The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 108 • Timothy Champion
and redistributing bronze metal. Many of these hoards contain items on the periphery of their
known distribution, and these hoards are particularly frequent in marginal locations such as the
lower Thames Estuary. Like the French objects interrupted in transit by the Dover shipwreck, the
items in these hoards may have been assembled for redistribution to another region, their value
being more as a commodity for exchange than in their specific form.
This explanation does not fit every such hoard, nor will it account for all the regional and
chronological patterns of variation in hoard composition. Above all, it does not address the
question of why the hoards were deposited. Some appear to have been deposited within settlements,
but many were not. The hiding of hoards for security at times of unrest or danger is a wellknown
practice, of which a certain proportion were inevitably never found again, and this may
account for at least some of the Later Bronze Age finds. Nevertheless, it does conjure up an
extraordinary picture of a very disturbed period if so many such concealed hoards were never
recovered, and other ideas need to be explored.
Although some items, especially small ones, may have been accidentally lost, and in other
cases people may have been prevented from recovering deliberately concealed objects, we should
perhaps think of the vast majority of bronze finds as the result of deliberate deposition with no
intention of recovery. Whether found singly or in large collections, within settlements or isolated,
in wet places or dry, these objects were deposited as part of a widespread and long-lasting practice
of ritual deposition. Some evidence for association with the abandonment of sites and the disposal
of the dead has been mentioned above, but such acts of deposition may have been part of many
different rituals.
These deposits show considerable regional and chronological variation, but some broad patterns
emerge, especially in the selection of weaponry. In south-eastern Britain, many hoards include
swords with a characteristic long tip (which is responsible for them being named Carp’s Tongue
swords), spearheads and associated items from belt fittings or even a sort of uniform; this set of
equipment is also found in northern and western France. Elsewhere in southern England, spears
are the commonest weapons; in much of the midland region there are hoards containing a typical
form of barbed spearhead, termed the Broadward type; and in the north, hoards are dominated
by swords, particularly of the Ewart Park type.
LATER BRONZE AGE SOCIETY
The changes in economy, technology, material culture and ritual described above all add up to a
major transformation of society in the Later Bronze Age. The ritual monuments and burials that
had formed such an important part of the archaeological record of the Earlier Bronze Age, and
were the prime focus for the playing out of social relationships and claims to authority at that
time, had gone out of use. In their place, new sources of prestige and new social opportunities
are apparent.
The general lack of a regularly recoverable burial rite does not mean that human remains were
disposed of with any less respect, or that such ceremonies were no longer the occasion of elaborate
rituals; it just means that, whatever they did with the dead, we cannot regularly find it (Brück
1995). Deposits in rivers may have been associated with skeletal remains; there is also some
evidence for excarnation and continued use of cremation. Whatever methods of disposal were
adopted, the ancestors no longer played the same central role as before, and new forms of social
activity, with their related material culture, were introduced. Four such themes can be recognized.
The most obvious is the conspicuous consumption of wealth through the ritual deposition of
bronze. Such deposits were an indication of an individual’s status and, in particular, control over