Esoteric Knowledge? Ancient Bronze Artefacts from Iron Age Contexts

摘要

This paper explores the ways in which Bronze Age bronze artefacts may, on occasions, have been used in thecommemoration of place during the southern British Iron Age. The chronologically-based typological systemsadopted by archaeologists indicate that these artefacts occur out of their time as they were already severalcenturies old when they were buried, but it should not be supposed that Iron Age societies necessarily viewedthese items entirely in terms of a linear sequence of time. While broadly similar in form and material to itemsin the cultural repertoire of contemporary society, the bronzes were also quite distinct in the particular formsthat they adopted. That these items often appear to have been deposited at sites with a pre-existingmonumentality may suggest that objects and places were felt to share 'otherworldliness'. These items and placesmay have been used to construct esoteric knowledge through reference to spirits but it is also likely thatparticular acts of curation and deposition created genealogical associations, incorporating ideas of the mythicalpast into the context of the present. Drawing on the evidence for the form and contexts of depositions of theseobjects, this paper addresses the connected topics of what Iron Age society did to objects and sites derived fromits own past and what we, in turn, do to (and can do with) the information derived from the Iron Age.