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The A B C of the British Iron Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Christopher Hawkes
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Extract

This article is something both more and less than the lecture that it represents. The lecture was given in London last December to open the Conference on the Southern British Iron Age which is reported here below by Mr Frere (p. 183). But it had the disadvantage of all introductory lectures to conferences, that they cannot anticipate what the other speakers will be saying later. And in this case, what the others said later was sometimes so new and striking as to leave the introductory lecture rather far behind. Of course, that was the measure of the conference’s success; yet I was gratified to find that what had happened, by the end, was that the others had not so much contradicted as carried further, in their various special fields, much of what was suggested in my more general talk. This surely means—and I think we can be gratified all round—that in the dozen years since the Council for British Archaeology last caused a general survey to be put forward, or the twenty years since Childe was writing in Prehistoric Communities, we have taken our Iron Age studies through a process of expansion, and of revaluation, and yet have emerged still pretty well together.

These milestones in their history are worth remembering. Horae Ferales, in which Kemble and Franks first brought our Iron Age metalwork to recognition, appeared in 1863, and John Evans’s Coins of the Ancient Britons in 1864; Arthur Evans’s monograph on the Aylesford cemetery, with both metalwork and pottery shown for the first time in their European setting, in 1890; Canon Greenwell’s on the Yorkshire chariot-burials in 1906.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 33 , Issue 131 , September 1959 , pp. 170 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1959

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References

1 In its Survey and Policy of 1947.

2 London, 1940.

3 Archaeologia, LII, 2, 317 ff.

4 Archaeologia, IX, 251 ff.

5 ‘Class A’ in his Report (Soc. Antiquaries, 1915).

6 M. E. Cunnington, All Cannings Cross (Devizes, 1923); cf. Wheeler in Arch. Journ., CVI, Supplement (Clapham Mem. Vol., 1952), 62 ff.

7 Field Archaeology as illustrated by Hampshire (London, 1915); cf. Hawkes in Proc. Hants Field Club, xx (1956), 14-22.

8 Proc. Hants Field Club, XI (1930).

9 Arch. Journ., LXXXVII (1930), 150-335.

10 Vol. V (No. 17, March 1931), 60 ff.

11 Ward Perkins, Proc. Prehist. Soc., IV (1938), 151 ff., and Arckaeologia, XC (1944), 153 ff.; cf. Hawkes in Sussex Arch. Colls, LXXX (1939), 252-8; A. E. Wilson, ibid., XCIII (195S). 59 ff-, S. S. Frere in Arch. Journ., CI (1944), 50 ff. On Sussex pottery generally: Wilson and G. P. Burstow in Sussex Arch. Colls., LXXXVII (1948),

12 Arch. Journ., CX (1953), 1ff.

13 They are the First C and Second C of pp. 181-2 below.

14 In her ‘Survey of the Evidence’ in Univ. London Inst. Arch. 8th Annual Report. (1952), 29 ff.

15 Congr. Internat. Sc. Pré- et Protohistoriques, Actes de la IV Session, Madrid 1954 (1956), 729 ff.

16 See note 14 above.

17 Margaret A. Brown (Smith), Proc. Prehist. Soc., XXV (1959), 144, 156-62, 185; the same and also Hawkes, in C.I.S.P.P.Actes V, Hamburg 1958 (forthcoming).

18 In France, Late Bronze 3 : see N. K. Sandars, Bronze Age Cultures in France (Cambridge, 1957). For Britain, see previous note (Hamburg Congress), and Antiq. Journ., XXVII (1957), 131 ff., 143, 187-90.

19 Ibid., 188-90, and XIX (1939), 375-6; J. D. Cowen in Proc. Prehist. Soc., XVIII (1952), 129 ff.

20 Cyril Fox, The Personality of Britain, ed. 4 (Nat. Mus. Wales, 1943), 23, pl. X (a); E. Sprockhoff, 31 Bericht Röm.-Germ. Kommission 1941 (1942), 11, 120, Abb. 89.

21 They only just overlap the Breton ‘carp’s-tongue complex’ (Savory in Proc. Prehist. Soc., xiv (1948), but see Cowen and Hencken in C.I.S.P.P. Actes Madrid, 1954, 639, 679, with Zephyrus, vn, 2 (1956), 125 ff.: its date is broadly 7th century). And next, they have Hallstatt associations: P. du Châtellier, Les Ép. préhist. et gaul. dans le Finistère (Rennes, 1907), 133-4, Guénoc hoard; P. R. Giot, Bull. Soc. préhist. fr. 1950, 338, Saint-Urnel-en-Plomeur. See also Ampurias, xiv (1952), 81-118, with refs.: Brittany trade to ‘island of Albiones ‘attested now, from Atlantic traders’ reports, by the Greek ‘Massaliote Periplus’ preserved in the antiquarian Ora Maritima of Avienus.

22 Antiq. Journ., 11 (1922), 354 ff.

23 With Cunnington (note 6), pls. 28-9, cf. Sandars, Br. Age Cultures in France, 215, fig. 54. Longbridge Deverill Cow Down (p. 183 below, Miss Chadwick) starts as an early First A site also.

