th to the 19th century ad.


Author(s):  
Rachel Pope

AbstractThis work re-approaches the origins of “the Celts” by detailing the character of their society and the nature of social change in Europe across 700–300 BC. A new approach integrates regional burial archaeology with contemporary classical texts to further refine our social understanding of the European Iron Age. Those known to us as “Celts” were matrifocal Early Iron Age groups in central Gaul who engaged in social traditions out of the central European salt trade and became heavily involved in Mediterranean politics. The paper focuses on evidence from the Hallstatt–La Tène transition to solve a 150-year-old problem: how the Early Iron Age “Celts” became the early La Tène “Galatai,” who engaged in the Celtic migrations and the sacking of Rome at 387 BC.


Author(s):  
Peter S. Wells

This chapter focuses on sword and scabbards. Swords were important visual objects, larger than most other objects in Bronze and Iron Age Europe, and their shape made them visually striking. Two parts of the sword were especially important in this regard. In the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, the hilt and pommel were often the vehicles for elaborate eye-catching ornament. When a sword was in its scabbard, whether worn at the side of the bearer, hanging on a wall, or placed in the burial chamber, the only parts of the weapon that were visible were the handle and its end. During the Middle and Late Iron Age, the scabbard became especially important as a vehicle for decorative elaboration. Bronze and Early Iron Age scabbards were mostly made of wood, and we do not, therefore have much information about how they were decorated. From the end of the Early La Tène period on, however, swords were long, and scabbards of bronze and iron offered extensive rectangular surfaces for decoration.


1950 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Piggott

Although among our most striking antiquities, the swords and daggers of the British Early Iron Age, with their accompanying scabbards, have received no systematic study in the light of recent archaeology. The artistic qualities of many of the ornamented bronze scabbards had led to their becoming collectors' pieces from the 18th century onwards, and the basic treatment of the types (and indeed the only publication of many examples) is that of A. W. Franks when he was engaged in defining the ‘Late Celtic’ art style in his articles of 1863 and 1880. On this basis, Déchelette was able to include the British material in his classic treatment of European La Tène swords in 1914, and this was followed and amplified by R. A. Smith in 1925. Since then, the British scabbards have received incidental mention by such students of Iron Age metal-work as Leeds, Ward-Perkins and Fox, but they have not been treated as a group. The purpose of this paper is to review the available examples, to attempt a classification, and to determine the relationships of these products of the armourers' craft in Early Iron Age Britain to what is known of the stylistic development of other decorative metal-work, and to the areas of settlement and trade interchanges of the various Iron Age tribal groups or distinctive communities. The absence of any recent comprehensive treatment of the enormous series of continental La Téne swords, and the distinctively insular character of the British groups, has led me to restrict this study almost entirely to the British evolution, with the minimum reference to prototypes or parallel developments on the European mainland.


2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Pearce

From the Norse sagas or the Arthurian cycles, we are used to the concept that the warrior's weapon has an identity, a name. In this article I shall ask whether some prehistoric weapons also had an identity. Using case studies of La Tène swords, early Iron Age central and southern Italian spearheads and middle and late Bronze Age type Boiu and type Sauerbrunn swords, I shall argue that prehistoric weapons could indeed have an identity and that this has important implications for their biographies, suggesting that they may have been conserved as heirlooms or exchanged as prestige gifts for much longer than is generally assumed, which in turn impacts our understanding of the deposition of weapons in tombs, where they may have had a ‘guardian spirit’ function.


Antiquity ◽  
1928 ◽  
Vol 2 (8) ◽  
pp. 423-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. de Navarro

Hallstatt and La Tène are the names given to the first and second phases of the pre-Roman Iron Age. They are derived from the sites where objects characteristic of the respective cultures were first identified, neither Hallstatt nor La Tène having any claim to be considered as the cradles of the cultures named after them. The former lies in Upper Austria. La Tène (‘the shallows’) is situated in Switzerland at the eastern end of the lake of Neuchatel.The upper limit for the chronology of the Hallstatt Period is a vexed point. If by Hallstatt we mean a period when iron was in general use, it can hardly have said to have begun before the ninth century B.C. ; if we regard it as denoting the time when Villanovan and other contemporary influences first made themselves felt in Central Europe, it can hardly have begun later than c. 1000 B.C. Reinecke would even put it back as far as c. 1200 B.C. The lower limit is somewhat easier to define. Generally speaking it came to an end c. 550-500 B.C. ; but in some districts it persisted until c. 400, while in north-east Germany and other remote areas, the La Tène culture cannot be said to have succeeded it until c. 150 B.C., or even later.


1961 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 307-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. M. Jope

The daggers of the Early Iron Age in Britain are remarkable technical achievements, among them some of the earliest iron implements to be made in Britain. They deserve detailed study particularly for the light they throw on the prehistory of its earliest phase, the Iron Age ‘A’. The earlier daggers may be classified quite straightforwardly according to their analogies among the continental daggers, six with the Hallstatt-D and eighteen with the La Tène I, thus giving a dating scheme, from the 6th century to the later 4th century B.C. All these come from southern England, and form a compact group mostly from the Thames in its reaches for about 8 miles west of London.


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