Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-vt8vv Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-08-11T04:23:01.888Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Belgic Bronzes and Pottery found at Felmersham-on-Ouse, Bedfordshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

Extract

The find of pottery and bronzes described in this paper was made in Catuvellaunian territory (fig. 1), on the north bank of the Ouse near Felmersham Bridge, in Shanbrook parish, Bedfordshire. At this place the river makes a gentle bend southwards towards the village of Felmersham. Following the Belgic predilection for riverine settlement, the site to which the find belongs was established on well-developed flood-plain gravels situated on the inner margin of this curve. Here in January 1942, from the gravel-digging exploited by Mr. A. E. C. Howard of Bedford, the excavating machine simultaneously disgorged the following objects:

A bronze bucket-handle and two bronze bucket-escutcheons in the shape of cow-heads (fig. 2).

A bronze spout in the shape of a fish-head (fig. 3).

A damaged bronze bowl (no. 1) with one of the two original attachments for holding swinging ring-handles (pl. VII, a, b).

Fragments of another bowl (no. 2), including parts of the rim and shoulder (pl. VII, c).

A flat plate of thin bronze, in shape the segment of a circle, with traces of solder on both sides (pl. VI, b).

Three pieces of curved bronze rim-mounting of U-section (pl. VI, a).

Three pieces of flat bronze ribbon and an irregular piece of bronze plate of the same thinness (pl. VI, a).

Some thirty potsherds, the lower jaw of a young pig, part of the tibia of another young animal, probably a horse, and some pieces of burnt clay (fig. 11 ).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1949

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 38 note 1 Mr. F. W. Kuhlicke, F.S.A., is keeping watch over the site and hopes eventually to analyse the pottery finds as a whole.

page 41 note 1 Lydney, Soc. Ant. Research Com. Report No. IX, pp. 78–9, fig. 14.

page 41 note 2 Unpublished, in the Durden Colin., B.M.

page 47 note 1 ‘Émailleurs d'Occident’, in Préhistoire, vol. ii (1933), pp. 65Google Scholarseqq.

page 47 note 2 Antiq. Journ. xv, 458, pl. LXXI (1).

page 47 note 3 Celtic Ornament, fig. 29.

page 48 note 1 Antiq. Journ. viii, 520 seqq.

page 48 note 2 B.M. Guide to the Early Iron Age, fig. 172.

page 48 note 3 Arch. lii, 361, fig. 11.

page 48 note 4 Many of the paired ornamental bronzes of classical and earlier date found in Greece and Italy were cast from originals modelled free-hand, although clearly it was intended to make the members of the pair as alike as possible. The only mechanical means of producing exact replicas of an object with complicated relief, viz. the multiple-piece mould, does not seem to have been used before Hellenistic times. Cf. Pernice, E. in Österreichisches Jahrbuch, vii (1904), 154Google Scholarseqq.

page 48 note 5 The bull-heads of the Royal Graves at Ur are well known. They already have some of the stylized features referred to above. Less remote examples are six bronze bull-heads from Cyprus, of the ninth or eighth century B.C., with large lentoid eyes and rectilinear muzzles (see Metrop. Mus. of Art Cat. of Bronzes, p. 349). The same features are seen in a bucranium from Tepe Kül, Anatolia, probably of the fourteenth century B.C. The rectangular stylization of the hair is found on the head forming the butt of a Syrian rhyton of the seventh century B.C. (The last two objects are in the British Museum.)

page 48 note 6 See Appendix for a list of British bull-heads.

page 48 note 7 Antiq. Journ. xv, 79.

page 49 note 1 A forthcoming paper by Professor C. F. C. Hawkes discusses the whole question of bull-heads found in Britain.

page 49 note 2 e.g. B.M. Guide to the Early Iron Age, fig. 24.

page 49 note 3 H. Willers: Neue Untersuchungen über die römische Bronzeindustrie von Capua und von Niedergermanien.

page 49 note 4 In Pernice, op. cit., p. 161, are illustrated two bronze escutcheons from a bucket, of unknown provenance, representing the head of the river god Achelous, who took the form of a bull after his first encounter with Hercules and is portrayed, as here, with short horns. An Achelous-head escutcheon found in Ariège, of inferior workmanship and apparently of Roman date, is illustrated by S. Reinach in Bronzes figurés de la Gaule Romaine, p. 336, no. 434. Thus Gaul was probably familiar with the attachment of horned human heads to buckets. The mythological allusion being lost and the portrayal of Achelous degenerating, the substitution of a bucranium would be understandable. Or perhaps a fragment of mythology common to the Celtic and the classical worlds gave rise to the lingering association of bucrania with water.

