This new book explores the purpose of decorative practices in Middle and Late Iron Age Britain, moving beyond traditional approaches to Early Celtic Art to consider what these decorative objects did. To investigate what pattern does, fundamentally means viewing it not as passive decoration nor as having abstract, symbolic meaning, but instead requires us to examine complex human and material lives, and the active ways in which objects affect people. Helen Chittock’s book does this in two main parts: a quantitative analysis of some 4,600 objects from 30 Middle to Late Iron Age sites in East Yorkshire, and a more in-depth analysis of 145 of these objects, covering material, design (or style), depositional context, and the highly interesting phenomena of use, wear, damage, and repair.
Data are derived from a range of sources and presented in Chapters 5 and 6, which are complex and detailed, as one would expect from a piece of doctoral work (which this book stems from). They are explained well and generally presented clearly (although some images and graphs have lost clarity in the printing process). As the in-depth focus on specific objects develops (Chapter 7), the clarity of examples and detail improves, very much supporting the author’s many and complex findings.
The ways in which decoration was useful for an object in fulfilling its purpose in a particular context is especially interesting. For example, the evidence suggests that decorative metal objects in funerary practices were not simply used as indicators of elite status. Instead, objects of a range of material types appear to have been placed in graves based on their intertwined relationships with human actors (including, but not necessarily limited to, the deceased). The purpose of decorated objects has therefore been considered in relation to the varied roles that an object had over its life-span, as well as in its intentional deposition, and not solely in terms of practical everyday function or decorative intricacy.
Analysing ancestry and ancient agriculture