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Irish Gold Crescents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

Extract

Since their first publication in 1757 (Archaeologia, ii, 32, pl. ii), the gold crescents characteristic of the Early Bronze Age of Ireland have remained in part unexplained; and the various names suggested for them reflect the prevailing uncertainty as to their use and significance. In his recently published Catalogue of Irish Gold Ornaments, our Fellow Mr. Armstrong has brought together all the existing material, and on consideration adopts the view that these gold crescents were worn as collars. They at first went under the name of lunulae or little moons, and a favourite term in later years has been lunette, which is generally used in French for ‘telescope’, and though more manageable than lunula, is not so fitted for international use as ‘crescent’.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1921

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References

page 132 note 1 Editor of the Saturday Review, with a residence at Tintagel, Cornwall: he was buried in the churchyard there in 1868.

page 134 note 1 Revue Celtique, 1900, 95–7, 166–75; cf. 1892, 194, for his view that Druidism was pre-Celtic.

page 134 note 2 Journal des Savants (Bordeaux), 1911, 153.Google Scholar

page 135 note 1 Discussed in Dr.Schenk's, A.La Sulsse préhistorique (1912), 324Google Scholar, with references. See also Déchelette, in Revue archéologique, 1908, 301Google Scholar, and his Manuel, ii, 472; and illustrations in Keller's, Lake-dwellings, pl. xxxviiGoogle Scholar, lxxx, lxxxi, xc, and cxlv.

page 136 note 1 A jadeite pendant of similar form, from La Buisse, Isère, is figured in de Mortillet's Musée préhistorique, 2nd edition, no. 774.

page 137 note 1 Assigned to Early Aeneolithic (B) by Dr.Schulten, , Hispania (1920).Google Scholar

page 138 note 1 Siret, M. Louis (op. cit., pp. 429–38)Google Scholar gives reasons for regarding Druidism as of oriental origin; see also Dr. J. A. MacCulloch's article on Druids in Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.

page 138 note 2 Proc. Soc. Ant., xx, 254; Bath Field Club, 1906.