A Belgic Burial-Group at Sholden, near Deal; and a Belgic Tazza from Mill Hill, Upper Deal

A BELGIC BURIAL-GROUP AT SHOLDEN, NEAR DEAL; AND A BELGIC TAZZA FROM l\:fILL HILL, UPPER DEAL By J. D. OGILVIE, F.S.A., and G. C. DUNNING, F.S.A. BELGIO BUfilA.L-GROUP AT SHOLDEN A burial of the Belgic period 􀃡as found in May 1962, about 2 ft. below the surface during the excavation of a sewer trench at Sholdeu, nea.r Deal. The trench ran alongside the footpath from Sholden Street to Court Lodge Farm; the position of the burial was ll0 yards east of Sholden Street.1 The group consisted of two pottery vessels; the larger was recovered intact, and the smaller was reconstructed from fragments. · The cremation had already been removed by the workmen before the pots were handed over. With the group were two bronze brooches, one nearly complete and the other fragmentary. The finds have been presented by the landowners, Messrs. V. C. and C. J. Mount, to Deal Castle Museum, where they are now exhibited. POTTERY Fig. I. Small carinated bowl of grey ware with burnished greyishbrown slip. The side is slightly concave, with single and double cordons. Fig. 2. Butt-beaker of grey sandy ware with matt grey surface. Below the rounded and slightly thickened rim is an anglecordon at the junction with the side. The surface is plain, divided into zones by two single and one double cordon. BROOCHES Fig. 3. La Tene ID bronze brooch with slightly curved bow, D-shaped in section, and right-angled bend at the head. The side-wings protecting the spring are lightly ribbed above the turns of the spring. Originally the spring had eight turns, with external chord held by a medium-sized hook. One side of the spring and the pin are missing. The catchplate would be triangular when complete, and may have been solid or pierced by ornamental openings. Fig. 4. Damaged head-end and part of bow of bronze brooch, of the same type as Fig. 3. 1 6-iri. O.S. Kent, sheet LVllI, N.E. National Grid Reference TR36095260. 221 A BELGIC BURIAL-GROUP AT SHOLDEN F10. l. Ca.rinated bowl (¼). \ '-1!1,=,􀀆, I I I I 1 • 1' I I I I d I 1 I 1 11 11 11 I I II 11 II ---􀀇 I:,,I ! llv 11 I FIG. 3. Bronze broooh of 'Colchester' type m- FIG, 2. Butt-beaker (¼), FIG. 4. Dama.god bronze brooch (t). Fros. 1-4. Pottery and brooches from from burial-group at Sholden. Sholden, a new mte for finds of the Belgic period, is only I mile north of Mill Hill, Upper Deal, well known for the two Belgic gravegroups mth brooches, 2 and for several other finds of funerary pottery 2 J.P. Busbe-Fox, Swarling (Sooiety of Antiquaries, Research Report No. V, 1925), 18-19, pla. IV and XIII. Both groups are described and illustrated by drawings in Dr. Ann BirchaJI's paper, quoted below, 249 and 304-5, Figs. 11-12. 222 A BELGIC BURIAL-GROUP .AT $HOLDEN and brooches lacking details of association. All the material from Mill Hill, formerly in the Town Hall at Deal, is now also in Deal Castle Museum. The butt-beaker places the Sholden burial in Dr. Ann Birchall's third or 'Late' Belgic group of the Aylesford-Swarling sequence, beginning about 10 D.O. and lasting until the Roman period.3 The carinated bowl (Dr. Birchall's Type IVb) is infrequent in Kent, but is represented in the urn.field at Cheriton, near Folkestone,4 as well as at Aylesford. The brooches from Sholden belong to the 'Colchester' type III of the early first century A.n.5 This type is frequent on Belgic sites over a wide area of Britain, from Kent in the east to Gloucestershire in the west,6 and from Dorset7 in the south as far north as Lincolnshire.8 At Upper Deal the type is represented by one example with strongly curved bow and catchplate pierced by an elaborate step-pattern;0 the associations of this brooch are not known, but in date it is the latest of the long series of Belgio brooches from Upper Deal. Elsewhere in Kent brooches of 'Colchester' type were found in two burials in the cemetery at Cheriton; one in association with a squat pedestal-urn (Type la) and a butt-beaker (Type VI), and the other associated with a cordoned tazza (Type X).10 The tazza is an interesting addition to the Belgic pottery types of Kent, since it is really a large version of .the local form of Type IVb with the addition of a hollow pedestal. Another tazza, from Mill Hill, Upper Deal, is described below. The last brooch of 'Colchester' type is from the urnfield at Stone, near Dartford, but its associations are unknown.11 Both Cheriton and Stone are, however, 'Late' Belgic cemeteries, and both continued to be used into the early Roman period. The very wide occurrence of the brooches of 'Colchester' type in 3 Ann Birchall, 'The Aylesford-Swa.rling Cultlll'e: The Problem of Belgae reconsidered', Proc. Prehist. Soc., xxxi (1965), 241-367. See also Ann Birchall, 'The Belgic Problem: Aylesford revisited,' British Museum Quarterly, xxviii (1964), 21-29. ' Arch. Oant., 1xii (1949), 32, Fig. 3, 28 a.nd 30. 5 C. F. C. Hawkes and M. R. Hull, Oamulodunum (Society of Antiquaries, Research Report No. XIV, 1947), 309, pls. LXXXIX-XC, 6-24. 8 Elsie l\:t. Clifford, Bagernum: A Belgic Oppi