A Panel of Celtic Ornament from Elmswell, East Yorkshire

Philip Corder; C. F. C. Hawkes

doi:10.1017/S0003581500021545

A Panel of Celtic Ornament from Elmswell, East Yorkshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2012

Philip Corder and

C. F. C. Hawkes

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The work of art here to be published was found in the excavations of 1938 at Elmswell, about two miles west of Driffield in the East Riding of Yorkshire (6-in. O.S. Yorks. E.R. CLXISE.). These excavations, following on those carried out by our Fellow Mr. A. L. Congreve from 1935 to 1937; have shown the site to be that of a native settlement of the Parisi, occupied—probably continuously—at least from Flavian times until the end of the Roman period, and again in pagan Saxon times. Of the pre-Roman Iron Age nothing has yet come to light beyond two British coins, one of the Iceni (c. A.D. 25) and one possibly of Cunobelin, but the site is separated by little more than the line of the Driffield—Malton railway from the Eastburn area where, in building operations in 1938, as many as seventy-five Iron Age graves were discovered even in the relatively small plots of ground excavated. These contained the remains of flexed inhumation-burials, each originally covered by a small barrow, exactly as in the well-known Danes' Graves and Arras cemeteries; and the date within the three centuries directly preceding the Roman Conquest was confirmed by several finds of grave-goods, notably an iron sword of La Tène type, bronze ornaments, an ‘involuted’ brooch, and several vessels of pottery. Further, in another part of the same site, Parisian pottery of Roman age was found, the earliest of which agrees exactly with the earliest from Elmswell. There can in fact be little doubt that this whole area was an important centre of settlement in the east Yorkshire equivalent of La Tène times, where ‘the Iron Age B’ culture of the Parisi passed directly into the romanization that was introduced at the Flavian conquest of the early seventies A.D.

Type: Research Article
Information: The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , July 1940 , pp. 338 - 357

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003581500021545 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1940

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^{page 338 note 1} Congreve, Anthony L., ‘A Roman and Saxon site at Elmswell, East Yorks, 1935–6’, Hull Museum Publications, no. 193 (1937)Google Scholar; the same, ‘1937’, ibid., no. 198 (1938): also in Trans. E. Riding Antiq. Soc. xxviii, pt. 3: Corder, Philip, Excavations at Elmswell, East Yorkshire, 1938, published by Hull University College Local History Committee, by arrangement with Hull Museum, 1940.Google Scholar

^{page 338 note 2} Sheppard, T., ‘Excavations at Eastburn, East Yorkshire’, Yorks. Arch. Journ. xxxiv, pt. 1, 35–47=Hull Museum Publications, no. 197 (1938).Google Scholar

^{page 339 note 1} Proc. Prehist. Soc. iv, pt. 2, pp. 308–13, esp. 311.

^{page 341 note 1} Archaeologia, lxxvi, 246 and pl. liii, 1.

^{page 341 note 2} The excavator (loc. cit.) conjectured a chariot, but subsequent work on these remains in the Colchester and Essex Museum has led Mr. M. R. Hull to regard it rather as an elaborate bier or funeral palanquin.

^{page 341 note 3} Ibid. 249 and pls. lix, lx, 1.

^{page 341 note 4} Ibid. 249 and pl. lvii, 5.

^{page 341 note 5} C. Roach Smith, Coll. Ant. ii, pl. xii; R. A. Smith, Archaeologia, lxiii, 9 and fig. 4.

^{page 341 note 6} Fox, Arch. Cambridge Region, 105 and pl. xviii, 4: cf. 100, and R. A. Smith, Archaeologia, lxiii, 10–11, fig. 6, no. 1, after Dryden, , Publ. Camb. Antiq. Soc. i (1846), 18.Google Scholar

^{page 342 note 1} R. A. Smith, Camb. Antiq. Soc. Proc. xiii, 153, pl. xvi, 2.

^{page 342 note 2} Corder and Pryce, Antiq. Journ. xviii, 261–7.

^{page 342 note 3} Brooke, Antiquity, vii, 275–6.

^{page 342 note 4} Brough 1st Report, 30–2; 2nd Report, 29–30; 3rd Report, 22; 4th Report, 15–16, 48 ff.; 5th Report, 176.

^{page 342 note 5} Thealby: Antiq. Journ. xv, 457–60 (further evidence, kindly submitted to me by Mr. H. E. Dudley, confirms this view of the date); Brough: Antiq. Journ. xviii, 68–74.

