Arras culture

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The Arras culture is an archaeological culture of the Middle and Younger Iron Age , ie the 4th – 2nd centuries. Century BC It is mostly restricted to the East Riding of Yorkshire in north-east England , from Holderness in the south-east to the central Vale of York in the north from the Vale of Pickering to the southern edge of the North York Moors . Another related chariot grave is from Newbridge , Scotland, with Ferry Fryston's grave in the West Riding . The culture is named after a burial ground discovered in the early 19th century at Arras Farm, six kilometers east of Market Weighton , which contained around 100 graves.

Arras culture horse gag from the King's Barrow, Arras Farm, Yorkshire

funeral

The first graves were dug as early as 1721. The Dane's Graves were examined by Greenwell and Mortimer in 1897/98 . The largest burial ground, in Wetwang Slack , contains over 450 graves and dates between 300 and 150 BC. It extends to the municipality of the adjacent Garton Slack . It was excavated between the late 1960s through the 1980s by TCM Brewster and John Dent as it was threatened with gravel mining. Many of the typical quadrangular moat burials have been identified on aerial photographs . Cemeteries are much better known than settlements. The cemeteries are mainly located near watercourses and often border walls . The number of graves is between a few dozen and 400. The dead were mostly buried as stools, with their heads facing north or north-west. Long burials are only found in Rudston. Pig parts are often found in the wagon graves as gifts. Men's graves sometimes contain weapons, including swords, sword scabbard fittings, lance tips and shield bosses. Stead identified them as "warrior graves". Some of the buried were apparently pelted with spears and buried in this way (Garton Station 10, Pocklington). The burial customs are partly different from other regions of England. There are large fields of body graves, while the rest of the practice in England has been pit burials, excarnation or cremation. The mostly rectangular trenches bordered and covered with a hill, tombs of the early Arras culture are reminiscent of findings in the Paris basin. The earliest findings date from the late 5th century, when this custom also appeared in the La-Tène culture. Later graves have a deeper pit, but are usually much smaller. Over 20 wagon graves , e.g. B. from Garton Slack, Ferrybridge , Garton Station and Kirkburn and three from Wetwang Slack are unusual in England. The carriages were mostly taken apart for the funeral, only Ferry Fryston's car was completely enclosed. Both men and women were buried in or under wagons, often on wheels. Usually relatively young people were buried in this way. A yoke or harness indicates the position of the horses, but they were not buried, except in the Kings' Barrow in the Arras burial ground. The axles of the wagons usually point north. One may have been buried upside down. Some of the chariot graves have a circular enclosure with the entrance facing west. The funeral customs are very similar to those in Champagne . However, the pottery is handmade and undecorated, as in the rest of Britain. The resemblance was made about 300 BC. Migration from Gaul to East England was declared. It corresponds to the "Eastern Second B" in Hawkes' detailed scheme.

Burial grounds

  • Arras farm
  • Burton Fleming
  • Cowlam
  • Dane's Graves
  • Garton Station
  • Kirkburn
  • Rudstone
  • Wetwang Slack / Garton Slack

Way of settlement

The settlements are concentrated in the valleys of the Wolds |. In Wetwang Slack, a settlement with around 100 traditional British round houses and four-pillar stores has been excavated. In Gaul, on the other hand, rectangular houses were inhabited at that time. Enclosures are known from Bell Slack (Burton Fleming) and Blealands Nook (Fimber and Wetwang), which were probably used for livestock farming. Animal burials have been documented in Blealands Nook, and in the Wetwang Slack cemetery two complete cattle were buried in graves identical to those of humans. In contrast to the south of the island, heights are unknown. The Δ N values ​​also indicate a high proportion of meat in the diet. No significant dietary differences were found between those buried in the wagon graves and the rest of the population. The individuals with animals in the graves also did not deviate significantly from the average. Linear earthworks like Paddock Hill are interpreted as border walls.

origin

The Parisii , a Celtic tribe who inhabited the area at the turn of the times, were interpreted as the descendants of an immigrant Celtic upper class with contacts to the La Tène culture in northern Gaul and Belgium . This idea was also based on the Parisii in Britain with the capital Petuaria , first handed down from Ptolemy , whose name is similar to that of the Parisii of Caesar's time in the Seine valley. However, it is now believed more likely that Gallic mores were adopted by a foreign elite with little population movement, by locals who imitated a continental practice in order to increase their prestige. An isotope study by Janet Mongomery of Durham University showed that all skeletons examined have local signatures.

