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Swords and Scabbards of the British Early Iron Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

Stuart Piggott
Stuart Piggott
Affiliation:
Abercromby Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology, Edinburgh University
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Extract

Although among our most striking antiquities, the swords and daggers of the British Early Iron Age, with their accompanying scabbards, have received no systematic study in the light of recent archaeology. The artistic qualities of many of the ornamented bronze scabbards had led to their becoming collectors' pieces from the 18th century onwards, and the basic treatment of the types (and indeed the only publication of many examples) is that of A. W. Franks when he was engaged in defining the ‘Late Celtic’ art style in his articles of 1863 and 1880. On this basis, Déchelette was able to include the British material in his classic treatment of European La Tène swords in 1914, and this was followed and amplified by R. A. Smith in 1925. Since then, the British scabbards have received incidental mention by such students of Iron Age metal-work as Leeds, Ward-Perkins and Fox, but they have not been treated as a group. The purpose of this paper is to review the available examples, to attempt a classification, and to determine the relationships of these products of the armourers' craft in Early Iron Age Britain to what is known of the stylistic development of other decorative metal-work, and to the areas of settlement and trade interchanges of the various Iron Age tribal groups or distinctive communities. The absence of any recent comprehensive treatment of the enormous series of continental La Téne swords, and the distinctively insular character of the British groups, has led me to restrict this study almost entirely to the British evolution, with the minimum reference to prototypes or parallel developments on the European mainland.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 16 , 1950 , pp. 1 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1950

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References

page 1 note 1 In Kemble, 's Horae Ferales (1863)Google Scholar and Arch. XLV (1880), 253Google Scholar.

page 1 note 2 Manuel d' Archéologie II, iii (1914)Google Scholar.

page 1 note 3 British Museum Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age (1925).

page 1 note 4 Celtic Ornament (1933).

page 1 note 5 Proc. Prehist. Soc., V (1939), 173–92, esp. 185–86Google Scholar.

page 1 note 6 A Find of the Early Iron Age from Llyn Cerrig Bach, Anglesey (1947); Arch. Camb., 1945, 199–220;Google Scholar 1948, 24–44; Ant. Journ. XXVII (1947), 1–16Google Scholar; XXVIII (1948), 123–37.

page 2 note 1 Swords, daggers and scabbards known to me are listed at the end of this paper (pp. 25–8), arranged under the Groups described in the text. Details of references, etc., of individual pieces will be found in this Register.

page 2 note 2 Recently cleaned swords in the Landesmuseum, Zürich, noted August, 1950.

page 2 note 3 Llyn Cerrig, 75–6.

page 2 note 4 Noted in Neuchâtel Museum, August, 1950.

page 4 note 1 To be published fully in Oxoniensia and referred to here by kind permission of the Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum.

page 4 note 2 This remarkable piece, like many of the finest examples of our Iron Age metal-work, has never been adequately published: my critical study of it, summarized in a paper to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland early in 1950, will appear shortly. Photograph in Childe, , Prehist. Scot. (1935)Google Scholar, frontispiece.

page 4 note 3 The ‘matted’ technique was occasionally used in La Téne pieces on the Continent to emphasize a relief design—e.g. the well-known scabbard from La Téne with three relief-moulded horses on it. (Jacobsthal, Early Celtic Art, II, pl. 66, no. III. The matted background is not here visible, but was noted on the original in Neuchâtel Museum in August, 1950).

page 4 note 4 Jacobsthal, , Burlington Magazine, LXXV, 31Google Scholar.

page 5 note 1 Ant. Journ., VI (1926), 277Google Scholar.

page 5 note 2 Maiden Castle, Dorset (1943), 216Google Scholar; pl. XXVIII, nos. 5 and 6 show further examples of the motif on pottery from Henon, Côtes-du-Nord.

page 6 note 1 Cf. Jacobsthal, Early Celtic Art, II, pl. 70, no. 125.

