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A Settlement of the Early Iron Age at Abington Pigotts, Cambs., and its Subsequent History; as Evidenced by Objects Preserved in the Pigott Collection
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2013
Extract
It is remarkable that so few attempts have been made to illustrate continuity of settlement on a given site through successive culture phases in East Anglia. No more valuable study could be undertaken by any field archæologist, than the careful examination of successive deposits on such a site. Especially useful would be the analysis of the transitional phases, showing the extent to which the art and craft-workers of one period influenced the technique and style of their successors and descendants; such a study should also throw light on the material, social and economic effects on the peasantry of the district of invasion and conquest, an evil from which East Anglia seems to have suffered every 500 years or so from about 1000 B.C. onwards. I cannot offer you, first hand, such a study; but it may be worth while, as an approach to the ideal, to illustrate a collection of objects from a settlement which seems to have been occupied during three (or four) culture phases for a total period of some 2,000 years.
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- Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1924
References
page 211 note * Resembling Evans, Coins of the Ancient Britons. Plate IX., Fig. 5, with the addition of the ring ornament on Fig. 7. See Proc., C.A.S., VI., p. xxxiGoogle Scholar.
page 211 note † Proc., C.A.S., VI., p. 309Google Scholar.
page 212 note * The entire area was turned over to a depth of from 12 to 18 feet.
page 212 note † searched with especial care for fragments of pail-shaped or cylindrical vessels, and for Deverel-Rimbury types; indeed, for any pottery to which Late Bronze Age date might be assigned.
page 214 note * Similar rings, but undecorated, in glass and bronze, were found at Hunsbury. Their use is uncertain.
page 214 note † An interesting find deserves notice here. Mr. Pigott recorded that 4 pieces of iron, circular, weighing each 5½-6½ 1bs. or thereabouts, were dug Tip on the site. Two of these are preserved. They are “blooms,” flattened spheres of metal, roughly refined from lumps of ironstone by heat. Mr. W. E. Woodward, M.A., M.I. and S.inst., of the School of Engineering, Cambridge, was kind enough to take great interest in the problem of their origin and character and his most valuable report, together with a microphotograph of a section, is appended (p. 232). In view of their primitive character it seems possible that these “blooms” may date back to the Early Iron Age.
page 217 note * See Cunnington, , “The Early Iron Age Site at All Cannings Cross Farm p. 176Google Scholar and Pl. 37, and Bulleid, and Gray, , Glastonbury, II., p. 519Google Scholar; and for the Hunsbury specimens, Northampton Museum.
page 217 note † See Cunnington op. cit., p. 32, and Plate 38.
page 218 note * The same wares occurred at Hunsbury (Northampton Museum).
page 218 note † Bulleid and Gray II., p. 489.
page 219 note * Though influenced by Aylesford forms this type of bowl may be directly derived from the bowls-with-omphalos of the Hallstatt-La Tène I. period such as have been found at Fengate, Peterborough, by Mr. G. Wyman Abbott.
page 220 note * These are badly baked and very rotten. The smaller shows the neck and rim shaped with the potter's finger; the lip is flattened, the base pinched out. The paste of the larger contained straw which carbonized in the firing leaving its traces.
page 220 note † This is of typical thick black Early Iron Age ware, smooth on the surface but not polished. There is some evidence that the base was flat internally.
page 222 note * To the early period possibly belongs a fragment of a large straightsided pot (Fig. 2 J) which has an unusual rim form. It is handmade, and roughly made. Paste and colour and surface texture are characteristically Early Iron Age.
page 222 note † This ornament occurs on a sherd from the pre-Roman site at Chesterford, Essex. I have recently seen the upper part of a large grain jar from the kiln site at Horningsea, Cambs, with the same pattern; and I take this opportunity of stating that the Rev. F. G. Walker's contention that the manufactory started before the Roman Conquest, is, I now believe, justified. (Proc., C.A.S., XVII., p. 14 ff.Google Scholar)
page 222 note ‡ Both the vessels on which this ornament occurs have well made roll-rims and are probably not of early date. A connection with the basket pattern is not improbable.
page 224 note * This pot has a line of small rivet holes showing it was mended in antiquity. It probably dates from 1 A.D.
page 225 note * It is restored on my plate from Mr. Pigott's outline drawing.
page 226 note * I have reconstructed the lost foot of the Abington Pigotts vessel on lines appropriate to such vessels. Our fragment fortunately preserves the angle where the base joined the foot; the diameter of the foot is therefore calculable.
page 227 note * Cf. Baudot, , “Memoire sur les Sepultures des Barbares decouvertes en Bourgogne” (1860)Google Scholar, pl. XXV., 9. Hughes figures an identical spout found in “Hunnybun's ditch,” Cambridge, in association with “Romano-English” wares (Proc., C.A.S., VIII, 43Google Scholar, and Pl. iv., 19).
Two other curious spouts were preserved from the site, which are figured (Fig. 3 J, K). In texture the wares are medieval.
page 228 note * e.g., Mill Lane Ditch (Hughes, , Proc., C.A.S. VIII., 269Google Scholar, and Pl. xiii., 4), St. Andrew's St., Trinity St., Market Hill; in all cases associated with wares later than the Roman period.
page 228 note † The majority found in excavating for the extension of Christ's College Library in 1895. They have never been illustrated, but are referred to by Hughes, (Proc. Camb. Antiq. Soc., XI., 408)Google Scholar.
page 229 note * A rim from Trinity St., Fig. 4, No. 5, shows that these may have been evolved from mortaria rims, the long sloping shoulder being set horizontally instead of at a sharp angle.
page 230 note * There appears in Eastern Britain in IV. century A.D., a vase form which shows impressed circles similar to those on Fig. 3 A. A good example is figured in my “Archæology,” pl. XV., 1. This may be the result of the infiltration during this century, of Saxon elements, along the Coastal zone. Misled by by the obvious relationship with Early Iron Age wares, I wrongly ascribed the type to the I. century A.D.
page 231 note * It is significant that there is a deserted moated site close to Bellus Hill, known as “Moyne's Manor House.”
page 231 note † The distribution of cemeteries and finds of the Age along the edge of the alluvium in these valleys is shown on Map III. of my “Archæology of the Cambridge Region.”