Description

Summary: An Iron Age iron involuted bow brooch from Cold Kitchen Hill

Research results

An Iron Age iron involuted bow brooch from Cold Kitchen Hill, Brixton Deverill. Cold Kitchen Hill was excavated by Rev Goddard and Nan Kivell in the 1890s and 1920s respectively, and was the site of a Iron Age settlement and probable Romano-British temple. This brooch is of a middle iron age form, with radiocarbon dates associated with the brooches, mainly from the Yorkshire Wold, suggesting a mid-3rd to early 2nd century BC date range for thier deposition. Involuted brooches appear to have been an insular development that had gone out of fashion by the end of the middle Iron Age, as the form does not reoccur in Late Iron Age or Early Roman brooches.

This brooch was examined by Adams (2013) as part of her PhD with the University of Leicester. This PhD examined an updated corpus of Iron Age Brooches across Britain in order to re-evaluate existing typologies and widely accepted chronology, as well as to investigate potential regional patterns and production. In particular the study highlights that direct dating evidence for most brooches is in fact quite poor, despite them often being used as chronological markers in the period. Reviewing all published radiocarbon dates associated with Iron Age brooches, Adams suggests that brooches were first introduced c. 450 BC, as well as refining the chronology of a number of specific types, although they note that the evidence is scarce.