page 49 note 5 In the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Two of the heads are from the Meyrick Collection and one from the Townley Collection.

page 50 note 1 Published by Stenberger, M. in Fornvännen, 1946, Häfte 3, pp. 147Google Scholarseqq. There is a better reproduction of the cow-head as frontispiece to Tor, 1948 (Meddelanden från Uppsala Universitets Museum för Nordiska Fornsaker), from which pl. VIII, a is taken.

page 50 note 2 The thick lips suggest the carp, which was probably not native to Gaul, but may have been known to the Belgae through the Romans. The tench is another possibility.

page 51 note 1 As seen, for example, in the repoussé bronze strips from Santon Downham, Suffolk, and Rodborough Common, Glos., and in elaborated form in the panel from Elmswell, E. Yorks.: see Antiq. Journ. xx, 344 seqq.

page 51 note 2 The distinctive feature of spinning is that it spreads the metal by pressure, whereas in ordinary turning the tool cuts and removes the surface. When visible at all the lathe-marks resulting from spinning will be minute concentric or all but concentric striae or furrows. Occasionally the spun metal may be marked with comparatively broad concentric bands defined by darker and lighter shades of colour. These bands, which in antique bronze may be accentuated by difference of patination, probably arise from patches of impurity in the metal, which must tend to be drawn out into visible arcs as the metal is spread. Bowl no. 2 is a case in point.

page 52 1 For a discussion of the lathe with particular reference to the Belgae see an article by the writer in the Archaeological Newsletter for June 1948.

page 52 note 2 Like the Japanese lathe illustrated in the article in the Archaeological Newsletter cited above.

page 52 note 3 Not vice versa, since the neck and shoulder can hardly have been spun against a negative form.

page 52 note 4 H. Willers, op. cit.

page 52 note 5 Two Belgic pear-shaped urns consisting of several sections turned separately in shale (see Arch. lii, 352) are now in the British Museum and the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Another fragmentary example accompanied the find of bronzes made at Harpenden, Herts. (Antiq. Journ. viii, 520).

page 53 note 1 B.M. Guide to the Early Iron Age, fig. 164.

page 53 note 2 Arch, lxxvi, 247, pi. LVIII, fig. 1.

page 53 note 3 e.g. A. de Ridder, Les Bronzes antiques du Louvre, ii, pl. 93, no. 2600. For occurrence of the tripod bowl with paw-feet in the sixth century A.D., see J. Werner, Italisckes und Koptisches Bronzegeschirr des 6ten und 7ten Jahrhunderts nordwärts der Alpen, pl. 26, 2.

page 53 note 4 e.g. Antiquity, v, 240, pl. 1, fig. 1, and Arch. lxi, 210, fig. 6.

page 53 note 5 J. G. Bulliot, Fouilles du Mont Beuvray: Album, e.g. pl. xxvi, nos. 10 and 17.

page 53 note 6 Ref. in May, The Pottery found at Silchester, p. 18.

page 53 note 7 Lydney, op. cit., p. 74.

page 53 note 8 Bulliot, op. cit., e.g. pl. xxiii, no. 1.

page 53 note 9 Antiq. Journ. vi, 281.

page 54 note 1 e.g. K. Schumacher, Beschreibung der Sammlung antiker Bronzen zu Karlsruhe, Taf. viii, nos. 18 to 20, etc. See Arch. lxiii, 17, fig. 23 left.

page 54 note 2 E. G. A. de Ridder, loc. cit.

page 55 note 1 Arch. lii, 361; Antiquity, v, 42.

page 55 note 2 Antiq. Journ. xv, 458, pl. LXXI, no. 1.

page 55 note 3 Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. xx, 202, pl. 9, fig. 4.

page 55 note 4 Lydney, op. cit., p. 87, fig. 21, no. 109.

page 55 note 5 H. Willers, op. cit., p. 132.

page 56 note 1 See Hawkes in Antiq. Journ. xx, 344 seqq.

page 56 note 2 Arch. lxiii, 16, fig. 11.

page 57 note 1 Potters' stamps are occasionally found on Roman coarse ware other than amphorae and mortaria. Mr. Graham Webster, F.S.A., informed the writer of the upper part of a large storage jar in the Lincoln Museum which has a stamp apparently to be read as RECINTV F retro.

page 59 note 1 Report of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries, vol. xiv.

page 59 note 2 Respectively Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries, vols. xi and xii.