- The Technology of Metalwork -
trading port of Hengistbury Head the metallurgy was more specialized and, besides
the casting of bronze objects, much of the metallurgy appears to have been involved
with silver and, perhaps, the coinage of the Durotriges. The production of the cast
bronze (potin) and struck copper coinages must also have taken place at a number of
sites in Britain but none have so far been identified. The oppidum of the Detliberg
near Zurich in Switzerland has, however, produced extensive debris from the casting
of potin coins (Northover 1992). We still have to locate workshops used for
such items as sword scabbards, which would have involved both cast and sheet
components, and brooches, although brooch blanks have been found at Baldock,
Hertfordshire (Stead and Rigby 1986), and deposits of Roman brooch moulds have
come from Prestatyn in North Wales (Blockley 1989) and Compton Dando, Somerset
(Bayley pers. comm.).
TECHNIQUES AND TYPES: CAST
AND WROUGHT PRODUCTSLate bronze age bronzework in Britain is almost always cast close to its final shape
and finished with a minimum of working. For a socketed axe this might simply mean
removal of flash and sprue and then cold-working and annealing cycles applied to
the cutting edge. For mass-produced items the annealing might be carried out at a
low temperature and the area worked be very limited. The castings for ornaments
and weapons might be cleaned up in the same way but in many cases finishing might
consist entirely of grinding and polishing. The only important exceptions in the
British Bronze Age to this casting-dominated technology were the cauldrons and
shields (Gerloff 1991; Coles 1962) with their large-scale use of sheet bronze. The
shields always show exemplary skill in handling this material but the cauldrons
are much more mundane until the Llyn Fawr period when they became both more
elaborate and finished to a much higher standard (see the introduction to this chapter
discussing the Late Bronze Age). Indeed the general quality of all metalwork
improved greatly at this time.
In the Hallstatt Iron Age in Britain, and elsewhere in Europe, the separation of
bronzes into cast and wrought products intensified and wrought products increased
in importance. As shown on page 5, the achievements of the sheet metalsmiths
supported by the Hallstatt princes could be spectacular, for example the bronze
couch and cauldron from the H9chdorf tomb, showing how they could produce
large and durable structures in gold. There is nothing on this scale in Britain and even
the cauldrons become simplified (Gerloff 1991; Meany 1990), but even so there are
some striking items such as the dagger sheaths from the Thames Gope 1983). Pins
and the first fibulae in Britain also point the way to the ascendancy of wrought or
part-wrought products.
The introduction of La Tene styles to the British Isles made a revolution in
bronzeworking. Apart, possibly, from highly specialized objects like the handle
fittings of some cauldrons, there is no evidence for the use of cire perdu casting
at any earlier date. Even a find such as the eleventh/tenth century Be hoard from
Isleham, Cambridgeshire, with its host of thin-walled scabbard chapes, parade