Aylesford urn burial ground

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Detail of the bronze bucket
dig

The urn field of Aylesford in the county of Kent (in England ) was discovered in the 1880s and in 1890 by Arthur Evans excavated. It dates from the 1st century BC. Chr.

The graves date to the pre-Roman Iron Age between 75 and 25 BC. Chr. And contained except urns and brooches , as well as buckets or tubs of wooden staves with metal fittings. A bucket carried bronze heads (cast bronze) on both sides of the handle attachments. The bronze sheet metal hoops show driven horses and faces, but also spiral motifs and so-called yin and yang patterns. A bronze jug and ladle come from the same grave from which the bucket came. The pieces were imported from central Italy . Apparently the bucket was used to mix wine and water.

Vessels made on a potter's wheel with a slightly exposed pedestal are typical of the Aylesford-Swarling culture of the immigrant Celtic Belgians (Latin Belgae). A few decades before, but even more so after the subjugation of Gaul by Julius Caesar (50 BC), Belgian tribes emigrated to Britain , which was already inhabited by Celts , where archaeological traces e.g. B. left behind by the introduction of the potter's wheel, coinage and some oppida . Venta Belgarum (Winchester), Calleva (Silchester), Camulodunum (Colchester) and Verulamium (near St. Albans) were the first cities on the island.

At the end of the Roman Iron Age there are a number of rich burials (Snailwell in East Cambridgeshire , Welwyn in Hertfordshire and the Tumulus of Lexden in Essex ).

See also

literature

  • Arthur John Evans : On a Late-Celtic Urn-Field at Aylesford, Kent, and on the Gaulish, Illyro-Italic, and Classical Connexions of the Forms of Pottery and Bronze-work there discovered , in: Archeologia , Vol. 52 (1890 ), No. 2, pp. 315-388. doi : 10.1017 / S0261340900007591
  • Glyn Daniel (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Archeology. Nikol, Hamburg 1996, ISBN 3-930656-37-X .
  • RJ Pollard: The Roman Pottery of Kent. Kent Archaeological Society, Maidstone 1988, ISBN 0-906746-12-4 ( Monograph Series of the Kent Archeological Society 5).

Coordinates: 51 ° 18 ′ 26 "  N , 0 ° 28 ′ 42"  E