- Jewellery and Adornment -
this material from Swiss cemeteries. One form of finger-ring is the 'bent' or elbow
ring, characteristic of the Swiss cemeteries but also found in Britain, and there
are other forms such as the meander ring and the wire ring with a knot; plain or
decorated bronze bands are also known. From La Tene II there are also a few intaglio
rings inlaid with glass, amber or stone.
BROOCHES/FIBULAEThe brooch and the safety-pin-Iike fibula are the most widespread personal ornaments
in the Iron Age; their variety and their constructional changes and technological
refinements through time have made them sensitive regional and chronological
indicators, and their large numbers have allowed considerable analysis into various
aspects of production and exchange. In the Hallstatt cemetery itself so-called spectacle
brooches were found in earlier iron age graves, mostly female; there seems to have
been a complete change in type from these to the series of fibulae which start in
Hallstatt D in the western Hallstatt zone with boat and leech types and those with a
serpentiform bow. Furnished with unilateral, short bilateral spring or stop disc, these
types develop and mutate into Certosa, kettledrum, double drum and decorated
foot varieties with genuine and false springs. Some of these are inlaid with coral, and
some with amber, but most are not heavily decorated. Though more than one can be
found in a grave, male or female, they are less obviously paired than in later graves.
They were probably used normally to fasten clothing, though in some graves they
may have been used to secure the shroud, and in Eberdingen-Hochdorf gold serpenti-
form fibulae were used to pin hangings to the wall of the burial chamber. In at least
one grave a small fibula is up by the head, perhaps implying the fastening of a scarf
or shawl.
At the end of the Hallstatt period and at the beginning of the La Tene there
appears a series of fibulae decorated with plastic representations of animals, animal
heads or human faces or masks; these can be highly stylized or quite naturalistic, and
some have coral inlay in the eyes or along the top of the bow. They are normally in
bronze, though there are a few examples in gold.
From the beginning of the La Tene period there is a proliferation in the number
and type of fibulae present both in graves and, increasingly, on settlement sites. In
graves it is possible to see patterns in the way that some types are deposited - for
example, on some skeletons there are pairs of identical fibulae, occasionally linked
with a bronze chain, on the shoulders, suggesting a particular form of clothing or
style of display. It has been suggested that these may represent married women,
though subsequent identification of some of the skeletons as probably male has
introduced difficulties, as discussed above.
Very widespread is the fibula with bilateral spring and returned foot, which may
be decorated with plastic or profiled ornament or with a disc, inlaid with coral or, for
a short period in La Tene I, with the same red opaque glass as seen on disc torques and
disc bracelets. The disc may be fairly small, up to I cm diameter, inlaid with a single
piece of coral or red glass, or a disc made up of three or four pieces; or it may be large,
up to 3 cm across, filled with a number of highly decorated wedge-shaped pieces