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Home , Badbury Rings, Hand axe

My 70-Year Love Affair

Fig.1. British penannular gold rings, torc type and striped, c.1150-750 BC, 17-21mm, 4.26gm and 7.76gm, ex-Chris Rudd collection, to be sold by DNW. (Image courtesy of Chris Rudd.)

Fig.3. Fragments of Durotrigan earthenware bowl, 16cm, and flagon, 28cm, found by Chris Rudd at Badbury Rings. (Image courtesy of County Museum.)

Fig.4. Four of 15 Durotrigan coins (ABC 2169, 2175) Fig.2. Badbury Rings, Dorset, site of Romano-Celtic temple found by Chris Rudd at Badbury Rings. Illustrated (arrowed), excavated by Chris Rudd, 1952-53, and by Martin by Commander R.P. Mack in the Sylloge of Coins in Papworth, 2000. Probably Vindocladia (‘White Ditches’) of the British Isles (1973), pl. VII, nos. 191-195. (Image Antonine Itinerary and Ravenna Cosmography. (Image courtesy courtesy of Chris Rudd.) of Google Earth.)

n September I’m getting divorced. I’m with her Celtic coin research and with our That’ the problem with collecting old ending my lifelong marriage to ancient publishing projects (three new books due treasures, whether coins or artefacts, and coins and artefacts. On Tuesday 5 to be published within the next year). getting too attached to them, as I’ve usu- September 2017, TimeLine Auctions ally done; it can be painful when you will sell my personal collection of The Very Beginnings have to part with them. antiquities – mostly , My love affair with ancient artefacts As a teenager I decided to become a Bronze Age heads, Iron Age enam- began back in 1947 when I acquired my professional archaeologist. So I studied elled mounts, Celtic terret rings and first Bronze Age axe head, a lovely looped hard, devoured dozens of old excava- Roman brooches, all of British prove- palstave which I got from my friend Alan tion reports, did ‘O’ level archaeology at nance. The following week on Wednesday in Bournemouth in exchange for my col- school (I was one of the first to do so) and 13 September, Dix Noonan Webb will be lection of glass marbles. He thought he’d won a seat at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, auctioning my little collection of Roman got a bargain; I knew I had. It was a to read archaeology and anthropology. coins of British interest, plus a couple of beauty, in immaculate condition with a I also did a lot of digging. I dug at Hod pieces of so-called ‘ring money’ (Fig,1) razor-sharp , just like one Sir John Hill, Dorset, with Sir Ian Richmond. I which I’ve always liked. I must say right Evans bought in Bath. I sold it to Spink in dug at Wroxeter with Dame Kathleen away that neither sale – both to be held in the early 1960s so that I could buy a nice Kenyon and Dr. Graham Webster; I also London – has anything to do with the Nero sestertius which showed the harbour dug with Graham at Chester where he Celtic coin business of Chris Rudd Ltd. As of Ostia on the reverse. That too disap- was curator of the Grosvenor House most readers of Treasure Hunting maga- peared when Mr. French of Glendining’s Museum and was delighted when, some zine know, this is now Liz’s business. I sold my first collection of Roman coins in 40 years later, he subscribed to my Celtic will of course be continuing to help Liz the 1970s to help pay for a costly divorce. coin catalogues. I also conducted my

26 www.treasurehunting.co.uk September 2017 Chris Rudd

Fig.5. model, Natural History Museum, London. British Archaeology Fig.6. British hand magazine reported the Happisburgh finds axe, 12.5cm, found at Kessingland, . As with Treasure Hunting magazine, Suffolk, and recorded with Suffolk I never miss an issue. (Image courtesy of Archaeology Unit. Ex-Chris Rudd Council for British Archaeology © Trustees collection. (Image courtesy of Michael of the Natural History Museum.) Healy © TimeLine Auctions.)

Fig.7. Sea-worn British flaked axe, 17cm, from Happisburgh beach, Norfolk, where 49 early footprints and a 500,000 year old were found. Ex-Chris Rudd collection. (Image courtesy of Michael Healy © TimeLine Auctions.)

