The Ringlemere Gold Cup and its Affinities

While the exquisite advanced Early Bronze Age gold cup found on Ringlemere Farm is a significant addition to an English and European mainland series of gold, silver, amber and shale cups, it furthers the argument that the barrows of East Kent's chalklands yielded artifacts which made them outliers of the "Wessex" phenomenon of Stonehenge's supportive landscape². Briefly, the Wessex culture's components come from about 100 rich graves, beneath bowl, bell and disc barrows. Defined largely by the European mainland affinities and accompaniments of the daggers found in certain graves, there is the division between Wessex I and Wessex II⁷. The first inhumation burials were superseded by cremations. Bronze pins from Germany, Baltic amber and Mediterranean faience beads were in some graves, and besides funerary gold⁴, incense cups, as from Tilmanstone⁵ as well as the first collar urns⁶ the society which had this funerary wealth brought Stonehenge to its final form⁷.

The Ringlemere gold cup is 6 inches in height and 4 inches in diameter at the rim and of thus the largest of its compresses. Beaten from a sheet of 20 carat gold, it is ribbed in a mode comparable with its Rillaton counterpart⁸ and has a closely similar handle. There is also the pointillé ornament below the rim. However, unlike the Rillaton cup (fig 1), which is considered to be a copy of a beaker⁸ it has an ovoid rather than a flat base. In gold the counterpart of such a base is displayed by the plain, handled, gold cup from Fritzdorf near Bonn (fig 2)⁹. Indeed, the Rillaton and Fritzdorf cups have close similarities of workmanship, particularly of their attached handles, and might have been the work of the same craftsman¹¹. It should not be forgotten that Wessex funerary gold may also be largely from the hands of a single craftsman¹². Found in 1837, in a large barrow's secondary stone cist¹³ and published thirty years later¹⁴, the Rillaton cup was sent by the Duchy of Cornwall to William IV and thereafter it was kept in Queen Victoria's Swiss Cottage at Osbourne. It passed into obscurity until after the death of George V, when it was found on his dressing table where it has been used to contain his collar studs¹⁵ During the short reign of Edward VIII it was deposited in the British Museum.

Until the discovery of his Kentish gold cup on Ringlemere Farm, the Frizdorf cup, with its rounded base, stood alone, for the Rillaton cup has a flat-based beaker-like counterpart found at Eschenz, Canton Thurgau in Switzerland. Without a handle, this has the proportions of a ceramic bell-beaker. Its decoration is overall horizontal zoning and infilled panels while, below the rim, there is a rendering of the familiar cable-stamping¹⁶. Another gold cup, from Golenkamp near Hanover, in private hands, although of flat-based bucket form, bears similar decoration¹⁷. The cups from Eschenz and Golenkamp both have circular-ribbed bases recalling that of the Rillaton cup. In its execution the Golenkamp vessel is akin to the developed pieces as the Mold tiippet¹⁸ and the golden 'hats', possibly post and stake ornaments, from Avanton, Vienne in central France, Schiffersstadt, Landkreis Speyer and Etuzdorf-Buch, Landkreis Nuremberg in Germany¹⁹. Parts of gold cups have also been found at Ploumilliau, Côtes-du-Nord, Brittany²⁰ and Cuxwold in Lincolnshire²¹. Both point to their having been parts of, or intended for, composite golden cups. Three rib-bon-handled gold cups from Spain, where they were part of a hoard²⁴ are said to have had concentric circles ornamenting their bases.

During 1974 the fragments of a much-corroded handled silver cup, composite and of a form comparable with the Fritzdorf golden cup, were dug from a large barrow, called Brun Bras, in Saint-Adrien about 6 miles south of Guingamp in Brittany²³. Silver is not unknown in Breton earlier Bronze Age contexts. There are pins and even spiral arm-rings, while the fragments of what was termed a silver bowl from a barrow at St.Fiacre, Morbihan²⁴ may have been those of a cup.

Of England's amber cups, that from a considerable barrow at Hove, Sussex, is possibly the best known²⁵. Its handle ornamentation is comparable with the golden cups but its squat form may have been dictated by the block of amber from which it was carved. Found in an oak coffin where it could have furnished an inhumation or burial, it was accompanied by a Wessex II dagger, a whetstone and a battleaxe. The only other amber example, that from the Clandon Barrow near Dorchester, in Dorset²⁶ has a bowl, almost pointed base and its handle is missing. Nonetheless, it is, although undecorated, comparable with the Fritzdorf golden cup and, as far as can be seen, our Kentish Ringlemere cup. It was accompanied by an atypical Wessex II dagger, a sheet-gold lozenge, a shale macehead with golden studs, a perforated incense cup and a collared urn.

