Finds from a Late Iron Age cremation burial
Iron Age, 75-25 BC
Found at Aylesford Cemetery, outside Maidstone, Kent, England
(1886)
A grave of a wealthy contemporary of Julius Caesar
This 'bucket', jug and pan were placed in the grave of a Briton
who was alive at the same time as the Roman leader Julius Caesar
(100-44 BC). She or he may even have seen Caesar when he led his
troops to invade the south of England in 55 and 54 BC. We can not
be sure whether the person was a woman or a man, as they were
cremated and the cremated bones then placed in the grave. If the
person had been a man, he might have looked like one of the men
visible on the handles of the bucket.
The grave, found in 1886 by the archaeologist Arthur Evans, was
one of the first Late Iron Age cremation graves to be studied by
archaeologists. This way of treating the dead was the same as in
northern France; Arthur Evans thought that this was confirmation of
Julius Caesar's comment that a people called the Belgae came from
France to live in Kent at this time. Today, archaeologists
recognize that religious ideas can spread between groups of people,
and that a new way of treating the dead, such as this grave, does
not mean that people from northern France emigrated to live in Kent
2100 years ago.
The bucket is made of wood and decorated with bronze sheets and
handles. The jug and pan were made somewhere in the Roman world,
but not locally in Kent. The grave also contained three pots and
two bronze brooches.
B.W. Cunliffe, Iron Age Britain (English Heritage / Batsford, 1995)
S. James and V. Rigby, Britain and the Celtic Iron Ag (London, The British Museum Press, 1997)