QUICK FACTS
Identify: Caergwrle Bowl
What it’s: A shale bowl with gold and tin decorations
The place it’s from: Caergwrle Citadel, in Wales
When it was made: Circa 1300 to 1150 B.C.
About 200 years in the past, whereas digging in a boggy discipline in Wales, a employee struck a uncommon, historic bowl formed like a ship. The Caergwrle Bowl, named after a close-by citadel, showcases the significance of nautical journey in Nice Britain’s Center Bronze Age (roughly 1500 to 1000 B.C.).
The within of the bowl is just not embellished, however the exterior and the rim have been ornamented with gold-foil-covered tin in a wide range of shapes.
“We predict the zig-zags across the base are waves and the lengthy triangles are oars,” Museum Wales representatives wrote. “The attention image protected sailors. The circles are the shields of its heroic voyagers.”
However a barely totally different interpretation was put ahead by nautical archaeologists in a 1980 examine of the bowl.
Relatively than seeing the concentric circles on the gold rim as shields, researchers argued that the closest parallel might be present in Bronze Age solar symbolism, such because the Nebra Sky Disc — which can additionally depict a ship — and the Nordic “Solar Chariot.” And as a substitute of the zigzag strains representing waves, the strains might depict the boat’s wood body displaying via the skins that had been stretched over it.
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Whatever the precise that means of the designs on the Caergwrle Bowl, its discovery in a boggy discipline close to the River Alun, which flows towards the Irish Sea, strongly suggests it was created as a illustration of a ship, based on Museum Wales. And contemplating many Bronze Age solar artifacts have been present in bogs as choices to the gods, the Caergwrle Bowl was doubtless meant to be an historic votive providing, maybe by sailors searching for a secure sea journey.
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