394 Notes on Objects of Late Celtic Character found in Wiltshire. 



Early Iron Age, to the fact that a certain number of fibulae of early 

 " Italian " types (of which the salient characteristic is the spring 

 of two spiral coils on one side of the head only) have been found 

 in England, of which the British Museum and seven other 

 museums possess specimens, which suggest a connection between 

 Britain and the Continent, or even Italy, in days previous even to 

 the period of the " La Tene I." fibulae mentioned before. The 

 sketch of the fibula here illustrated, from Devizes Museum (fig. 1), 

 has been submitted to him, as, indeed, have all the sketches here 

 given, and he has been kind enough to give an opinion on the 

 various specimens, upon which much of the present notes has been 

 founded. This specimen of the " cushion "-shaped type is of a 

 form well known in Italy previous to 400 B.C. It was, however, 

 found with other distinctly Eoman objects on the site of a Eoman 

 villa at North Wraxall many years ago,^ 



Mr. Smith would get over the difficulty of its apparent association 

 with objects of so many centuries later by suggesting that the sites 

 of Eoman villas were often those which had been previously oc- 

 cupied by the Britons, and that, therefore, all objects found upon 

 those sites were not necessarily of Eoman age. Another possibility 

 suggests itself, viz., that the inhabitants of the villa, when they 

 came to Britain, brought with them trinkets from Italy which had 

 already been several centuries in use. In any case, however, this 

 fibula is certainly of an early Italian type, of which at present 

 a few other examples are known from Britain, two of which are 

 in the Canterbury and one in the Maidstone Museums.^ 



The only other Wiltshire example of a fibula possibly earlier 

 than the " La Tene I." class at present known to me belongs to 

 Mr. J. W. Brooke, of Marlborough, Fig. 2, who has most kindly 

 drawn it for me, as he has the other fibulae from his fine collection 

 mentioned here. It was found casually near Baydon, a locality 

 which has yielded, from the site of a settlement there, many 

 Eomano-British or, perhaps, Late Celtic objects, now at Devizes. 



' Wilts Arch. Mag., vii., 59—75. 



- Professor W. Bidgeway and K. A. Smith on " Early Italian Brooches " in 

 Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, xxi., 97 — 118. 



