The Early Bronze Age in Wessex

Stuart Piggott

doi:10.1017/S0079497X00021137

The Early Bronze Age in Wessex

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2014

Stuart Piggott

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The work on which this study is based was originally undertaken with a view to examining the cultures of the geographical area usually comprised in the term ‘Wessex’ in the period immediately following the Beaker phase. For a great many years a remarkable series of grave-groups have been known, incorporating elements (often spectacular in their implication of material wealth) which were peculiar to the area under discussion, and loosely assigned to the Middle Bronze Age. It was clear from the outset that a study of these groups would throw a great deal of light on trade relations, both internal and overseas, and it also seemed likely that in them might be found a culture equivalent chronologically to the Food Vessel phase of northern England, intervening (in a ceramic sense) between the beakers and the cinerary urns and forming a final phase of the Early Bronze Age—a phase which had already been postulated in the typological series of bronze implements, but which had not reached the dignity of a definite culture.

The evidence examined in this paper supports the existence of such a culture in Wessex in the final phases of the Early Bronze Age. It is a highly individual culture whose origin lies in an actual ethnic movement from N. France. The nature of the evidence,—finds from the richly-furnished graves of chieftains—presents us with a view of the material equipment of an aristocratic minority. The basic folk culture appears, from the slight evidence available, to have been similar to the food-vessel culture of the greater part of Britain north of the Thames at this time, but it becomes clear that in Wessex there was; superimposed on this somewhat uninteresting and unenterprising substratum, an intrusive ruling class whose delight in barbaric finery led them to open trade connections not only with their Breton homeland, but with central Europe and Scandinavia, and whose imports of bronze tools and almost certainly of actual craftsmen laid the foundations of the peculiarly individual metallurgical achievements of the British Middle Bronze Age.

Type: Research Article
Information: Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , July 1938 , pp. 52 - 106

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0079497X00021137 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1938

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References

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^{page 52 note 2} B.A.P., vol. 1, 137.

^{page 52 note 3} L'Anthrop., XXIV, 644Google Scholar.

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^{page 53 note 2} Manuel, II, 360Google Scholar.

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^{page 53 note 5} ‘The Halberd in Bronze Age Europe,’ Arch., LXXXVI, 195Google Scholar.

^{page 53 note 6} The Wessex material is mainly in the British Museum, at Devizes and at Dorehester. In France I have examined the collections at St. Germain, Rennes, Vannes, Carnac, Penmarc'h, Quimper, Brest, St. Brieuc and Dinan.

^{page 53 note 7} An excellent geographical study of North Wiltshire has been made by Brentnall, H. C. and Carter, C. C., in their Marlborough Country (Oxford, 1932)Google Scholar.

^{page 53 note 8} Map of Neolithic Wessex, Introduction, 14.

^{page 54 note 1} The segments of fossil crinoids from the limestone which have been used as beads, from barrows at Aldbourne, Winterbourne Stoke and Normanton, (Arch. LXXXV, 213–14)Google Scholar and at Manton, (Reliquary, 1907, 28)Google Scholar, may be noted in this connection.

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^{page 55 note 3} Cf. Proc. Prehist. Soc., I, 125Google Scholar. The comprehensive study of the problem of these axes, now in progress by a Committee of the South-western Museums, should do much to clarify the situation.

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^{page 61 note 1} Such a phase has been frequently postulated; it is equivalent to Montelius II (Arch., LXI). Peake, (Arch. of Berks., 1931, 49)Google Scholar suggested naming it E.B. II, and in the Handbook of Prehist. Arch. of Britain (International Congress, 1932)Google Scholar, it was described as Middle Bronze Age A. None of these writers however recognized the intrusive nature of the phase.

^{page 61 note 2} W.A.M., 432.

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^{page 62 note 2} Ibid., LVIII, 24.

^{page 62 note 3} This grave lies outside our area on the edge of Dartmoor. See Ant. J., XVIII, 313Google Scholar, with refs. there given.

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^{page 64 note 2} Ibid., XI, 159.

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^{page 66 note 2} Montelius quoted the ornament on the base of blades such as those of Pitcaithly (Evans, , Bronze, 246Google Scholar), Levens, Westmorland (Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd ser., II, 370—wrongly located as Helsington), and Undley, Suffolk (Evans Coll., Ashmolean) in this same connection, but their affinities seem to lie rather with the Irish group (Evans, loc. cit., Coffey, , Bronze Age in Ireland, 58Google Scholar), although these may themselves derive from an Italian source.

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^{page 69 note 2} Studier öfver den Yngre Stenäldern norden och Västeuropa (1912), 53Google Scholar. Cf. those from Oakley Down (Wessex from the Air, fig. 41) and from Barrows on Ridgeway Hill, near Dorchester, (Barrow-Diggers, 1839, pl. II, p. 75)Google Scholar. The angularity of those from Everly, Barrow 7 (Stourhead Cat., 105–107) and from Lambourn (Peake, Arch. of Berks., fig. 15) may be significant.

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^{page 85 note 1} In Bristol Museum.

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^{page 85 note 3} In the British Museum.

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^{page 96 note 1} For the Mycenae daggers see Karo, Die Schachtgräber von Mykenai, pl. LXXXVII, 435; LXXXIX, 396; for the gold cups, pl. CIV, 392-393.

^{page 98 note 1} Arch. Camb., LXXX.

^{page 98 note 2} Warne, Celtic Tumuli, pt. III, 70.

^{page 98 note 3} Castillo, La Cultura del Vasi Campaniforme, pl. CLVII, 9, 10; pl. CLXVIII, 8.

^{page 98 note 4} Ant. Journ., XVI, 97Google Scholar.

^{page 98 note 5} Hoare, Colt, Ancient Wilts., 237Google Scholar, pl. XXXIII.

^{page 98 note 6} Proc. Prehist. Soc., 1935, 147Google Scholar, pl. XVI; Antiquity X, 423Google Scholar.

^{page 100 note 1} Cf. Montelius, , Civ. prim. en Italie, IGoogle Scholar, pl. 16, no. 6; II, pl. 126 passim.

^{page 100 note 2} Some of these daggers were claimed as halberds by Déchelette, , but Childe, (Danube, 244Google Scholar n.) first pointed out that this was not the case.

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