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A Bronze Cult-Wagon from Lezoux (Puy-de-Dôme) in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

Nicholas Freidin
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Summary

The three bronze fragments from Lezoux belong to a particular type of cult-wagon manufactured in central Italy in the seventh century B.C. Their presence in Lower Auvergne, together with other largely contemporary Italo-Etruscan bronzes, suggest that they are a result of a commercial exchange in return for tin ores. Such trade links between France and central and northern Italy were close and continuous in the centuries preceding the foundation of Massalia by the Phocaeans in c. 600 B.C. The cult-wagon from Lezoux is a particular central Italian creation drawing on a variety of Urnfield decorative techniques and symbolic motifs from eastern and central Europe. Whether or not the wagon was used at its ultimate destination for the cult practices intended by its creators remains open to debate.

Type
Note
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , September 1980 , pp. 320 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1980

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References

NOTES

1 The objects are entered in the Accessions Register (1896–1908: 51) under the numbers 329–332. A short note about these pieces appeared in Megaw, J. V. S., Art of the European Iron Age (London, 1970), pp. 50–1, no. 20Google Scholar.

2 Garrucci, R., ‘On the discovery of sepulchral remains at Veii and Praeneste’, Archaeologia, xli (1867), 196–7, pl. iv, no. 2Google Scholar; Woytowitsch, E., Die Wagen der Bronze- und frühen Eisenzeit in Italien (PBF XVII, i, 1978), p. 54, no. 121, Taf. 22Google Scholar.

3 Müller-Karpe, H., ‘Das Grab 871 von Veji, Grotta Gramiccia’, in MüllerKarpe, H. (ed.), Beitrdge zu italienischen und griechischen Bronzefunden (PBF XX, 1, 1974), p. 96Google Scholar; E. Woytowitsch, op. cit., p. 54. The latter dates the burial to the end of century.

4 H. Müller-Karpe, op. cit., pp. 89–97.

5 Ibid.; Hencken, H., The Earliest European Helmets. Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (Bulletin of the American School of Pre-historic Research, 28, 1971), p. 100Google Scholar.

6 E. Woytowitsch, op. cit., pp. 54–6, nos. 122–4.

7 The measurements of both vehicles are roughly similar (platform, ducks and rattle-plates). The Veii wagon (L=62-s cm.) has a procession of sixty-six ducks, ten on each of the short sides of the rectangular platform, and twenty-four and twenty-two ducks on the long sides respectively. Fragment PR 331, which is complete, corresponds to one of the short sides, and PR 329 to one of the long sides, as its attendant PR 330.

8 H. Müller-Karpe, op. cit., Taf. 22, no. 1, 23, no. 1; E. Woytowitsch, op. cit., Taf. 22, no. 124 a-b.

9 R. Garrucci, op. cit., pl. Ill, no. 5; H. Müller-Karpe, op. cit., Taf. 22, no. 2.

10 Kossack, G., Studien zum Symbolgut der Urnenfelder und Hallstattzeit Mitteleuropas (Forsch, R.-G., 20, 1954), pp. 40–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Taf. 15, nos. 1–14, 16, nos. 22, 29.

11 H. Hencken, op. cit.H. Müller-Karpe, op. cit., Taf. 23, no. 1, 24, no. 3.

12 Hencken, H., Tarquinia, Villanovans and Early Etruscans (Bulletin of the American School of Prehistoric Research, 23, 2, 1968), p. 514Google Scholar; for the ‘ridge-and-boss’ style applied to bronze vessels, see Merhart, G. von, ‘Studien über einige Gattungen von BronzegefäBen’, Festschrift Romisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums in Mainz zur Feier seines hundertjdhrigen Bestehens, 2 (1952), pp. 1–71Google Scholar.

13 Boucher, S., Recherches sur les bronzes figurés de Gaule préromaine et romaine (Rome, 1976), p. 14Google Scholar, n. 6, pl. i, no. 2. The piece is included in a lot of local bronzes belonging to the Moreau collection of Neris.

14 Chapotat, G., ‘Le char processionnel de la Côte-St.-André (Isere)’, Gallia, xx (1962), 33–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Déchelette, J., Manuel d'Archéologie préhistorique, celtique et gallo-romaine, II, 1 (Paris, 1910), pp. 447–8Google Scholar.

16 Boucher, op. cit., pp. 19, 346. The find from Clermont-Ferrand comes from the city museum, and although unprovenanced, a local origin is assumed.

17 Ibid., pp. 13–14, pi. 1, no. 1.

18 A. Duval et al., ‘Les fibules anterieures au VIe siecle avant notre ere trouvdes en France’, Gallia, xxxii (1974), 43–4, 45, fig. 27.·

19 Ibid., 46; H. Hencken, op. cit. (1971), pp. 9, 66–72; Jehl, M. and Bonnet, C., ‘Nouvelles fouilles et importantes trouvailles dans la Foret de Kastenwald pres de Colmar’, Cahiers Alsaciens d'Archéologie, d'Art et d'Histoire, 1 (1957), 28Google Scholar.