Fig.8. Colossal British Neolithic polished axe of Langdale greenstone, Cumbria, 27cm, found near Wickham Market, Suffolk, 250 miles away. Ex-Chris Rudd collection. (Image courtesy of Chris Rudd.)

own amateur excavations at Badbury known as Britain, before the last Ice Forest Bed. Some of these deposits are Rings, Dorset, 1952-53, where I discov- Age and while ‘Britain’ was still part of thought to have been laid down either ered traces of a Romano-Celtic temple Europe; in other words, almost a mil- 840,000 or 950,000 years ago, making the (Fig.2) and early Iron Age settlement, lion years before our prehistoric Brexit artefacts recovered from them the earliest plus masses of (Fig.3), animal in c.5900 BC. Some of the earliest signs currently known in Britain, and indeed bones, oyster shells and other minor of human activity in Britain (Fig.5) were northern Europe.” (Current Archaeology artefacts. Also unearthed were 15 Duro- recently discovered on my doorstep at 288, March 2014, p.16.) trigan coins, four of which are shown in Happisburgh (known locally as ‘Haze- More recently, actual footprints of Fig.4 and 85 Roman coins, all deposited bruh’), only a dozen miles from where I some of the earliest recorded Britons with Dorset County Museum. I’d forgot- live in Aylsham, Norfolk. In March 2000 were revealed in the hardened grey mud ten about this early excavation of mine Mike Chambers was walking his dog on of Happisburgh beach. First spotted by until Robert Van Arsdell reminded me the beach at low tide at Happisburgh Martin Bates of AHOB and described of it in 1991 after he’d come across my when he made an amazing discovery: a by Nick Ashton of the report in Dorset County Museum; at that superb Paleolithic black-flint hand axe. in British Archaeology (March April 2014, time Bob was participating every sum- Unlike previous Paleolithic finds of this pp.14-21), these footprints (49 in all) mer in Sir Barry Cunliffe’s excavations kind, Mike Chambers’ hand axe wasn’t have now been washed away. But I man- at , Hampshire. That’s lying loose on the ground; it was half aged to see them for myself and touch what I like about Bob. He’s not an arm- buried in a once-peaty deposit on the them before they eventually disappeared chair academic numismatist; he’s been an beach that was later dated to about half- forever. Imagine feeling the footprints active collector and researcher of Ancient a-million years ago, providing tantalising of human beings who lived in Norfolk British coins and a hands-on, hands-dirty hints that Happisburgh held evidence nearly a million years ago. I found that archaeologist. Which is why his book of early at least as old as Homo a thrilling experience – maybe almost as Celtic Coinage of Britain (Spink 1989) is Heidelbergensis, a tibia and two teeth thrilling as finding your own stone axe such a good one and has stood the test of whom were excavated at a quarry in on Happisburgh beach. No, I haven’t of time, despite the snippy sniping from a Boxgrove, Sussex, 1993-96. found one myself, but I have one in few scholars when it first came out. Chris Stringer, director of the Ancient my collection (Fig.7). It is a large flaked Human Occupation of Britain project axe, brown and sea-worn, Neolithic not Axe Heads and More Axe Heads (AHOB), says: “Since then, a total of Paleolithic, and it was found on Hap- For 70 years I’ve been attracted to British six Paleolithic sites have been identified pisburgh beach, just north of the car stone axes and British Bronze Age axe in the Happisburgh area (Fig.6), pro- park, near to where an older hand axe heads. Their deep antiquity has always ducing flint and butchered animal and flake tools were found (The Searcher, appealed to me. The story of prehistoric bones that push this evidence back fur- October 2014, p.64). My own garden in axes is the story of the first Britons or, to ther still. Dozens of cutting and piercing Aylsham has produced many small early be more accurate, the first people who implements have been found in thick Neolithic flint tools, plus part of a Bronze lived in the land which later became layers of sediment known as the Cromer Age spearhead, about 70 Romano-British

September 2017 www.treasurehunting.co.uk 27 My 70-Year Love Affair

Anatomy of Bronze Age Axe Heads Fig.10. British Midgale type decorated flat axe, c.2200-1950 BC, with ‘rain pattern’, 15.5cm, found Banffshire, Scotland. Ex-Chris Rudd collection, ex-Sir Richard Ground collection. (Image courtesy of Michael Healy © TimeLine Auctions.)