24 Antiq. Journ., XXXVII (1957), 191-8.

25 See Dunning’s map for Wheeler in E. Eyre’s European Civilization, II (London, 1935), 241, fig. 13; the, ‘London’ spot is agreed now to be dubious. The Italian-type brooches found stray in Britain are still obscure, but may partly have made good the Hallstatt II deficiency; see D. B. Harden in Atti J. Congr. Internaz, di Pre- e Protostoria Mediterranea, Firenze 1950 (1952), 315-24.

26 E.g. the region north of the Loire which would have given them haematite for pottery-coating: K. P. Oakley in Wheeler’s Maiden Castle (Soc. Antiquaries, 1943), 379 ff.

27 P. R. Giot, Bull. Soc. préhist. fr. 1950, 338; Jacquetta Hawkes, Archaeology of Jersey (Soc. Jers. 1939), 121-2, 259 ff., Ville-és-Nouaux cremation-cemetery.

28 Miss Dorothy Dudley in Arch.Journ., CXIII (1956) 1 ff.

29 Dudley Waterman and others in Yorks Arch. Journ. 151 (1954), 383 ff. : Grafton, and Roomer Common (Masham).

30 H. N. Savory, Oxoniensia, II (1938), 8 ff.

31 Beginnings all slightly earlier now, chiefly on account of the Mont-Lassois, Vix, and Heuneburg discoveries (cf. Antiq. Journ., XXXVII, 196-7), than when Mr. de Navarro wrote on them for Wheeler’s Maiden Castle (1943), 388 ff., or Paul Jacobsthal in Early Celtic Art (Oxford, 1944).

32 G. C. Dunning in Arch. Journ., XCI (1934), 278 ff. On brooches, see Margaret Fowler, ibid., CX (1953), 88 ff.

33 Cyril Fox, Pattern and Purpose: Early Celtic Art in Britain (Nat. Mus. Wales, 1958), 1-2, fig. 1.

34 Ibid., fig. 2, and 16-17, fig. 13a (but the scroll needs drawing on the flat to be appreciated).

35 Hawkes in Antiq. Journ., XX (1940), 115-21, and Sussex Arch. Colls, LXXX (1939), 217-62; but is not all Park Brow I of Period 2?

36 C. A. Ralegh Radford, Journ. R. Inst. Cornwall, n.s. 1, Appendix (1951). His general review of the Southern British Iron Age, Proc. Prehist. Soc., XX (1954), 1 ff.

37 Aileen Fox in Arch. Journ., CIX (1952), 1 ff.

38 Alison Young and K. M. Richardson, Proc. Devon Arch. Expl Soc., v, 2-3, (1954-5), 43-67.

39 Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc., XXVI (1950), 17 ff. The penanmilar brooch, fig. 7, 2, is of the early thick-hooped type (cf. W. Watson in Antiq. Journ., XXVII (1947), 178 ff.), and the querns need no longer be dated late by Maiden Castle (p. 181 below).

40 See note 11.

41 J. W. Brailsford, Proc. Prehist. Soc., XIV (1948), 1 ff.; C. M. Piggott and W. A. Seaby, ibid., in (1937), 43 ff.; Clare Fell in Arch. Journ., XCII (1936), 63 ff., with W. F. Grimes in Aspects of Archaeology: Essays presented to O. G. S. Crawford (ed. Grimes, London, 1951), 164-6; and on decorated pottery, Proc. Prehist. Soc., XVII (1952), 160 ff.

42 Stuart Piggott, Proc. Prehist. Soc., XVI (1950), 5 ff. (Group II); on dating, cf. XXI (1955), 211-12.

43 Fox, Pattern and Purpose, 84-105; plaque, 33, and his Find of the Early Iron Age at Llyn Cerrig Bach (Nat. Mus. Wales, 1946), 46 ff. Are not the ‘up-dating’ considerations observed below (pp. 181-2) consistent with an earlier start, i.e. a less rapid pace, for the artistic sequence that he has traced and there expounded?

44 De Bello Gallico, V, 12, 1-2. On Caesar’s British expeditions, 55 and 54 B.C., see C. E. Stevens, ANTIQUITY, 1947, 6 ff.

45 J. Colbert de Beaulieu in Proc. Prehist. Soc., XXIV (1958), 201-10.

46 R. E. M. Wheeler and K. M. Richardson, Hill-Forts of Northern France (Soc. Antiq., 1957); cf. ANTIQUITY, 1958, 154 ff.

47 Despite J. W. Brailsford, Proc. Prehist. Soc., XXIV (1958), 101-19. It has a Belgic element too.

48 This will then start earlier (as at the Gurnard’s Head cliff-castle, Arch. Journ., XCVII (1940), A. S. R. Gordon) than Mrs. Murray-Threipland has suggested in reporting on the St Mawgan-in-Pyder excavations, Arch, Journ., cxm (1956), 33 ff., 53 ff.

49 Bredon Hill: Thalassa Cruso Hencken in Arch. Journ., XCV (1938), 1 ff.; Sutton Walls: K. M. Kenyon, ibid., CX (1953), 1 ff.

50 A. H. A. Hogg, ANTIQUITY, 1958, 189, with W. J. Varley, ‘The Hill-Forts of the Welsh Marches’, Arch. Journ., CV (1948), 41 ff.; Pennine: R. E. M. Wheeler, The Stanwick Fortifications (Soc. Antiquaries, 1954).

51 By Mrs E. M. Clifford; to be published shortly as a monograph. Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, i960.

52 For this, see once for all C. E. Stevens, in Aspects of Archaeology (1951: see note 41) 332-44.