Reassessing the long chronology of the penannular brooch in Britain: exploring changing styles, use and meaning across a millennium Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy At The University of Leicester By Anna Louise Booth School of Archaeology and Ancient History University of Leicester 2014 1 | P a g e Abstract Title: Reassessing the long chronology of the penannular brooch in Britain: exploring changing styles, use and meaning across a millennium Author: Anna Louise Booth Penannular brooches are a simple form of dress fastener used in Britain from the late Iron Age, through to the Roman and Early Medieval periods. This thesis represents the first full study of their British development for fifty years. The catalogue of penannulars originally compiled by Elizabeth Fowler in the late 1950s has been more than doubled, allowing a thorough re-analysis of chronological variation and continuity in stylistic development, distribution, use and deposition. This has been carried out via broad analysis of the penannular database and two regional case studies looking at South- West England and Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, the two areas where penannulars were concentrated throughout their chronology. Many previous studies have focused only on the later penannular types, leading to an unbalanced approach dominated by the preoccupations of early medieval archaeology. This has created the perception that penannulars had a simple evolutionary development that contributed to the straightforward survival of a ‘Celtic’ culture in some regions during the Roman period and beyond. To counterbalance this, analysis here has particularly focused on the earlier end of the penannular chronology. As a result an alternative picture is presented, of a highly complex development influenced by Continental parallels, which stands in deep contrast to the simplistic sequences proposed in most previous studies. The ever increasing corpus of theoretical work on bodily adornment has also been drawn on, enabling a more nuanced approach that moves us away from the idea that appearance is just an external manifestation of a single, static form of identity and instead recognises that it plays a vital role in an active and continual process of forming and maintaining multiple, complex, overlapping and sometimes opposing identities. 2 | P a g e Acknowledgements This research project is the outcome of an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, involving the collaboration of the University of Leicester, the British Museum and the Portable Antiquities Scheme and I am grateful to all four organisations for their support. It would never have been achieved were it not also for the guidance, both formal and informal, of a huge range of people. First and foremost I must thank my supervisory panel, supervisors Prof. Colin Haselgrove and Dr. Roger Bland and advisers Dr. John Naylor and Sally Worrell, for giving me the opportunity to undertake this research, but also for all their advice, encouragement, support and the swift reading of chapters throughout. I am also indebted to a large number of staff at various national and local museums without whose support and assistance in viewing and working with collections my research would have been impossible. These include: Ralph Jackson, Richard Hobbs, Barry Ager, Sonja Marzinzik, Jody Joy, Julia Farley, at the British Museum. Fraser Hunter at the National Museum of Scotland. Adam Gwilt and Evan Chapman at the National Museum of Wales and Mark Lewis at the National Roman Legion Museum. Gail Boyle and Kurt Adams at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. Sandy Hashimi at Dorset County Museum. Kerry Nickels at Wiltshire Heritage Museum, Devizes. Jane Ellis-Schön at Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum. Stephen Minnitt at the Museum of Somerset. Paula Gentil at Hull and East Riding Museum. Rose Nicholson and Martin Foreman at North Lincolnshire Museum, Scunthorpe. Adam Parker at the Yorkshire Museum. In addition Elizabeth Fowler kindly agreed to make a copy of her original BLitt thesis available to me, Nina Crummy generously allowed me access to the penannular section M.R. Hull’s brooch corpus and Ralph Jackson at the British Museum to the penannulars in Donald Mackreth’s paper archive, which considerably assisted my data collection. Thanks also to Damian Evans at Bournemouth University for information regarding a very interesting pair of penannulars found during excavations in Dorset and to Philip Crummy at the British Museum for providing me with several brooch illustrations. The general support and assistance of various academic and administrative staff at both the British Museum and the University of Leicester has also been invaluable to me 3 | P a g e throughout. These include the CDA programme co-ordinators J.D. Hill and Alexandra Fletcher and PAS staff Claire Costin and Dan Pett at the British Museum, whose endless patience with my many administrative difficulties was greatly appreciated. The same is true of department administrators Rachel Godfrey and Sharon North at the University of Leicester. Other staff have offered me much informal support, advice and practical assistance including Neil Christie (who kindly edited some chapters for me), Mark Gillings (who helped me with my GIS woes) and David Edwards at the University of Leicester and Richard Hobbs, Neil Wilkins, Julia Farley and Jody Joy at the British Museum. I am most grateful to various colleagues in the Portable Antiquities Scheme (some now former) for their general advice and for keeping me up-to-date with new discoveries of metal detected penannulars. Thanks in particular to my current colleague Wendy Scott for your support and listening to my moaning. I also have no end of thanks to my fellow brooch aficionados Sophia Adams, Julia Farley and Melissa Edgar for all the technical conversations that helped me so much and to the rest of the wonderfully supportive postgraduate community at Leicester. Unfortunately there is not space to name you individually, but you know who you are. Thank you for keeping me sane with emergency coffee breaks and beer in the Marquis. And Alessandro for ‘frisbee lunches’ and being a great friend during some difficult phases. Thanks are also due to the wider community of postgraduates specialising in artefact studies and other subjects, who have offered support and some very stimulating discussions at various conferences over the past four years. Finally thank you Mum, Dad and Rachel for helping me to get through the tough times, for your patience and for being proud of me despite my doubts. And of course the cats. Thanks Millie, Tex, Groucho, Iggy, Katie and Luna for the cuddles and distractions! And lastly thank you Denis for your endless encouragement, hugs, cups of tea and generally putting up with me. I could not have done it without you. Of course any errors, omission and inadequacies in the following work remain entirely my own. 4 | P a g e For Mum, Dad and Rachel. 5 | P a g e Contents Thesis Abstract .............................................................................................. 2 Acknowledgements......................................................................................... 3 Contents ......................................................................................................... 6 Tables .......................................................................................................... 16 Figures ......................................................................................................... 17 Abbreviations used ...................................................................................... 24 Introduction.............................................................................................................. 25 Why penannulars? ............................................................................................ 25 Study structure .................................................................................................. 26 Chapter 1: The penannular in Britain –research traditions ............................... 28 1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................ 28 1.2 The earliest work ........................................................................................ 28 1.3 Elizabeth Fowler’s work ............................................................................ 31 1.3.1 Fowler’s typology ................................................................................... 31 1.3.1.1 Types A, Aa and B ............................................................................... 31 1.3.1.2 Type A variants .................................................................................... 34 1.3.1.3 Type C .................................................................................................. 34 1.3.1.4 The zoomorphic penannulars and their antecedents – Types D, E and F .......................................................................................................................... 35 1.3.1.5 Types G, H and the other late/post-Roman forms ................................ 38 1.3.2 Fowler’s approach ................................................................................... 38 1.4 The development of the British penannulars in a continental context ....... 40 1.5 Recent work on the British penannulars .................................................... 44 6 | P a g e 1.5.1 The zoomorphic penannulars .................................................................