A Later Bronze Age shield from South Cadbury, Somerset, England J.M. COLES, P. LEACH, S.C. MINNITT, R. TABOR 81 A.S. WILSON* A shield of beaten bronze from South Cadbury, Somerset, England is the first shield to be discovered by excavation on an archaeological site. The shield lay in a silt-filled Bronze Age ditch on a spur of land below Cadbury Castle. A stake was thrust through the shield. The paper considers the recovery and conservation of the shield, the technology of metal shields and the evidence for the ritual deposition of shields in the Later Bronze Age of western Europe. Key-words: shield, metalwork, ritual deposition, Bronze Age, South Cadbury Introduction (JMC) Readers of ANTIQUITY will be familiar with most of the features of Later Bronze Age Europe - hillforts, urnfields, metalwork and the like. Museums throughout Europe are full of bronzes, and weaponry figures large in most displays; slashing swords, spearheads and various axes make up the bulk. Among the glittering array are much rarer objects exhibiting high degrees of technology and craftsmanship, such as beaten metal cauldrons, buckets and shields. This paper focuses on one such object, a bronze shield, found in unusual circumstances. Beaten metal shields are rare in European Bronze Age contexts. Perhaps 70-80 are now known from an area stretching from Ireland to the Carpathians, and, when recorded, they ap- pear to have come from wet or watery contexts, either peatbogs or rivers and ponds. Almost all are stray finds, found during peat-cutting or ditching, or by the plough, or by divers. A large proportion of European metal shields comes from Britain and Ireland (FIGURE 1) and the South Cadbury shield is the first to be recorded from southwest England. Few shields are associated with any other object, and when some relation- ship has been claimed it is generally vulner- able to critical examination; almost the only clear associations are shield with shield. Some fragments appear in hoards of the Later Bronze Age of eastern Europe, but the dating of beaten- metal shields depends as much on their tech- nology of manufacture and their typology of decoration as on any clear contextual associa- tion. Shields appear on rock carvings in vari- ous regions of Europe, but their chronology is not made more precise by such representations. The shield from South Cadbury is the first to be discovered on an archaeological site in Britain, and it has a position and context that offers us a new, if puzzling, insight into the ceremonial activities that demanded the pro- duction and disposal of such precious objects in the Later Bronze Age. This short paper will present the evidence from the site, the steps taken to recover and conserve the shield, a de- scription of the shield and others of the type, and some comments on the circumstances of deposi- tion just below the hillfort of Cadbury Castle. South Cadbury Environs Project (PL & RT) The South Cadbury Environs Project is a con- tinuing programme of research run by the Uni- versities of Birmingham and Glasgow, with the support of local colleges and amateur archaeo- logical organizations. The core study area com- prises 64 sq. km of southeast Somerset and north Dorset, centred on Cadbury Castle (FIGURES 1 * Coles, Fursdon Mill Cottage, Thorverton EX5 5JS, England. Leach, Department of Ancient History & Archaeology, University of Birmingham B15 2TT, England. Minnitt, Somerset County Museum, Taunton TAl ~AA, England. Tabor, Simonburn Cottage, Sutton Montis, Yeovil BA22 7HF, England. Wilson, Conservation Centre, 65 The Close, Salisbury SP1 ZEN, England. Received 1 October 1998, accepted 30 October 1998. ANTIQUITY 73 (1999): 3348 at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00087822 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Bradford, on 13 Feb 2018 at 10:26:34, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available