Coral in northern climates: an exotic coral bead from Iron Age Scotland and its implications

Hunter, Fraser; Fà¼rst, Sebastian

Coral in northern climates: an exotic coral bead from Iron Age Scotland and its implications

Resource type

Book chapter

Creator (person)

Hunter, Fraser

Fà¼rst, Sebastian

Abstract

This paper is offered to Eugène in the spirit of his own wide-ranging research and his ability to extract good stories from finds. The first author met Eugène at an Edinburgh conference on 'Scotland in later prehistoric Europe', where he offered a masterly overview of the southern Low Countries over the period (Warmenbol 2015). His subtitle was 'where East meets West': our paper could be called 'where North meets South'. Its focus is a rare coral bead from the hillfort of Broxmouth, near Dunbar in south-east Scotland, easily overlooked in the publication of the rich finds assemblage (Hunter 2013). Here we broaden our view beyond the few British parallels quoted there to a wider European context more fitting to the intellectual scope of our honorand. Our own collaboration arose from a chance meeting in the library of the Rà¶misch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz; the second author is completing his doctorate on coral in the Iron Age of continental Europe, and this curious insular fragment seemed an intriguing topic to pursue