Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar

by T. Rice Holmes

Fig. 41.

Pedestalled vases were not the only pottery found at Aylesford and the analogous sites. There were others, bowl-shaped or with low globular bodies, some of which were also cordoned, while a few had the triangular decoration characteristic of the Bronze Age.

Domestic vessels of wholly different forms have also been recovered, some with handles on either side, and perforated bases, which were perhaps used for draining honey-combs, and others which are more easily recognized as Late Celtic by their flamboyant decoration. A fragment of this ware was taken from the same cavern near Torquay which had been used as a dwelling-place in palaeolithic times. Household pottery was still commonly made by hand; and while some specimens were without any ornament, others had rectilinear patterns of such a kind that, but for the associations in which they were found, they would have been referred unhesitatingly to the Age of Bronze.[1010]

The noblest creation of Late Celtic art.

If archaeologists were invited to name the noblest creation of Late Celtic art, I think that with one consent they would point to the bronze shield which was lost in the Thames, and found after it had lain there some nineteen hundred years. Oblong with rounded ends and gently contracted in the middle, the outline forming an endless curve, it is adorned with three successive circles of repoussé work, a large central one and two smaller, connected by sinuous lines, within which lesser circles are contained. The central piece of each greater circle is a boss enclosing enamelled swastika designs and surrounded by curves, S-shaped and C-shaped, which begin and end with the same mysterious device. Yet, though the beauty of form remains, the glory of colouring is gone; and one can only now imagine how, when the shield hung upon the forgotten warrior’s arm, gleaming bronze and raised curves and red enamel combined to produce their due effect. Like Stonehenge this was the work of a master: not one detail could be altered, or removed, or added without impairing its perfection.[1011]

Fig. 42. ⅕

Imported objects of art.

Among the products of Late Celtic art that have been found in Britain are some of foreign manufacture, which testify to the increased commercial activity that followed the Belgic invasion. Besides the bronze-mounted bucket, already mentioned, the Aylesford cemetery yielded a bronze flagon, which had been made in Northern Italy:[1012] an elegant Graeco-Italian two-handled cup of black glazed earthenware with white foliated ornament encircling its inner margin was discovered in the rick-yard of the Manor Farm at Dorchester in Oxfordshire;[1013] while the Marlborough bucket is adorned with figures of sea-horses which are common on Gallic coins of the neighbourhood of Rennes, and which warrant the conjecture that it was imported from North-Western Gaul,[1014] perhaps in one of the vessels that plied between the Loire and Ictis. What else besides tin the Britons in the days of their independence exported in return for such articles we do not know; but in a later chapter we shall see that a long list of their exports and imports was compiled by Strabo.[1015] The carrying-trade was for the most part in the hands of Gallic ship-owners; but some cargoes were perhaps loaded in British bottoms. The British envoys who presented themselves in Caesar’s camp in 55 B.C. may indeed have crossed the Channel in a Gallic merchantman, and so may the hostages who were sent to him after his first invasion of Britain; but it is unlikely that the maritime Belgic tribes, who must British ships and coracles. have set out from Gaul in ships of their own, built none after they had settled in Britain, or that the numerous British adventurers who reinforced Caesar’s Gallic enemies depended for their transport upon the latter. The only British vessels, however, which are expressly mentioned by our authorities were light coracles of lath covered with hides, which Caesar observed when he was in Kent and afterwards copied when he was fighting in Spain against Pompey’s lieutenants,[1016] and which are still used by Irish fishermen off the coast of Connaught.[1017] These boats were doubtless employed in coastal navigation and on inland waterways; but much of the intertribal traffic must have been carried on along trackways, Trackways. which are still traceable, and the prehistoric antiquity of which is proved by their association with hill-forts. Most of them, like the Pilgrim’s Way, which is known to all who have tramped the high grounds of Surrey and Kent, ran along ridges or the slopes of downs which were generally unencumbered by forest or morass. If their origin could be traced, we should find that they were formed by the earliest settlers who felt the need of communication, along the lines of least resistance which nomadic hunters had followed when they passed from one temporary settlement to another;[1018] and doubtless attempts were made to render them more suitable for wheeled traction when the Cornish miners began to convey their tin in wagons to the coast, and the invaders of the Iron Age brought their chariots from Gaul. Even then, however, wheel-less vehicles, like those which Sir Arthur Mitchell noticed a few years ago in Strathglass and Kintail, must have been used for carting timber down steep hills or over heaths where no wheeled carriage could have moved.[1019]