The Aylesford-Swarling Culture: The Problem of the Belgae reconsidered

Abstract

Until the discovery of the Aylesford urnfield seventy-five years ago, the Belgae were still no more than dramatis personae in Caesar's Gallic War. It was Sir Arthur Evans who first identified the users of the Aylesford cemetery with the invaders ex Belgio referred to by Caesar. Reginald Smith's publication of the Welwyn grave-groups (1912) and then Bushe-Fox's excavation of the Swarling urnfield (1925) were followed, in 1930, by Hawkes' and Dunning's account of the history of the British and Continental Belgic tribes, which has remained the standard work on the subject ever since. Thus, it has been accepted that the archaeological material of Aylesford-Swarling type represents the introduction of Belgic culture into Britain. Its continental origins were traced to northern Gaul, the area occupied by the historical Belgae, where a similar series of cremation burials of Late La Tène date is known. This continental series, thought to mark a change from what seemed to be the universal practice of inhumation as mode of burial to cremation, was interpreted as representative of a fusion of inhuming Galli with cremating Germani from across the Rhine. This fusion, leading to the formation of the Belgae, who, as Caesar records, boasted of their ‘Germanic’ origin, was thought to have taken place in the latter half of the 2nd century B.C. The date for the first Belgic invasion of Britain was put at about 75 B.C.

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