Fig.11. Irish Balbirnie type flanged axe head, c.1750-1550 BC, with ‘triple herringbone’ decoration, 14.5cm, found River Thames, Windsor. Ex-Chris Rudd collection, ex-Sir Richard Ground collection. (Image courtesy of Michael Healy © TimeLine Auctions.) Fig.12. British Primary Fig.9. Above: Sleaford type low-flanged looped Shield palstave axe head, palstave from Bath, 16cm, Evans 77 (like one I c.1400-1000 BC, with got in 1947). Below: Welby type looped socket shield-shape pierced by axe, ex Carlton Rode hoard, Norfolk, 10cm, midrib, 14.5cm. Ex-Chris Evans 132. (Image courtesy of Mr. Swain for Rudd collection, ex-Sir John Evans, The Ancient Bronze Implements, Richard Ground collection. Weapons and Ornaments of and (Image courtesy of Michael Ireland, 1881.) Healy © TimeLine Auctions.)

potsherds, a worn bronze sestertius of Dee in Scotland – that’s over 1,000 miles intended to be used for work. Instead they Septimius Severus, and a small Constan- from Monte Viso. My polished greenstone were symbols, precious objects kept and tinian period bronze coin. axe probably came from the Lake District admired, given names and attributed with I found my first ever Roman coin near in Cumbria, or to be more precise, from the power; passed from hand to hand, from the top of Creech Barrow Hill, Dorset, in barren rocky summit of Harrison Stickle or parent to child and from clan to clan.” (A 1950, the year I joined Numis- Pike O’Stickle, over 2,000 feet above the History of Ancient Britain, Weidenfeld & matic Society. It was a bronze or billon floor of Great Langdale. It would have Nicholson, 2012, p.122.) cent of the short-lived Licinius Junior who taken literally hundreds of hours to polish Even today, after some 5,000 years, I was made Caesar on 1 March, AD 317, the surface of my greenstone axe, grinding feel that there is something very special, and executed by his uncle Constantine it first against some coarse material and something very precious, about my Lang- when he was only eleven. In my opinion, then with progressively finer abrasives dale greenstone axe. I know that sounds this was not the greatest deed of Con- until finally a glass-like smoothness was rather sentimental, but even the most stantine the Great who had espoused achieved. Why go to all this trouble? down-to-earth professional archaeologists Christianity just 12 years earlier. However, Neil Oliver says: “While polishing have made similar emotive comments I digress. Another axe in my collection makes for a more beautiful object, it does about these polished greenstone axes. (Fig.8) that I’m very fond of is a colossal not make a sharper or better axe. Often fin- David Miles, former Chief Archaeologist of Neolithic polished axe, 27cm long, made ished polished stone axes show lines and English Heritage, says: “It is not every day of Langdale greenstone and found some blotches of different colour-veins running that someone brings you a five-thousand- years ago near Wickham Market, Suffolk, through the pieces like lettering through year-old gift. It happened to me in the mid not far from where the Dallinghoo hoard seaside , adding to their allure. Those 1970s when we lived in Woodstock – the of 840 late Iron Age gold staters was dis- features would have been visible in the English Woodstock, near Oxford, which covered in 2008-09 (see my report, King’s uncut block and in the rough-out and has Blenheim Park at the end of its high gold hoard from Suffolk, Treasure Hunting seem always to have inspired the com- street. We were laying the table for dinner magazine, February 2009, pp.16-19). Pol- pletion of the finished axe that contains when there was a knock at the door. A ished greenstone axes were highly prized them. And yet such veins are faults in the man stood there, holding a sports bag. He in Neolithic Britain, probably even more stone and therefore points of weakness. introduced himself as Bob. highly prized than they are by collectors By rights the maker of an axe intended for “I work in the gravel pit at Stanton like myself today. Because they were tre- chopping down trees ought to have dis- Harcourt and a couple of years ago I mendously treasured they often travelled carded such a stone at the very beginning. noticed this thing on the conveyor belt. I huge distances, as mine had. The first blow against something hard heard that you were an archaeologist and For example, polished greenstone axes would likely shatter such an axe along thought that you might be interested?” that had been fashioned from jadeite quar- the fault , so that hundreds of hours He stuck his hand deep into the bag and ried from the massive mountain of Monte work (not to mention a life-threatening pulled out a smooth greenish object. I rec- Viso (12,602 feet high) in the Italian Alps climb up a mountain) would be wasted ognised it with delight: a large, Neolithic have been found in the valley of the River at a stroke. Such items, then, were never polished stone axe head. He passed it to

28 www.treasurehunting.co.uk September 2017 Chris Rudd

Fig.14. British Fig.15. British Fig.13. British Carleton type Welby type Salisbury type looped looped palstave axe head, looped socket axe socket axe head, c.4th-3rd c.1400-1000 BC, with midrib head, c.800-700 BC, decorated century BC, with faceted body, 10cm, bisecting shield motif, 16cm, with short ridges, 10.5cm, found only 102 grams, too light and brittle found Barton-le-Clay, Beds. 2015. Yorkshire. Ex-Chris Rudd collection, for practical use. Ex-Chris Rudd Ex-Chris Rudd collection. (Image ex-Sir Richard Ground collection. collection, ex-Sir Richard Ground courtesy of Michael Healy © (Image courtesy of Michael Healy collection. (Image courtesy of Michael TimeLine Auctions.) © TimeLine Auctions.) Healy © TimeLine Auctions.)