^{page 342 note 6} This need not be further argued; see Leeds, Celtic Ornament, 42–5.

^{page 343 note 1} J. Anderson, Scotland in Pagan Times: Iron Age, 112–16, figs. 92–3; Leeds, Celtic Ornament, 7–10, fig. 4; Childe, Prehistory of Scotland, pl. 1.

^{page 343 note 2} Anderson, op. cit. 138–9, fig. 114; Cowen, P.S.A. Scot, lxix, 455–9 (as terret); Childe, op. cit. 254, fig. 81 (as sceptre-head).

^{page 345 note 1} Op. cit. 132–4, fig. 35 b.

^{page 345 note 2} Anderson, op. cit. 140 ff.; Leeds, op. cit. 126 ff.

^{page 345 note 3} Préhistoire, ii, 1, 93.

^{page 346 note 1} Journ. Brit. Arch. Ass. xxxix, 90–1, fig. 4.

^{page 346 note 2} B.M. Early Iron Age Guide, 146, fig. 169.

^{page 346 note 3} Originally published by R. A. Smith in Camb. Antiq. Soc. Proc. xiii, 153, pl. xvi, 1. I am much indebted to Miss Maureen O'Reilly for this more complete photograph, hitherto unpublished, which she obtained for me under the difficult conditions imposed by war-time storage of the original in the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

^{page 347 note 1} B.M. Early Iron Age Guide, 105, fig. 115.

^{page 347 note 2} Antiq. Journ. xiii, 466–7, pl. lxxxi, 1.

^{page 347 note 3} Celtic Ornament, 26–7.

^{page 347 note 4} Proc. Prehist. Soc. v, pt. 1, 181, 189–90.

^{page 347 note 5} Op. cit, 27.

^{page 347 note 6} An even zigzag of tiny lentoid knobs, evidently just a solidified miniature of the interlocking-arc pattern of Glastonbury or ‘South-eastern B’ pottery. Cf. Clarke, Arch. Journ. xcvi, pt. 1, 70–1.

^{page 347 note 7} Proc. R. Irish Ac. xxxviii, C, 243, pl. xxiv, 1; Leeds, op. cit. 59 and fig. 24, a–b.

^{page 347 note 8} Leeds, op. cit. 53 ff, 110–11.

^{page 347 note 9} Curle, Newstead, 303–4, pl. lxxv, 5 (from pit lviii).

^{page 348 note 1} I am deeply grateful to Mr. A. J. H. Edwards, Curator of the National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh, for furnishing me with these new photographs, taken despite war-time storage and its inevitable difficulties. The illustrations previously current (e.g. Leeds, op. cit. 60, fig. 25) are Anderson's engravings (Scotland in Pagan Times: Iron Age, 127, figs. 103–4; rosettes on unexplained plates, ibid. 129, fig. 106).

^{page 349 note 1} Anderson, op. cit. 128, fig. 105; Leeds, op. cit. 34, 61; Ward Perkins, Proc. Prehist. Soc. v, pt. 1, 186, fig. 11 (map), 192.

^{page 349 note 2} Arch. Camb. 6th ser. iv (1904), 9, fig. 6, on which I have been allowed to base this illustration by kind permission of the Editor.

^{page 349 note 3} Leeds, op. cit. 53 ff., 110–11.

^{page 350 note 1} Fan-tail: Collingwood, Arch. Roman Britain, 256–7, fig. 63, 92 (group X); thistle: ibid. 89–90 (group W).

^{page 350 note 2} As Prof. Collingwood has shown: Archaeologia, lxxx, 39–40. The Santon Downham example he cites is really a thistle-brooch.

^{page 350 note 3} Cf. that of the fully-embellished thistle type Archaeologia, lv, pt. 1, 188, fig. 10, now well paralleled at Colchester.

^{page 350 note 4} I am much indebted to Mr. E. T. Leeds and the authorities of the Oxford University Press for permission to use this fine illustration, first published as fig. 20 c of Mr. Leeds's Celtic Ornament, published by the Press (1933).

^{page 351 note 1} As the side elevations show. Aesica: Archaeologia, lv, pt. 1, 187, fig. 9, right; thistle: e.g. Wheeler, London in Roman Times, 91, fig. 24, 5–6.

^{page 351 note 2} Absent from the pre-Roman prototype in the Belgic South: B.M. Early Iron Age Guide, 95, fig. 101 (Great Chesterford).

^{page 351 note 3} Ibid. 96, fig. 102; Archaeologia, lxxx, 45, fig. 4 d.

