Welsh Journals

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Early Iron Age Discovery Life in Anglesey 2,000 Years Ago History from Relics By Sir CYRIL FOX, F.B.A. A COLLECTION consisting of some 90 objects of bronze and iron which touches life and art in Celtic antiquity at more points than any deposit hitherto found in Wales was discovered in 1943 a few miles from Holyhead, Anglesey. It has now become the property of the National Museum of Wales at Cardiff, the principal donor being Mr. Evan R. Hughes, of Holyhead. The collection includes weapons-fragmentary swords and daggers and spears; indestructible elements of vehicles-iron tyres, nave- hoops, bollard and linch-pins and of harness-terrets, loop and numerous bridle-bits things of social and economic interest-gang- chains for captives, currency bars, sickle, and fragmentary cauldron (or waterclock) of ceremonial interest-the central portion of a bronze trumpet, a wand of ash-wood decorated with spiral bronze ribbon personalia-the bronze mounts of a wooden casket. All the objects were found in peat many were deeply stained with vivianite, being associated with animal bones-of horse, ox, pig, sheep, and dog. The limiting dates of the objects comprising the deposit, provision- ally assigned, are 100 B.C. A.D. 50. Thus it covers the most brilliant phase of prehistoric Celtic civilization in Britain. Some of the objects, the fragment of a trumpet, one bronze horse-bit, and possibly one iron spear-a terrible weapon with a 2ft. blade-are of Irish origin. They reveal, for the first time, that export of metal-work of the finest quality, a feature of the Bronze Age and the Bronze-Iron Transition, continued (on a reduced scale) into this later period. The majority of the finds, however, are Lowland British work of craftsmen working in*the.Marnian (Iron Age B) tradition of the Belgic (Iron Age C). The bridle-bits, presenting a striking variety of types and techniques, illustrate the nature of the whole assemblage more clearly than any other single group. We are studying, not a creative centre of art or craftsmanship in Anglesey, but the range of acquisitions possible to a wealthy family or dynasty of chieftains, at a focal point in the Highland zone of Britain, accessible to travellers and traders from all parts, by sea or by land. Repair work on one bridle-bit, an unwelded iron link, shows indeed that the blacksmith, whom we may fairly assume to have