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British Iron Age swords and scabbards are here catalogued in detail for the first time. They are grouped on the basis of typologies of components and are discussed with special reference to their decoration, context and chronology. Artefact studies have been neglected for many years, and this subject was last tackled in a paper published in 1950. Since then, the material available for study has tripled, from 93 to 274 items, and new archaeological discoveries include several elaborately decorated scabbards. Illustrations include 71 full pages of line drawings, while additional contributions examine the technology of some of the swords and provide a discussion of their enamelled decoration. Contents: Introduction; Typology and terminology; Group A: Swords of medium length and scabbards with open chape ends; Group B: Swords of medium length and scabbards with closed chape ends; Group C: Long swords and scabbards with campanulate mouths; Group D: Long swords and scabbards with straight mouths; Group E: Earlier swords and scabbards in the north; Group F: Later swords and scabbards in the north; Group G: Short swords in the south and the north; Group H: Swords and scabbards of mixed traditions; Discussion; Appendices; The technology of some of the swords; Weapons and fittings with enamelled decoration; The Isleworth sword: a note on the brass foils; A technical report on the Orton Meadows scabbard; The scientific examination of the Asby Scar sword and scabbard; The extraction of swords from their scabbards; Catalogue; Bibliography.
In 1817 a group of East Yorkshire gentry opened barrows in a large Iron Age cemetery on the Yorkshire Wolds at Arras, near Market Weighton, including a remarkable burial accompanied by a chariot with two horses, which became known as the King’s Barrow. This was the third season of excavation undertaken there, producing spectacular finds including a further chariot burial and the so-called Queen’s barrow, which contained a gold ring, many glass beads and other items. These and later discoveries would lead to the naming of the Arras Culture, and the suggestion of connections with the near European continent. Since then further remarkable finds have been made in the East Yorkshire region, including 23 chariot burials, most recently at Pocklington in 2017 and 2018, where both graves contained horses, and were featured on BBC 4’s Digging for Britain series. This volume bring together papers presented by leading experts at the Royal Archaeological Institute Annual Conference, held at the Yorkshire Museum, York, in November 2017, to celebrate the bicentenary of the Arras discoveries. The remarkable Iron Age archaeology of eastern Yorkshire is set into wider context by views from Scotland, the south of England and Iron Age Western Europe. The book covers a wide variety of topics including migration, settlement and landscape, burials, experimental chariot building, finds of various kinds and reports on the major sites such as Wetwang/Garton Slack and Pocklington.
In this volume, Harding examines the deposition of Iron Age human and animal remains in Britain and challenges the assumption that there should have been any regular form of cemetery in prehistory, arguing that the dead were more commonly integrated into settlements of the living than segregated into dedicated cemeteries.
Of all Britain's great archaeological monuments the Iron Age hillforts have arguably had the most profound impact on the landscape, if only because there are so many; yet we know very little about them. Were they recognised as being something special by those who created them or is the 'hillfort' purely an archaeologists' 'construct'? How were they constructed, who lived in them and to what uses were they put? This book, which is richly illustrated with photography of sites throughout England and Wales, addresses these and many other questions. After discussing the difficult issue of definition and the great excavations on which our knowledge is based, Ian Brown investigates in turn hillforts' origins, their architecture, and the role they played in Iron Age society. He also discusses the latest theories about their location, social significance and chronology. The book provides a valuable synthesis of the rich vein of research carried out in Britain on hillforts over the last thirty years. Hillforts' great variability poses many problems, and this book should help guide both the specialist and non-specialist alike though the complex literature. Furthermore, it has an important conservation objective. Land use in the modern era has not been kind to these monuments, with a significant number either disfigured or lost. Public consciousness of their importance needs raising if their management is to be improved and their future assured.
How did past communities view, understand and communicate their pasts? And how can we, as archaeologists, understand this? This volume brings together a range of case studies in which objects of the past were encountered and reappropriated.
'Early Celtic art' - typified by the iconic shields, swords, torcs and chariot gear we can see in places such as the British Museum - has been studied in isolation from the rest of the evidence from the Iron Age. This book reintegrates the art with the archaeology, placing the finds in the context of our latest ideas about Iron Age and Romano-British society. The contributions move beyond the traditional concerns with artistic styles and continental links, to consider the material nature of objects, their social effects and their role in practices such as exchange and burial. The aesthetic impact of decorated metalwork, metal composition and manufacturing, dating and regional differences within Britain all receive coverage. The book gives us a new understanding of some of the most ornate and complex objects ever found in Britain, artefacts that condense and embody many histories.