page 9 note 1 Llyn Cerrig, 63.

page 10 note 1 Cf. for instance Ward Perkins' maps of 3-link bits and of involuted brooches in Proc. Prehist. Soc. V (1939), 178, 184Google Scholar (but note Fox's correction to bit distribution in Llyn Cerrig, 33), and Fox's maps of shield-bosses (Arch. Camb., 1945, 201)Google Scholar, mirrors (ibid., 1948, 37) and ‘matted’ ornament (Llyn Cerrig, fig. 33).

page 10 note 2 Ant. Journ., XXVIII (1948), 123–37Google Scholar.

page 13 note 1 Nordisk. Fortidsminder, III, i (1937)Google Scholar; Acta Arch. XIX (1948), 170Google Scholar.

page 14 note 1 Inadequately published in British Museum Early Iron Age Guide, fig. 116.

page 14 note 2 Childe, Prehist. Scot., fig. 81; its identification as a tore-terminal is due to Mr R. R. Clarke, whose paper on an analogous terminal from North Creake, Norfolk, will appear shortly. The coins, to which Dr John Allan and Mr R. B. K. Stevenson drew my attention, are of the type of Blanchet, , Monn. Gaul. (1905), 540Google Scholar, no. 7; cf. Rev. Arch., XX, 294Google Scholar; Bull Soc. Ant. France, 1857, 103Google Scholar.

page 14 note 3 Arch. Camb., 1945, 215Google Scholar; note revision of some dates in Ant. Journ., XXVIII, 132 n.

page 15 note 1 For the importance of the voids in such ornament, see Fox in Arch. Camb., 1945, 211–13Google Scholar, quoting also Jacobsthal on ‘ambivalence of positive and negative forms.’

page 16 note 1 British Museum Early Iron Age Guide, fig. 115; better photo, in Saxl and Wittkower, British Art and the Mediterranean, pl. 4, no. I.

page 16 note 2 Anderson, , Scot, in Pagan Times: Iron Age, 128Google Scholar; Llyn Cerrig, fig. 30.

page 16 note 3 Bulleid, and Gray, . Glastonbury Lake Village, I, 312Google Scholar.

page 16 note 4 Arch., LV, 391Google Scholar; Leeds, Celtic Ornament, 132.

page 16 note 5 Proc. Prehist. Soc., V (1939), 173Google Scholar.

page 16 note 6 Proc. Prehist. Soc., III (1937), 411Google Scholar.

page 16 note 7 For the historical and philological background of this phase, cf. Powell, , ‘The Celtic Settlement of Ireland,’ in Early Cultures of N.W. Europe (Chadwick Memorial Studies, 1950), 173Google Scholar.

page 17 note 1 Celtic Ornament, 110.

page 20 note 1 Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., LXXIII, 146.Google Scholar

page 20 note 2 Ant. Journ., IX (1939), 41Google Scholar.

page 20 note 3 Childe, Prehist. Scot., pl. XV.

page 20 note 4 Grimes, Prehist. Guide, Nat. Mus. Wales, fig. 40.

page 20 note 5 V.C.H., Norfolk, I, 273Google Scholar.

page 21 note 1 Roman Frontier Post, 186.

page 21 note 2 Cf. also Lindenschmidt, AuhV, III, ii, Taf. I, 4, from Alesia.

page 22 note 1 Fox (Llyn Cerrig, 51), suggested a Belgic origin for the St. Albans scabbard-mount.

page 22 note 2 Llyn Cerrig, 6 and 73.

page 22 note 3 Notably in the metal hoards from Cockburnspath, Eckford, and Carlingwark, (.Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., LXVI 1931–1932), 362, 365, 373Google Scholar. I am publishing a detailed study of these shortly.

page 24 note 1 Arch. Journ., CIV (1948)Google Scholar, 44 n.

page 24 note 2 For the type, cf. London Mus. Medieval Guide (1940), pl. VI, 2.