20 S. Boucher, op. cit., pp. 15–16.

21 Stjernquist, B., Models of Commercial Diffusion in Prehistoric Times (Scripta Minora, 1965–1966, 2, 1967), p. 29, fig. 6.Google Scholar The three trade models are: a, direct long-distance trade linking the production area directly to a single market area; b, successive long-distance trade linking the production area with intermediary market areas; c, local trade between adjoining market areas. Market areas are synonymous, for B. Stjernquist, with settled areas, an assumption that cannot be made with bronze artefacts found in isolation. The value of these models, in the context of this paper, is purely descriptive.

22 G. Chapotat, op. cit., p. 71.

23 G. von Merhart, op. cit., p. 31, Karte 5, 69; E. Woytowitsch, op. cit., p. 52, no. 110, 61, no. 131.

24 A. Duval et al., op. cit., p46; Peroni, R., ‘Considerazioni ed ipotesi sul ripostiglio di Ardea’, Bulletino di Paletnologia Italiana, xvii, 75 (1966), 175–97.Google Scholar The latter considers the pre-monetary character of the hoard at Ardea, south of Rome, containing bronze axes and eighty-five mostly ‘a sanguisuga’ -type fibulae, based on a weight analysis of the bronzes which reveals a series of standards that partly relate to corresponding standards in other hoards.

25 For the main sources of tin in France see Nash, D., The Celts of Central Gaul (D.Phil, thesis, Oxford, 2, 1975), Appendix IIIGoogle Scholar.

26 S. Boucher, op. cit., p. 17; for a second tin route, largely contemporary to the trans-Alpine passage, linking the Golfe de Lion to the mouth of the Loire and the Armorican peninsula by way of the Garonne and the Golfe de Gascogne coast, see Jully, J. J., ‘Le marché du métal en Méditerranee occidentale au Premier Âge du Fer: Sémites et Etrusques’, Opuscula Romano, 6 (1968), 57–9, fig. 2Google Scholar; and Benoit, F., Recherches sur I'helldnisation du Midi de la Gaule (Annales de la Faculté des Lettres, 43, Aix-en-Provence, 1965), pp. 43, 166–8Google Scholar.

27 G. von Merhart, op. cit., p. 35, Karte 6, Taf. 20; idem., Hallstatt und Italien (Mainz, 1969), pp. 338–40Google Scholar; G. Kossack, op. cit., pp. 26–7, Taf. 8.

28 G. Kossack, op. cit., pp. 10–11, Taf. 1.

29 Ibid., pp. 17, 28, Taf. 4, nos. 7, 9.

30 Ibid., Taf. 10–12; see also n. 10. Rattle-plates associated with birds are known in the later Urnfield Period and in the early Iron Age. One can mention, in this respect, the cast bronze curved-bow fibulae with a pair of facing stylized birds in the arc of the bow and with triangular plates suspended by chain-links to a curved ornamented sheet-bronze fan extension of the bow, from the cemetery at Hallstatt, Salzkammergut, in Upper Austria, dated to the early Ha D, in Peroni, R., Studi di Cronologia hallstattiana (Rome, 1973), pp. 18, 45, fig. 9, no. 8Google Scholar.

31 H. Hencken, op. cit. (1968), p. 531; G. von Merhart, op. cit. (1969), p. 354; for a review of the bird motif in Italy, see H. Hencken, op. cit. (1968), pp. 514–31.

32 For the significance of the wheel, see Forrer, R., ‘Les chars cultuels pr6historiques et leurs survivances aux dpoques historiques’, Prehistoire, i (1932), 19–123Google Scholar; for a general discussion regarding the cult aspects of birds and cult-wagons generally, see J. Dechelette, op. cit., pp. 426–53; and G. Kossack, op. cit., pp. 79–84.

33 G. Chapotat, op. cit., 73.

34 Cordier, G., ‘Une figurine ornithomorphe hallstattienne dans l'environnement des “Danges” de Sublaines (Indre-et-Loire)’, Revue Archdologique, i (1966), 85–6Google Scholar.

35 Coles, J. M. and Harding, A. F., The Bronze Age in Europe (London, 1979), pp. 369–70.Google Scholar The authors juxtapose this interpretation with the more traditional view that sees the cult-wagons as funerary vessels drawn by amphibious animals.

36 Frankenstein, S. and Rowlands, M. J., ‘The internal structure and regional context of Early Iron Age society in southwestern Germany’, Institute of Archaeology Bulletin, 15 (1978), 73–112.Google Scholar The model of a ‘prestige-goods’ economy, based on general anthropological theories, implies an hierarchical social order of patrons and clients where prestige goods, often imported, are used by the more dominant groups as levers of control over other groups in their sphere of influence.