^{page 351 note 4} Ibid. 51, fig. 9; lv, pt. 1, 181, fig. 4.

^{page 351 note 5} Ibid, lxxx, 40–2.

^{page 351 note 6} Ibid. 44, fig. 3, f; Curle, Newstead, pl. lxxxv, 8.

^{page 351 note 7} Archaeologia, lxxx, 54, 55, fig. 12a.

^{page 351 note 8} Num. Chron. 3rd ser. xvii (1897), 293 ff.

^{page 352 note 1} Mr. Leeds too has drawn from Prof. Collingwood's analysis encouragement for the same belief: Celtic Ornament, 109.

^{page 352 note 2} Arcaaeologia, lxxx, 42.

^{page 352 note 3} Ibid. 42–52.

^{page 352 note 4} p. 349 above; Leeds, Celtic Ornament, 53, 60, 110: torcs as B.M. Early Iron Age Guide, 157, fig. 188, from Lochar Moss.

^{page 353 note 1} Leeds, op. cit. 47, 101, 115, 119–21, 125.

^{page 353 note 2} B.M. Early Iron Age Guide, 141.

^{page 353 note 3} Ibid., figs. 158–9.

^{page 353 note 4} Archaeologia, lx, pt. 1, 289, fig. 32.

^{page 353 note 5} e.g. Leeds, op. cit., fig. 31.

^{page 353 note 6} Archaeologia, lxxx, 38; Hull Museum Publications, no. 38 (1906), 260, with pl. xxviii, 2.

^{page 354 note 1} P.S.A. Scot, lxvi, 365, fig. 49; Leeds, op. cit. 61; Henry, Préhistoire ii, 1, 98–9, fig. 17, 5.

^{page 354 note 2} P.S.A. Scot, xx, 396–8, pl. viii, 1; Leeds, op. cit. 40, 61, 124; Henry, op. cit. 90, 92, fig. 14, 3.

^{page 354 note 3} R. R. Clarke, Arch. Journ. xcvi, pt. 1, 68–9, with pls. xvi–xviii.

^{page 354 note 4} Ibid. 70; V.C.H. Norfolk, i, 273, 276.

^{page 354 note 5} Leeds, Celtic Ornament, 103–5, with Pl ii 1, 2, 4, 5, Henry, Préhistoire, ii, 1, 100.

^{page 354 note 6} Kemble, Horae Ferales, 193, pl. xviii, 3; for this northern type, with the strap-loop half-way down the scabbard, cf. Leeds, op. cit. 54–5, 105.

^{page 355 note 1} P.S.A. Scot, xv, 320, fig. 4; Anderson, op. cit. 123, fig. 101; Leeds, op. cit. 115–6; Childe, Prehistory of Scotland, 229–30, fig. 66, 2; Henry, op. cit. 100–1, fig. 18,2.

^{page 355 note 2} Collingwood, Archaeologia, lxxx, 45 ff., 52 ff., 54 ff. The Flavian trumpet-brooches (Ri) are none of them enamelled.

^{page 355 note 3} Crawford and Keiller, Wessex from the Air, 39, fig. 3, a; Henry, op. cit. 100–1, fig. 18, 4.

^{page 355 note 4} Antiq. Journ. xviii, 147–9, 151, fig. 3, no. 4.

^{page 356 note 1} e.g. London in Roman Times, 131–2, fig. 47, 2. For this transference in general see Henry, op. cit. 108 ff.

^{page 356 note 2} Walters, Catalogue of the Bronzes in the Deft, of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1899), 323, no. 2479, acquired in 1872 in the Castellani collection (diameter 4⅛ in.).

^{page 356 note 3} A. Darcel, ‘De l'Émaillerie’, in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1867, 275; quoted by Mile Henry, op. cit. 108, n. 2.

^{page 356 note 4} Henry, op. cit. 108–9, with fig. 23.

^{page 356 note 5} Kendrick, Antiquity, vi, 176–7, pl. vii, 1; Henry, op. cit. 112, fig. 25, I; 114.

^{page 356 note 6} Henry, ibid., fig. 25, 4.

^{page 356 note 7} B.M.R.B. Guide, pl. ix, 2; Henry, ibid., fig. 25, 5.

^{page 357 note 1} Tacitus, Annals, xii, 32, 3.

^{page 357 note 2} Ibid. 40, 2–8.

^{page 357 note 3} Tacitus, Histories, iii, 45.

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