Peter Clark - Bronze Age Connections: Cultural Contact in Prehistoric Europe

Published by
Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK

Oxbow Books and the individual authors, 2009

ISBN 978-1-84217-348-0
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-78297-316-4
PRC ISBN: 978-1-78297-317-1

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bronze Age connections : cultural contact in prehistoric Europe/edited by Peter Clark.
p. cm.
Presentations from a conference held Sept. 2006 in Dover, England.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-84217-348-0
1. Bronze age--Europe--Congresses. 2. Acculturation--Europe--History--To 1500--Congresses. 3. Intercultural
communication--Europe--History--To 1500--Congresses. 4. Europe--Antiquities--Congresses. 5. Excavations
(Archaeology) Europe--Congresses. 6. Europe--History, Naval--Congresses. 7. Naval history, Ancient--Congresses. 8.
Seafaring life--Europe--History--To 1500--Congresses. 9. Boats and boating--Europe--History--To 1500--Congresses.
10. Europe--Commerce--History--Congresses. I. Clark, Peter.
GN778.2.A1B755 2009
930.15094--dc22

2009024737

Cover design by Mark Duncan,
photography by Andrew Savage and cover concept by Peter Clark

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Hobbs the Printer Ltd
Totton, Hampshire

Contents

List of Contributors

PROFESSOR JEAN BOURGEOIS

Department of Archaeology and Ancient History of Europe

Research Unit Prehistory and Protohistory

Blandijnberg 2

3rd Floor

Belgium-9000 Gent

Belgium

MR CHRIS BUTLER

Rosedale

Berwick

Polegate

East Sussex BN26 6TB

UK

MR PETER CLARK

Canterbury Archaeological Trust

92a Broad Street

Canterbury

Kent CT1 2LU

UK

PROFESSOR BARRY CUNLIFFE

Institute of Archaeology

36 Beaumont Street

Oxford OX1 2PG

UK

DR ANDREW FITZPATRICK

Wessex Archaeology Ltd

Portway House

Old Sarum Park

Salisbury,

Wiltshire SP4 6EB

UK

DR DAVID FONTIJN

Faculteit der Archeologie

Postbus 9515

2300 RA Leiden

The Netherlands

MR MICHEL PHILIPPE

Muse Quentovic

8, place du General De Gaulle,

62630 taples-Sur-Mer

France

PROFESSOR MARY W HELMS

407 N. Holden Road

Greensboro

North Carolina 27410

USA

DR STUART NEEDHAM

Langton Fold

North Lane

South Harting

West Sussex GU31 5NW

UK

DR ROBERT VAN DE NOORT

Department of Archaeology

University of Exeter

Laver Building

Exeter EX4 4QR

UK

DR MARC TALON

Directeur interrgional Nord Picardie

Institut National de Recherches Archologiques Prventives

518 rue St Fuscien

80 000 Amiens

France

DR LIESBETH THEUNISSEN

National Service for Archaeology

Cultural Landscape and Built Heritage

P.O. Box 1600

3800 BP Amersfoort

The Netherlands

DR SIMON TIMBERLAKE

19 High Street

Fen Ditton

Cambridge CB5 8ST

UK

1. Introduction: Building New Connections

Peter Clark

Standing beside the great Roman pharos on the towering heights east of Dover at the south-eastern tip of Britain, the distant coast of Europe can be clearly seen, a thin strip of greenish brown evocatively set between sea and sky. Below, the port rattles and booms as a seemingly endless succession of ferries load and unload, huge steel behemoths towering over the cars and lorries they carry, forever plying backwards and forwards across the waves. Dover is Britains busiest port, with over fourteen million people passing through it each year, making the short sea crossing between England and France. This intimate connection has often been ambivalent, however; the great hills flanking the town are studded with the remains of gargantuan defences dating over many centuries, witness to times when the sea was a welcome barrier against continental threat rather than the populous highway it is today. Fittingly, it was deep below the streets of this bustling modern port that Europes oldest sea going boat was discovered in 1992; the Dover Bronze Age boat built some three and a half millennia ago now has pride of place in the local museum, and is a focus of intense international interest and study. In particular, it has stimulated a desire to better understand what connections might have existed between peoples on either side of the Channel in this distant time. Archaeologists have long been aware of similarities in Bronze Age material culture in the modern countries of England, northern France, the Netherlands and Belgium; what can these tell us about the nature of relations between these transmanche communities in the second millennium BC? The growing pace of research and new discoveries on both sides of the Channel together with the general publics appetite for information suggested the need for a colloquium where new data could be presented and new ideas discussed in open forum. There could be no better place for a debate about ancient seafaring and maritime connections than the modern port of Dover.

Thus, in September 2006, over 180 people gathered at Dovers Western Docks to attend some fifteen presentations by various scholars from Belgium, England, France, the Netherlands and the USA on the theme Bronze Age Connections: Cultural Contact in Prehistoric Europe. This volume brings together twelve of those presentations for a wider audience and for the benefit of those conference delegates who found difficulty in hearing the original presentations as huge waves crashed on the walls and roof of the conference venue ().

The conference was the second such event organised by the Dover Bronze Age Boat Trust (DBABT), a registered charity set up in 1993, whose aims are to protect, preserve and conserve for the public benefit the Dover Bronze Age Boat and to advance the education of the public about all aspects relating to the boat, its design, construction, history, use and all other relevant matters. The first of these aims was achieved in November 1999 when an award-winning gallery of Bronze Age life was opened at Dover museum (Clark et al 2004), with the fully conserved Dover boat as its centrepiece. The Trust continues to monitor the condition of the boat and the gallery as part of its remit; similarly the education of the public is a continuing responsibility, realised in many ways, such as the production of a documentary video, appearances on television and radio, public lectures, the organisation of school visits, guided tours of the gallery and so forth. In the same vein, and in recognition of the international significance of the find, the DBABT organised a major conference focussing on the Dover boat in 2002 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of its discovery. With speakers from Denmark, England, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Wales, some 130 delegates attended the conference, whose proceedings were published in 2004 as