awesome sight 3,000 years ago. Neil Oli- west, taken together with what is known of ver says: “Smelting would have been a similar languages once in use in central and magical wonder for people watching it for western Iberia and until the time the first time. I grew up in a world from of the Roman Occupation, are sufficient which men flew to the Moon and back. to suggest that closely related languages Like everyone else alive in the developed were spoken along the Atlantic seaways world of today I take for granted won- from Portugal to Britain by the middle of ders like mobile phones, computers, the the first millennium BC. It is not unreason- Internet, Wi-Fi, Skype, the Large Hadron able, therefore, to conclude that ‘Celtic’, as Collider and talk of quarks and String defined by Lhuyd (1660-1709, an Oxford Theory – but with my hand on my heart museum-keeper and author of Archaeologia I will swear that I have never witnessed Britannica, 1707), was the Lingua Franca anything more viscerally amazing than of the Atlantic community. It could be the transformation of powdered rock into further argued that the language had devel- molten metal. No matter how carefully the oped gradually over the four millennia that science of it all is explained, I defy anyone maritime contacts had been maintained, to watch the process without a lump form- perhaps reaching its distinctive form in ing in the throat. It is magical enough to the late Bronze Age when communication make a man cry.” (A History of Ancient along the sea lanes was at its most intense, Britain, p.172.) and when many aspects of the elite system, Fig.16. Cernunnos in my garden. He is I love the way British metalwork- and beliefs had coalesced to also in Cirencester, France, Denmark ers (and others) spent a thousand years create a broadly similar cultural continuu.” (Gundestrup cauldron) and on three improving the technical efficiency of cast (Facing the Ocean: the Atlantic and its Peoples, Ancient British coins of the Regini bronze axeheads. I love the way flat cop- Oxford, 2001, p.296.) (ABC 680, 683, 686). (Image courtesy per axes became broad butted bronze axes, Finally, my 70-year love affair with Brit- of Carol Rudd.) and then narrow butted axes, and then ish antiquities has as much to do with their long flanged axes, and then short flanged symbolic value and ritual usage as with axes, and then median winged axes, and their practical, everyday usage. For exam- then loopless palstaves, and then looped ple, why were bronze axes carved on some me. To hold such a thing, a survivor from palstaves, and then ribbed and grooved of the stones of ? Why were our ancient past, is always a thrill. There palstaves, and then finally became sock- thousands of bronze axes made but never is a kind of magic in something that has eted axes (Figs.10-15). used as axes and instead buried in the time-travelled; a stone, itself millions of I love the way that Bronze Age smelt- ground or deposited in rivers and lakes? years old, yet crafted and transformed ing and Bronze Age metalworking helped Maybe such questions might be addressed by another person thousands of years to develop Britain’s trading relationship in another issue of Treasure Hunting maga- ago: heavy, smooth and solid.” (Prologue with mainland Europe, especially along the zine, deo volente. The Celtic deity I love from The Tale of the Axe: How the Neolithic Atlantic façade and into ancient Massalia most is Cernunnos ‘The Horned One’. As Revolution transformed Britain, Thames & (modern Marseilles). Our main offering he lives in my garden (Fig.16), I see him Hudson, 2016, p.11.) Even if you are only to Europe at that time was Cornish tin, every day and he sees me. vaguely intrigued by British stone axes, I because without tin you can’t make bronze Readers who may wish to examine cannot recommend The Tale of the Axe too axe heads, bronze swords, bronze - a catalogue of my personal collection of highly. As I said earlier, the story of pre- heads or bronze tools. One fascinating facet British antiquities should contact Time- historic axes is the story of the first Britons. of the Bronze Age Atlantic trade network Line Auctions Limited, email: enquiries@ I love Bronze Age axe heads too is that it may have produced and promul- timelineauctions.com (Fig.9), there is an almost magical alchemy gated what we call ‘Celtic’. Professor Sir For all their help I thank Martin Bates, involved in smelting copper from pow- Barry Cunliffe says: “The surviving, and Elizabeth Cottam, Mike Pitts and Damir dered rock. It must have been a truly recently surviving, ‘Celtic’ languages of the Radic. TH

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