literature

  • John S. Dent 1982, Cemeteries and settlement Patterns of the Iron Age on the Yorkshire Wolds. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 48, 1982, 437-457.
  • Mandy Jay, Janet Montgomery, Olaf Nehlich, Jacqueline Towers, Jane Evans 2013, British Iron Age chariot Burials of the Arras Culture: a multi-isotope Approach to investigating mobility Levels and subsistence Practices. World Archeology 45/3, 2013, 473-491. doi : 10.1080 / 00438243.2013.820647
  • Jay, Mandy, Richards, MP 2006, Diet in the Iron Age cemetery Population at Wetwang Slack, East Yorkshire, UK: Carbon and Nitrogen Stable Isotope Evidence. Journal of Archaeological Science 33, 653-662.
  • Ian Mathieson Stead: The Arras culture. Yorkshire Philosophical Society, York 1979. ISBN 9780902357037 .
  • Ian Mathieson Stead: Iron Age Cemeteries in East Yorkshire . English Heritage, London 1991 ( digitized version ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jay, M., Haselgrove, Colin, Hamilton, D., Hill, JD, Dent, John S. 2012. Chariots and Context: New Radiocarbon Dates from Wetwang and the Chronology of Iron Age Burials and Brooches in East Yorkshire. Oxford Journal of Archeology 31, 161-189
  2. ↑ Carter, S., Hunter, F., Smith, A. 2010. A 5th Century BC Iron Age Chariot Burial from Newbridge, Edinburgh. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 76, 31-74
  3. ↑ Mandy Jay, Janet Montgomery, Olaf Nehlich, Jacqueline Towers, Jane Evans 2013. British Iron Age chariot burials of the Arras culture: a multi-isotope approach to investigating mobility levels and subsistence practices. World Archeology 45/3, 2013, 473
  4. ^ William Greenwell 1877, British Barrows, a Record of the Examination of sepulchral Mounds in various parts of England, together with description of figures of Skulls, general remarks on prehistoric Crania, and an Appendix by G. Rolleston . Oxford, Clarendon
  5. ^ JS Dent, 1983. A summary of the excavations carried out in Garton Slack and Wetwang Slack, 1964-80. East Riding Archaeologist 7, 1-14
  6. ^ HG Ramm 1973. Aerial reconnaissance and interpretation. Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 45, 208-210.
  7. ↑ Mike Parker Pearson 1991, Food sex and Death: Cosmologies in the British Iron Age with particular Reference to East Yorkshire. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9/1, 51f
  8. ^ Dennis W. Harding, The Iron Age in Northern Britain. London, Routledge 2017 2 , 34
  9. ↑ Mike Parker Pearson 1991, Food sex and Death: Cosmologies in the British Iron Age with particular Reference to East Yorkshire. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9/1, 54
  10. ^ Dennis W. Harding, The Iron Age in Northern Britain. London, Routledge 2017 2 , 39
  11. ↑ Mike Parker Pearson 1991, Food sex and Death: Cosmologies in the British Iron Age with particular Reference to East Yorkshire. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9/1, 51
  12. ^ John S. Dent 1982, Cemeteries and settlement Patterns of the Iron Age on the Yorkshire Wolds. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 48, 1982, 446.
  13. ^ Dennis W. Harding, The Iron Age in Northern Britain. London, Routledge 2017 2 , 36
  14. ↑ Mike Parker Pearson 1991, Food sex and Death: Cosmologies in the British Iron Age with particular Reference to East Yorkshire. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9/1, 56, doi : 10.1017 / S0959774300015201
  15. ^ Ian Stead: Iron Age Cemeteries in East Yorkshire . English Heritage, London 1991, fig. 48b
  16. ↑ Mike Parker Pearson 1991, Food sex and Death: Cosmologies in the British Iron Age with particular Reference to East Yorkshire. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9/1, 56
  17. ^ Christopher Hawkes , The ABC of the British Iron Age. Antiquity 33 (No. 131), 1959, 170-182
  18. ^ Christopher Hawkes, The ABC of the British Iron Age. Antiquity 33 (No. 131), 1959, 181
  19. ^ John S. Dent, The Impact of Roman Rule on native Society in the Territory of the Parisi. Britannia 14, 1983, 35, JSTOR 526339
  20. ^ John S. Dent, The Impact of Roman Rule on native Society in the Territory of the Parisi. Britannia 14, 1983, 36, JSTOR 526339
  21. ^ John S. Dent, The Impact of Roman Rule on native Society in the Territory of the Parisi. Britannia 14, 1983, 37, JSTOR 526339
  22. ^ John Robert Mortimer, Forty Years' Researches in British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire, including Romano-British discoveries, and a description of the ancient Entrenchments on a Section of the Yorkshire Wolds . London, A. Brown & Sons 1905, 197f, figs. 489, 492
  23. ↑ Mike Parker Pearson 1991, Food sex and Death: Cosmologies in the British Iron Age with particular Reference to East Yorkshire. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9/1, 53
  24. ^ John S. Dent, The Impact of Roman Rule on native Society in the Territory of the Parisi. Britannia 14, 1983, 36, JSTOR 526339
  25. ↑ Jay, Mandy, Richards, MP 2006, Diet in the Iron Age cemetery Population at Wetwang Slack, East Yorkshire, UK: Carbon and Nitrogen Stable Isotope Evidence. Journal of Archaeological Science 33, 653-662
  26. ^ Dennis W. Harding, The Iron Age in Northern Britain . London, Routledge 2017 2 , 41
  27. ↑ Colin Haselgrove, The Iron Age. In: Ian Ralston (Ed.), The Archeology of Britain: An Introduction. From the Upper Palaeolithic to the Industrial Revolution, London, Routledge 1999, 113-134
  28. ↑ https://www.dur.ac.uk/archaeology/staff/?mode=pdetail&id=9150&sid=9150&pdetail=86599