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Lansdown

Miscellaneous

Sun Discs;

http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2008/02/lansdown-barrows-and-golden-disc.html

A few days ago someone who is writing a book on Lansdown race course asked me about the Bronze Age 'sun disc' that was found in one of the barrows. It was in fact gold over bronze (most of the gold having disappeared) and was in such a terrible state and in so many fragments that its reconstruction is a matter of drawing the complex pattern on paper, which both Rhiannon and Mike Aston have done.
Having delved through what little information there is, I was struck by the fact that the term 'sun disc' might be a misnomer for some of these artefacts. These Irish sun discs are buttonlike almost....

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26880/26880-h/26880-h.htm#Page_62

There is a similar small gold disc found at Jug's Grave also,

http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/7660/jugs_grave.html

a few miles from the Lansdown, here we are in Wessex kingdom land of course, where gold is occasionally found in the B/A barrows. So was the 6 inch Lansdown a bigger version of a sun disc, and are the smaller ones more like ornamentation for horses or people, And not to forget the Trundholm Sun-Chariot a gold/bronze depiction of a mare pulling the sun, the disc has a certain similarity to the Lansdown one...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Solvogn.jpg
moss Posted by moss
28th February 2011ce
Edited 2nd March 2011ce

Comments (1)

I didn't realise there were all those Irish ones, Moss. That's a very interesting article you've found.

(Btw I'm not 100% sure where I was when I scribbled that picture now. I think I must have been looking at a photo in a display the Bristol Museum (and now that whole area has been turned upside down in the name of fluffification GRRR).
Rhiannon Posted by Rhiannon
28th February 2011ce
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