The British involute brooch

British La Tène 2 Involute Brooch
Portable Antiquities Scheme record
SWYOR 399938

As rare as hen's teeth, they are a type of La Tène 2 brooch unique to Britain. Martyn Jope, (2000), Map 4b, records 34 find spots of these brooches in iron and bronze (17 in each metal). He notes, however, that more than sixty involutes have been found in Yorkshire. He does not mention the total number of involutes, but the type does seem to be much more plentiful there than in the other regions. We might be looking at about a hundred in total. He says:

Involute brooches were a current fashion in parts of Britain for something like two centuries; they were to be seen (in bronze or iron) from the south-west Cornwall, somerset, and Wiltshire, the Middle Thames lands, in Herefordshire, and away to the north in Yorkshire (map on p. 42). By their changing construction and ornament these and other brooches will give some details of their time setting...

The general type is dated from the last few years of the 3rd century BC to the 1st Century BC but the earliest, which have a much shallower profile than SWYOR 399938, are of the first half of the 2nd century BC on his chronological chart at the start of Volume 1. The brooch illustrated above is deeply profiled and thus dates from the mid 2nd century to the early 1st century BC despite the record's date given as "between 300-100 BC"

British La Tène 2 Involute Brooch
Portable Antiquities Scheme record
 SWYOR-B18B81

The incomplete example on the left is correctly dated in its record to "2nd or 1st century BC." and references H. E. M. Cool, The small finds from Somerford Keynes:

"The earliest brooch found was the involute brooch 321. Brooches such as this are an Iron Age form in use during the 2nd and 1st century BC and were probably in existence by the end of the 3rd century BC (Harding 1974, 188-9). They had a variety of hinge mechanisms (see Hattatt 1985, 16-7)"

The most famous (or should it be infamous?) example was found on the skeleton in the Ferry Fryston Iron Age Chariot Burial (formerly Ferrybridge), which in this article is dated far too early (beginning of the 4th century BC). The earliest reports of this site have it dated even earlier than that and with a very fanciful interpretation! Oxford Archaeology has yet to correct its errors in their article, and there is no mention of the brooch whatsoever.

My own investigations have revealed that the animal bones in the burial (but not those deposited around it) exhibited triple peaks and thus appear to have been moved from another site. When the excavators showed the involute brooch to the British Museum, Ian Stead informed them of their guff -- but because of the rush to promote the find, everything has been "swept under the carpet" and most images of that particular brooch all seem to have vanished. It can be seen in this article  in a small photograph, but clearly enough.  Very deeply profiled and quite elaborate, it might well be one of the last versions of the type. Perhaps it was even modified later with its coral stud being added, but it would need a good set of photographs to be sure, at the very least. It's difficult to make it out from this small illustration of the grave finds as found. The British Museum site's article on their involute brooch does mention it, however.

I think it most likely that the burial dates to the same time as the bones from the feast held outside (2nd half of the 1st century AD or very slightly later). The other reasons being that the chariot was made from "spare parts" and included facsimiles in foil-covered forge scale of missing chariot parts. The Romans, of course, did not allow war chariots to exist after the Claudian conquest. I also suspect that the skeleton was a sacrificed captive most likely from Scotland. The entire burial and its feast was a response to Roman encroachment into the area and there is a general rule with Iron Age sacrifices that the more desperate the situation, the more dramatic the sacrifice -- human sacrifices appear to be a response to the direst of situations.

It is too bad that the site investigation did not go further and previous mistakes were not confessed -- it might be the most interesting Celtic sacrifice ever found in Britain. It is also too bad that the involute brooch is not better (and more widely) known.