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Currency Bars and Water-Clocks: The Verdicts of Archaeology Reviewed

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

E. Wyndham Hulme
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Extract

I was first led to question the soundness of ‘the Iron Currency Bar’ theory when investigating the early history of iron-making in the Forest of Dean—the district from which it is generally accepted that these bars emanated. If the ‘Currency Bar’ theory is wellfounded, the inference is unavoidable that the Celtic tribes who used this form of currency were a race endowed with a very low mentalitybut this inference is not supported by recent archaeological research.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 7 , Issue 25 , March 1933 , pp. 61 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1933

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References

1 FromBritish Museum Guide to Early Iron Age Antiquities, 2nd ed., 1925, p. 165, where illustrations of bars of 1, 2, and 4 units are given.Google Scholar

2 Proc. Soc. Antiq. Ser. 2, 20, 1905, p. 185.Google Scholar

3 Ibid. p. 190.

4 Proc. Soc. Antiq. Ser. 2, 27, 1914–15, p. 108 Google Scholar

5 Les Helvètes à La Tène, p. 35.

6 Quoted by Mr Reginald Smith. Proc. Soc. Antiq. Ser. 2, 20, 1905, p. 108.Google Scholar

7 I have translated áρϒòν as ‘unworked’ on the ground that iron is never described as ‘bright’ in Greek writings. Its usual attribute is ‘black’, ‘gray’ or ‘violet’. The description, however, ‘bright or glittering’ would not be altogether inappropriate if applied to meteoric iron.

8 ‘utuntur aut aere aut nummo aureo aut aliis ferreis ad certum pondus examinatis pro nummo’.

Aureo, aeneo

aliis α and 2 MSS of β, taleis 2 MSS of β,

anulis I MS of α, pro nummo α, omitted by β.

(Signed) A.E.H., 3 Nov. 1932.

9 Proc. Soc. Antiq., Ser. 2, 27, 1914–15, pp. 76–95;Google Scholar British Museum Guide to the Early Iron Age, 2nd ed., 1925, pp. 162–4.Google Scholar

10 The Celt,the Roman and the Saxon, 6th ed., p.403.

11 Man. d’Arch. 3, p. 265.Google Scholar

12 Nihlén, J. Studier rorände äldre svensk järntillverkning, etc. (Stockholm, 1932).Google Scholar

An English translation of this important work is greatly to be desired.

13 Jour. Royal Asiatic Society, 1915, pp. 213–30.Google Scholar

14 op. cit. (in text, p. 62), p. 218.Google Scholar

15 Trans. Worcs. Naturalists’ Club, 1918–22, pp. 103–4.Google Scholar

16 op. cit., p. 207.Google Scholar