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Iron Age Metal Horses' Bits of the British Isles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

J. B. Ward Perkins
J. B. Ward Perkins
Affiliation:
Professor of Archaeology, Royal University of Malta)
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Extract

Ever since the complexity of the Early Iron Age civilization in the British Isles was first realized, the accepted classification of its cultures has been based primarily upon pottery-types. In its present form, as stated by Mr Hawkes in 1931, that classification is, with modifications, likely to remain a basis of research for many years to come. Not only is pottery the most universally durable of the domestic articles then in common use, but it is, from the conditions of its manufacture, particularly sensitive to narrow regional and cultural differences. Nevertheless the very success of the pottery-criterion demands that we should bear in mind its obvious limitations. Not only were several culturally important areas apparently almost devoid of any but the crudest pottery, but the essentially domestic character of the potter's craft, which makes it so faithful a mirror of the constituents of everyday life, at the same time precludes it from reflecting, save in a very general fashion, the wider cultural and political contacts which must have played so large a part in the history of the period.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , July 1939 , pp. 173 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1939

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References

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page 173 note 3 This paper is not concerned with other types of horses' bits, e.g., the bone cheek-pieces which are a familiar feature of many British Iron Age sites (see Bulleid, and Gray, , Glastonbury Lake Village, II, p. 440 ff., pl. LXIVGoogle Scholar; see also Arch. J. XCV (1939), 88, fig. 12, no. 8)Google Scholar. Nor does it cover metal ‘bridle-spurs’ and similar fittings.

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page 177 note 4 L. des Noëttes, L'attelage et le cheval de selle a travers les ages, fig. 34.

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page 182 note 2 This reservation was suggested to me by Mr S. Piggott. It is worth noticing that other Irish Iron Age types, e.g., scabbards, show a similar derivation from types current in Yorkshire rather than from their Highland Zone derivatives. At first sight this suggests that the Irish Iron Age types were derived from Britain before the later types developed; and that contact was then interrupted. Against this however is the simultaneous occurrence, e.g., on the Lisnacroghera scabbards, of basket-work ornament, a feature of the developed British Iron Age. In any case the point can only be decided in relation to the other Irish evidence.

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page 187 note 1 The type undoubtedly continued in use in the Roman period, but no distinction is here made between those used before and after the conquest. See list, p. 192.

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page 190 note 1 British Museum, Early Iron Age Guide, fig. 174.

page 190 note 2 Celtic Art, p. 37.

page 190 note 3 It is not by any means obvious that the Colchester grave-group upon which he lays such stress (op. cit., pp. 36–7, fig. 10) should be dated to the first century B.C.

page 190 note 4 Archaeologia, XVI (1812), 348–9Google Scholar.

page 192 note * Added after map blocks were made.