http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3452
The traditional image is of backward, hostile, bluepainted hordes led by a http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3405. Unlike the Celtic sophisticates of the South East, with their wheel-thrown tablewares and imported wines, the Norfolk Iceni were rural primitives. Or were they? Megan Dennis, specialist min Late Iron Age metalwork, pays tribute to the high culture of Boudica’s people.
The Iceni are famous for two things – Boudica and gold. Little else is known of this society that existed in the shadowlands between the Iron Age and the Roman periods in http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=429, and northeast Cambridgeshire.
http://wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3415 evidence seems to suggest they were bumbling and backward compared to their southern neighbours. They lived in uniform agricultural communities. Their settlements were unenclosed. Their way of life was simple.
This picture is one sided. New research on Iron Age East Anglia has revealed evidence for a complex society, fascinating politics, and above all a lively and fast-changing relationship with near neighbours, with the Continent, and with Rome. Past interpretations of the Iceni were based on the evidence of occasional Roman writings and limited archaeology. The Romans wrote very little about the Iceni. Julius Caesar described them as the Cenimagni or ‘Great Iceni’. Most Roman writing about them, of course, concerns their most famous ruler: Boudica.‘In stature she was very tall,’ says Dio Cassius, in a passage designed to chill his readers’ spines, ‘in appearance most terrifying, in the glance of her eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh. A great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips. Around her neck was a large golden necklace. And she wore a tunic of divers colours over which a thick mantle was fastened with a brooch.’ This short description is the only evidence we have for the physical appearance of the woman who has coloured the interpreation of the Iceni since they were first discussed by the antiquarian William Camden in 1586.
But what about everyone else? For information about the Iceni as a whole we depend entirely on archaeology. Certainly the pottery was basic. Made from local clays and formed by hand without using a wheel, it is neither pretty nor technologically advanced. Nor did the Iceni build grand monuments like the hillforts known in other parts of Britain. Archaeologists have argued, therefore, that the Iceni were marginal – unimportant in the bigger picture and pretty backward in terms of technology and social development. When the Romans appeared on the scene, it seems, the simpleminded Iceni were first gulled into a political contract with them, then got shafted, and in response exploded into a furious rebellion under Boudica.
But if the Iceni were so backward, so removed from trade routes and contact, where did they get the raw materials for their beautiful objects? What the Iceni were good at was working gold and silver into torcs, brooches, bracelets, and coins. But where was the raw material coming from? And how did the Iceni get the knowledge and skills to work precious metals into such beautiful artefacts?
Gold had been in use for thousands of years and is likely to have been recycled from earlier objects. But the Iceni made East Anglia’s first ever silver artefacts. There are no silver deposits in the region and the metal must therefore have been imported. To understand where the Iceni’s silver came from we need to look closely at the objects themselves.
One of the most common types of silver objects made and used by the Iceni was the torc. These large rings were worn around the neck like a type of rigid necklace. They were made in all sorts of different designs – from a very simple type made from a few twisted bars of silver with the ends looped round to form terminals, to a much more ornate item made from many twisted wires and with elaborate terminals decorated with graceful, swooping designs.
The Iceni also made a series of silver coins depicting different animals and people important to their society. You can see faces, horses, boars, and more abstract patterns on Icenian coins. Some even have writing on them – the first writing in Britain. We are not sure what all the words mean, but we can identify a few of the references. ECEN, for example, denotes the Iceni, and RI PRASTO must be King Prasutagus, the client-king who was Boudica’s husband, and whose death precipitated the events leading to rebellion. These coins are tiny – only a centimetre across. The ability to create this beautiful art in such small spaces must not be underestimated.
The Iceni also created silver pins, bracelets, brooches, and religious items. They used silver as decoration on everyday objects like brooches to make them look posher. So we know that their silversmiths were manufacturing a wide range of often highly accomplished and elaborately decorated artefacts. And we know that this had never happened before in East Anglia. So where was the silver coming from?
To answer this question we can look at the metallic ‘recipes’ the Iceni used in their silver. Most silver objects are not pure silver they are a mixture of silver, copper, and sometimes other metals. By identifying exactly what recipes the Iceni were using we might get closer to finding out where the silver was from. We can work out what ingredients are used in a silver coin or torc by using an electron microprobe. This instrument is really quite simple. It fires small particles (electrons) at a metallic object. These electrons interact with the silver and copper atoms in the object and excite them. The excited electrons have extra energy which they need to get rid of. They do this by emitting X-rays. The silver atoms emit a different type of X-ray from that of the copper atoms. By measuring the number of different types of X-rays thrown back from the object we can work out how much silver and other metals it contains.
After analysing over 100 Icenian silver objects and comparing the results with those of other scientists working on other material from elsewhere, we discover that late prehistoric silver objects tend to contain less silver the later in date they are. The original silver used by the Iceni was impure, and there seems little doubt that it was recycled. Then the Icenian silversmiths discovered for themselves that they could dilute the metal by adding copper. So far so good. But where was the source of the silver used in the earliest Icenian artefacts?
http://www.archaeology.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1579&Itemid=26