The Social Context of Technology explores non-ferrous metalworking in Britain and Ireland during the Bronze and Iron Ages (c. 2500 BC to 1st century AD). Bronze-working dominates the evidence, though the crafting of other non-ferrous metals – including gold, silver, tin and lead – is also considered. Metalwork has long played a central role in accounts of European later prehistory. Metals were important for making functional tools, and elaborate decorated objects that were symbols of prestige. Metalwork could be treated in special or ritualised ways, by being accumulated in large hoards or placed in rivers or bogs. But who made these objects? Prehistoric smiths have been portrayed by some as prosaic technicians, and by others as mystical figures akin to magicians. They have been seen both as independent, travelling ‘entrepreneurs’, and as the dependents of elite patrons. Hitherto, these competing models have not been tested through a comprehensive assessment of the archaeological evidence for metalworking. This volume fills that gap, with analysis focused on metalworking tools and waste, such as crucibles, moulds, casting debris and smithing implements. The find contexts of these objects are examined, both to identify places where metalworking occurred, and to investigate the cultural practices behind the deposition of metalworking debris. The key questions are: what was the social context of this craft, and what was its ideological significance? How did this vary regionally and change over time? As well as elucidating a key aspect of later prehistoric life in Britain and Ireland, this important examination by leading scholars contributes to broader debates on material culture and the social role of craft.
A Forged Glamour, which takes its title from a poem, is an exploration of the lives and deaths of ironworking communities renowned for their spectacular material culture, who lived in modern-day East and North Yorkshire, between the 4th and 1st centuries BC. It evaluates settlement and funerary evidence, analyses farming and craftwork, and explores what some of their ideas and beliefs might have been. It situates this regional material within the broader context of Iron Age Britain, Ireland and the near Continent, and considers what manner of society this was. In order to do this it makes use of theoretical ideas on personhood, and relationships with material culture and landscape, arguing that the making of identity always takes work. It is the character, scale and extent of this work (revealed through objects as small as a glass bead, or as big as a cemetery; as local as an earthenware pot or as exotic as coral-decoration) which enables archaeologists to investigate the web of relations which made up their lives, and explore the means of power which distinguished their leaders.
The Oxford Handbook of the European Iron Age presents a broad overview of current understanding of the archaeology of Europe from 1000 BC through to the early historic periods, exploiting the large quantities of new evidence yielded by the upsurge in archaeological research and excavation on this period over the last thirty years. Three introductory chapters situate the reader in the times and the environments of Iron Age Europe. Fourteen regional chapters provide accessible syntheses of developments in different parts of the continent, from Ireland and Spain in the west to the borders with Asia in the east, from Scandinavia in the north to the Mediterranean shores in the south. Twenty-six thematic chapters examine different aspects of Iron Age archaeology in greater depth, from lifeways, economy, and complexity to identity, ritual, and expression. Among the many topics explored are agricultural systems, settlements, landscape monuments, iron smelting and forging, production of textiles, politics, demography, gender, migration, funerary practices, social and religious rituals, coinage and literacy, and art and design.
In Rewriting History, Dennis Harding addresses contemporary concerns about information and its interpretation. His focus is on the archaeology of prehistoric and early historic Britain, and the transformation over two centuries and more in the interpretation of the archaeological heritage by changes in the prevailing political, social, and intellectual climate. Far from being topics of concern only to academics, the way in which seemingly innocuous issues such as cultural diffusion or social reconstruction in the remote past are studied and presented reflects important shifts in contemporary thinking that challenge long-accepted conventions of free speech and debate. Some issues are highly controversial, such as the proposals for the Stonehenge World Heritage sites. Others challenge long-held popular myths like the deconstruction of the Celts, and by extension the Picts. Some traditional tenets of scholarship have yet remained unchallenged, such as the classical definition of civilization itself. Why should it matter? Are the shifting attitudes of successive generations not symptomatic of healthy and vibrant debate? Are there grounds for believing that current changes are of a more disquieting character, denying the basic assumptions of rational argument and freedom of enquiry that have been the foundation of western scholarship since the Enlightenment? Re-writing History offers Harding's personal evaluation of these issues, which will resonate not only with practitioners and academics of archaeology, but across a wide range of disciplines facing similar concerns.