The shale cups, detailed by R.L.S. Newall (1928), two coming from the 'Amesbury district' in Wiltshire and two from Honiton in Devon²⁷, have line-ornamented handles similar to those of the Ringlemere, Rillaton (fig 3) and Frizdorf golden cups, and ovoid bases. One of the Amesbury examples has one concentric line decoration, as does one from Devon. This has zigzag line ornament inside its rim. The bases are ovoid and, like the amber cup from the Clandon Barrow, almost pointed. The second cup from Amesbury has around it a single zone of lines as does that from Farway Down, Honiton (fig 3). The base of this Amesbury cup could be best referred to as 'pointed' and its form is displayed by the ceramic cup from Farway Down, Honiton (fig 3).

Fig 1. The Rillaton Cup

Fig 2. The Fritzdorf Cup

Fig 3. Shale cups from the 'Amesbury district' and Farway Down, Honiton

Defined as a flattened ovoid. In general terms the form of these shale cups is that of our new Ringlemere cup, a likeness accentuated by the decoration of the handles.

Functionally, the gold cups such as Rillaton and Ringlemere, were likely to have been drinking cups, a term originally applied to beakers by Col. P.B. Shelley in 1878¹. Such a "beaker" being a term introduced by Abercromby (1904). Although the nature of the drinks consumed in beakers and the golden cups, two of which closely resemble these ceramic vessels, is elusive, residues have been found. An age-born hot ladle found in a beaker during the 19th century at Inverurie, Scotland²⁸ hints only at a liquid carefully measured. However, more recently²⁹ traces of mead, flavoured with meadowsweet, have been detected in a late style beaker, also from Scotland. It has been suggested that the beer was regularly consumed to redress the vitamin deficiencies of small communities. Besides the finely finished ceramic examples it is likely that there was a range of wooden cups and bowls in Neolithic and Bronze Age times. Curwen (1954, 153)³¹ refers to a Danish wooden cup of the same form as the Hove amber cup. An Italian handled wooden bowl illustrates the capabilities of the wood-worker³⁰. Fragments of a fine Late Bronze Age wooden bowl were recovered from the Wilford Shaft, at a good distance from Stonehenge¹.

A piece of pointillé ornamented oval amber dagger was associated with the Rillaton cup, which, as has been stressed, has close affinities with that from Fritzdorf and our new Ringlemere cup. Ogival daggers define, for the most part, Wessex II, approximately two centuries prior to 1500BC. Such a dagger also accompanied the Hove amber cup, and a dissimilar dagger the shale cup from Farway Down. It can be contended that two out of our golden cups, those from Rillaton and Eschenz, are very complex types of ceramic beakers. Yet, when they were made, beakers had become less aluminium in their thinness, in a manner for example, that makes these well-sealed gold encased shale cores which are patently anachronised versions of Beaker shale buttons. Indeed, it can be said that most of the Wessex goldwork has a general Beaker character³². It is possible that the cups of this period that have been intentionally archaistic pieces, presumably calculated to invoke the sense more of an earlier age. The round and ovoid bottomed vessels, unless immediately drained and laid down, would have needed stands. Although in part recalling beakers, these rounded and ovoids have invoked a yet more ancient past, perhaps even the well-finished, leathery vessels of the Neolithic. As was remarked at the outset of this résumé, our advanced Early Bronze Age gold cup from Ringlemere moves the prehistory of this period in Kent into a fresh dimension. It must be stressed that these comments concerning its character and affinities are provisional and from printed and pictorial details, for this remarkable piece, when seen, could impel further ideas and investigations. It does show however, that East Kent, like Cornwall, is likely to have been a significant extension of the remarkable Wessex Bronze Age phenomenon. It has been said that the past is a foreign country; it is a place where one is often surprised by dramatic change.

Paul Ashbee

Notes

1. Ashbee & Dunning 1960
2. Piggott 1938, 92; Gerloff 1975; Ashbee 1978, 160-80
3. Apsimon 1954
4. Fox 1954; Ashbee 1979, 59
5. Newall & Bush 1960, 56
6. Cowperthwaite 1998
7. Drewett 1980
8. Ashbee 1978, 160, 117-18 P. LXXIV a,b
9. Clarke 1970, Improbable
10. von Uslar 1995; Ashbee 1960, P. XCIV; C. Piggott 1966, 134; J. RYL, a Bibliography by Ashbee 1978, 157
11. Gerloff 1975, 129-61
12. Grinsell 1953, 125-6
13. Sharpe 1866
14. Hardy 1980
15. Hardened by Burgi 1975; Kiunes 1975; 57
16. Newall 1977, 157
17. Ashbee 1959; Ashbee 1960, 115 P. LXXIV; Taylor 1980, 97
18. Newall 1966, 155 P. 48; 1979, 294, P.LIX; Fox 1940; 1966, 198 P. 281
19. Gerloff 1975, 257
20. Gerloff 1975, 257
21. Grinsell 1975, 257
22. Gerloff 1975, 257
23. Ashbee 1979, 255
24. Gerloff 1975, 257
25. Curwen & Curwen 1924; Clarke et al 1985, 125-7
26. Fox 1940
27. Grew 1988; Greenlaw 1980; Greenlaw 1981
28. Clarke et al 1985, 125-7
29. Ashbee 1960, 72
30. Newall 1978, 155; C.G. W.J, 2
31. Hawkins 1980

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