A Panel of Celtic Ornament from Elmswell, East Yorkshire

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The work of art here to be published was found in the excavations of 1938 at Elmswell, about two miles west of Driffield in the East Riding of Yorkshire (6-in. O.S. Yorks. E.R. CLXISE.). These excavations, following on those carried out by our Fellow Mr. A. L. Congreve from 1935 to 1937; have shown the site to be that of a native settlement of the Parisi, occupied—probably continuously—at least from Flavian times until the end of the Roman period, and again in pagan Saxon times. Of the pre-Roman Iron Age nothing has yet come to light beyond two British coins, one of the Iceni (c. A.D. 25) and one possibly of Cunobelin, but the site is separated by little more than the line of the Driffield—Malton railway from the Eastburn area where, in building operations in 1938, as many as seventy-five Iron Age graves were discovered even in the relatively small plots of ground excavated. These contained the remains of flexed inhumation-burials, each originally covered by a small barrow, exactly as in the well-known Danes' Graves and Arras cemeteries; and the date within the three centuries directly preceding the Roman Conquest was confirmed by several finds of grave-goods, notably an iron sword of La Tène type, bronze ornaments, an ‘involuted’ brooch, and several vessels of pottery. Further, in another part of the same site, Parisian pottery of Roman age was found, the earliest of which agrees exactly with the earliest from Elmswell. There can in fact be little doubt that this whole area was an important centre of settlement in the east Yorkshire equivalent of La Tène times, where ‘the Iron Age B’ culture of the Parisi passed directly into the romanization that was introduced at the Flavian conquest of the early seventies A.D.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: