Some Somerset hoards and their place in the Bronze Age of Southern Britain

Abstract

Two articles published in recent years have drawn attention to distinctive bronzes which are found concentrated in Somerset. Sir Cyril Fox showed in 1941 that sickles cast with an elongated terminal knob for hafting, or pair of conical knobs, are in England entirely confined to the county; and in 1949 Mrs C. M. Piggott discussed types of bronze ornament also commonly found in Somerset, and often in association with such sickles, though distribution of these extends to other parts of southern England as well. As these authors demonstrated, the sickles and some of the ornaments must alike derive from foreign prototypes. The interest of the Somerset hoards in which they occur lies in their combination of other, peculiarly British, bronzes with these foreign-paralleled types, which may serve to link the developments of British industry with the established chronological sequences of Continental Europe.Somerset hoards of this class are characteristically composed of several types of ornament together with a few bronze implements from a restricted number of forms. Fewer than half the ornaments seem to have been deposited in a pristine condition, and of those damaged some are in fragments. Most often, however, the associated tools are usable, and some (especially sickles) are still untrimmed from the mould.