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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
In recent years considerable attention has been devoted to the problems of the Early Iron Age in the British Isles; and, amongst these problems, that of the relationship between the insular and the continental cultures of the period has not become simpler or clearer as the British evidence has accumulated. How far, and in what manner, were the various Iron Age cultures of Britain derived from the continent? How far, and under what conditions, were they due to local initiative in Britain itself? Until questions such as these can be answered approximately, it will remain impossible alike to estimate the real achievement of the later prehistoric civilization of the island and to visualize the full significance of the adjacent civilization of northwestern Europe. The problem is not an easy one. The agricultural and therefore local basis of most of the Iron Age economy of Britain encouraged the strong local differentiation of cultural forms, and this local individuality was enhanced by the fashion in which the major tracts of open and habitable chalk or greensand tended, in ancient times, to be isolated by expanses of dense and often impassable forest. And, similarly, an intrusive element from overseas might easily take root in a particular area of southern or eastern Britain without directly affecting other areas within a relatively short map-distance.
This interim report is substantially the English version of the French summary which will appear in the Revue archéologique, and was written therefore from the point of view of the French reader. The complete report will be published by the Society of Antiquaries of London, which was responsible for the initiation of the work. The expedition was rendered possible by a generous Leverhulme Research Grant supplemented by the University of London and the Society of Antiquaries, and consisted of about 60 members of British and other universities. Miss K. M. Richardson was a co-director of it, and the basis of the work was a survey of French museums carried out in 1935 by Miss Leslie Scott, who also supervised the excavation of Kercaradec in 1938. The actual excavation of the other two sites was controlled largely by Mr W. Wedlake, and the photographer was Mr M. B. Cookson.
2 ANTIQUITY, 5, 60 ff.Google Scholar
3 Revue archéologique, 1901, 5, 51;Google Scholar Manuel d’archéologie,, 2, 1467.Google Scholar The comparison is only partly valid, and does not solve the question of the origins of the Glastonbury ware.
4 The beaded rim is of course a feature also of Hallstatt metalwork, but its transference to pottery seems scarcely to have occurred before La Tène I.
5 Interim reports in Antiquaries Journal, 1935, 15, 265;CrossRefGoogle Scholar 1936, XVI, 265; 1937, XVII, 261; final report in preparation.
6 Antiquaries Journal, 1937, 17, 275.Google Scholar
7 he term ‘Wessex’ is here used as equivalent to Dorset, southern Somerset, eastern Devon, western Hampshire as far as the Avon, and southwestern Wiltshire.
8 It is not here maintained that slingstones are everywhere associated exclusively with multiple defences. The general equation is claimed only for northern France and Britain; elsewhere, single lines of ramparts are sometimes associated with slingers, and it is certain that even in the regions now in question some single-ramparted camps were still used in the ‘slingstone period’.
9 Notably Chatellier, P. du Les époques préhistoriques et gauloises dans le Finistère (Rennes, 1907);Google Scholar Délandre, C. Le Morbihan, son histoire et ses monuments (Vannes, 1847);Google Scholar Messelière, F. de la ‘De l’àge probable des chàteaux de terre des Cótes-du-Nord’, Société d’émulation des Cótes-du-Nord, Bulletins et mémoires, 65, 51 ff. (Brieuc, S. 1934);Google Scholar Banèat, P. Le Département d’Ille-et-Vilaine, 4—I (Rennes, etc.);Google Scholarand the reports of the Commission d’étude des enceintes préhistoriques de la Société Préhistorique Française.
10 Banèat, P. Le Département d’Ille-et-Vilaine, 1928, 5, 250.Google Scholar
11 This schedule will be included in the full report. That part of it which relates to multiple earthworks is here illustrated by the map, FIG. 6. It is important to remember that the map, in so far as the British distribution is concerned, must be supposed to include a multitude of derivative multiple earthworks, some of them long subsequent to the first introduction of the type by Venetic settlers.
12 Plan in Archaeological Journal, 1872, 29, 314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 Geog., IV, 4, I.
14 The countersunk handles which are a characteristic feature of ‘Wessex hill-fort B’ (FIG. 2, no. 6) occur on five sites in northern France : at Plouzevédé and Huelgoat in Finistère, at S. Donan, io kms. s.w. of S. Brieuc in the Cótes-du-Nord, at Kerhillio near Carnac in the Morbihan, and at S. Nazaire in Loire Inférieure. Moreover, some of the pottery from Castel Coz (Finistère) shows a tendency towards the bead-rim, not incomparable with that of the B pottery of southwestern Britain.
15 Bell. Gall. III, 16.