Brooches in late Iron Age and Roman Britain. 1

Product Description
The result of forty years of study, this book offers an overview of the most common find, after coins, on sites in Roman Britain, the brooch. Used basically to hold outer clothing together, it was always on view and was usually decorative. Based on the study of some 15,000 specimens, the second volume illustrates some 2,000, all drawn by the author. The first chapter is a discussion of manufacturing techniques, methods of study and the concept of dating. The bulk of the book consists of nine chapters examining in detail the myriad style of brooches from the second century B.C., when the habit of wearing brooches really took off, to the early fifth century A.D. when newcomers brought their own types of brooch and imposed them on the rest of what was to become England. The final chapter is a synthesis of various strands mentioned in the body of the book and the social implications of the great change in brooch wearing which occurred in the third century.


Table of Contents


Chapter 1. Introduction
Part 1. The Study
Part 2. Dating
Part 3. Typologies and Classification
Part 4. Selection and Bias
Part 5. Materials and Manufacture
Part 6. The Illustrations


Chapter 2. Late La Tène, Britain and the Continent
Part 1. The Stead, Birdlip, Nauheim and Drahtfibel Group, etc.
Part 2. The Rosette and Langton Down Group
Part 3. The Colchester
Part 4. The Aesica
Part 5. The South Western La Tène Series
Part 6. The Military La Tène II


Chapter 3. The Colchester Derivative
Part 1. The Harlow, Spring System
Part 2. The Rearhook
Part 3. The Polden Hill
Part 4. The Hinged Pin
Part 5. Polden Hill/Hinged Pin


Chapter 4. The Headstud and others
Part 1. Alternative Headstuds
Part 2. The Headstud
Part 3. The Wroxeter
Part 4. Colchester Derivatives, with Trumpet-style Knops


Chapter 5. The Trumpet and its Varieties
Part 1. Mainstream Trumpets
Part 2. Double-lugged
Part 3. The Knop Replaced by Flat Plates
Part 4. Hinged


Chapter 6. Continent Imports and Their Influence
Part 1. Alésia-Aucissa Series
Part 2. The Hod Hill
Part 3. The Durotrigan
Part 4. The Augenfibel and Relatives
Part 5. The Pannonian, Norican etc


Chapter 7. The Plate and Related, and Dragonesques
Introduction
Part 1. British
Part 2. Continental
Part 3. Objects and Animals
Part 4. Dragonesque


Chapter 8. The Knee, Almgren 101 and Interlopers
Part 1. The Knee
Part 2. Almgren 101
Part 3. Interlopers from Free Germany etc


Chapter 9. The Crossbow Sequence
Part 1. The Sprung-pin or Proto Crossbow Brooches
Part 2. The Crossbow and its Antecedents


Chapter 10. Penannulars
Part 1. Coiled
Part 2. Folded Over
Part 3. Knobbed
Part 4. Late-zoömorphic
Part 5. Others


Chapter 11. Usage, Tribes, Fashions and the Demise of the Bow Brooch
Part 1. Who Wore Brooches, Why and How
Part 2. The Problem of Military Brooches
Part 3. Religion
Part 4. Marketing and Money


Appendices
1. The Dating of the King Harry Lane Cemetery
2. The Dating of Applied White Metal Trim
3. South Cadbury the South West Gate

Review
This is an impressive work... The book focuses on an artefact that is second only to coins when it comes to quantity in Britain. The result is thorough, well-illustrated and well-scripted, with Mackreths 40 years of experience studying brooches shining through.'

Dr Alex Lang, Current Archaeology Nov/Dec 2011

Rarely does an individual temperament shine though a work such as this but M.’s quirky approach to problems and lacunae in the data reflect his tenacity, clarity, flexibility, occasional exasperation,and rising above all his sense of humour.

Nina Crummy, Britannia 44 (2013)