FUNERARY EQUIPMENT FOR THE LATE IRON AGE ARISTOCRAT

In early December 1967, the progress of a bulldozer digging the course of a road near Baldock in north Hertfordshire was halted by a piece of iron sticking out of the ground. The substantial object in question was a fire-dog, an item of late Iron Age hearth furniture, one of a pair found in the same context. This chance discovery led to the full-scale archaeological excavation of some other exceptional objects and a small quantity of cremated human remains. In full, the grave contained an amphora from Italy that probably once contained wine, a pair of iron fire-dogs, a pair of copper alloy bowls of likely Italian origin, a pair of copper alloy-bound wooden buckets, an iron-rimmed copper alloy cauldron, the remains of a pig, and a brown bear pelt which probably wrapped the body prior to cremation (Fig. 2.1). If the dating of the Dressel 1A amphora is a reliable indicator of the date of the grave, it probably belonged to the first half of the first century BC, pre-dating the campaigns of Julius Caesar in Gaul and Britain – making it the earliest known Mediterranean amphora in a funerary context in Britain. The presence of standardised Mediterranean objects in a grave this early raises many questions. What was the significance of the Italian wine container at Baldock, long before any historically-attested Roman presence in the region, north or south of the Channel? What kind of person was buried in the grave? And what can be inferred from the combinations of objects with the cremated remains?

To shed more light on the questions posed by the richly furnished grave at Baldock, a logical next step is to locate nearby examples or parallels. While Italian wine amphorae are known in Britain in this period, most famously at the port of Hengistbury Head in Dorset, central southern Britain has yet to produce a late Iron Age grave with a wine amphora. Across the Channel however, the situation is rather different, with a plethora of examples to choose from.