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Coins aml power in Late Iron Age Britain H

genders of the pardcipants are reversed from the Irish rite dcscribcd above. Herc a prize stallion is sacrificed after the king’s chief wife has undergone simulated mating with it. The word Asvamedha is also used as a speciiic name for a prince in the Rig-Veda who undertakes this rite (RV 5.28.4). This uncanny similarity acron centuries and thousands of mil es is madę even morę bizarre by a direct link between the word describing this rite and an inscription on a Gallic Iron Age coin.

The word Asvamedha is madę up of two parts: Asva-, which can be directly linked with the Indo-European *ekzoo-, or ‘horse’, and -medha, which relates to a cluster of words connected to ritual intoxicadon (Puhvel 1955). The word for the alcoholic drink ‘mead’ comes from this root, as does the name for the Irish goddess of sovercignty, ‘Medb’. Of morę interest to us is the inscription IIPOMIIDVOS (trans-literatcd as Epomeduos). This is found with slight variadons (sonietimes the lis are Es) on some of the silver coins of the Arvemi in first century BC central Gaul (Nash 1978, fig. 441). In effect it is the direct Gaulish equivalent of the Asvamedha persona! name, the IIPO being the signifier for ‘horse’ (hence the later goddess Epona), the -MIID- meaning ritual intoxicadon, and the -VOS ending signifying it as a personal name.

We have, therefore, a rite which manifests itself in two diverse literary sources, and which is placed within our own time-frame by an inscripdon. I do not wish to suggest that such a pracdce took place in Late Iron Age Britain, that would be too much of a jump. For the moment, I wish to suggest that we should be prepared to accept the central role that the horse might have taken in any ritual validating structures of authority. From here we must return to the archaeological evidence, to see what it can offer to sustain or reject this idea.

The faunal remains of horses from pre-Caesarean contexts in Britain do suggest they were treated and perceived as being different from other animals. At Gussage Ali Saints, a high-status site with a large number of horse trappings, there are butchery marks on horse bones, but nothing like as many as on cattle and other animals (Harcourt 1979)- There is also a virtual absence of neo-natal horse mortali-des in the Iron Age sample, which suggests that horses were not bred, but were captured and broken in from the wild. The idea of wild horses would suit the concept of the man/horse marriage being a metaphor for the union between man and naturę. The excepdonal acdvity of eating horse-flesh would correlate with the kind of image portrayed by the Irish sources. But Gussage Ali Saints is only one site; what do other sites suggets?

At Danebury virtually all the horse skeletal materiał also belonged to adults: only remains from two individuals had unfused bones, and these belonged to the late occupadon of the site. About two-thirds of the horses were małe. So, both in demographic structure and in sex rado, the horse bones were totally different to the cattle, sheep and pig assemblages from the site. The propordon of broken horse bones was also much smaller. Grant intcrpreted this as pardy a result of the age structure (there being morę fused bones which were less likely to break), and partly as a consequence of horse temains being placed in ‘special deposits’ with their fiesh stiU attached:

the lack of neonatal animals in all phases and of juvenile animals in all but the late phase, together with the predominance of males, suggests the possibility that these animals were not being bred at Danebury. The freąuency with which their bones occur in apparently ritual contexts also suggests that horses may have held a position of higher status than cattle, sheep or pigs, and were only exceptionally a source of food, perhaps in times of need or even to celebra te particular occasions.

(Grant 1991:476)

As at Gussage All Saints, the impression is given of wild horses being broken in, rather than of captive breeding populations. Nonetheless, reconstructing popula-tions from ritually deposited materiał (which madę up a fair proportion of the Danebury horse bones) is problematic, and this was acknowledged. A larger study of MIA ‘special deposits’ was undertaken by Hill (1995). All sorts of animal remains found their way in to pit fills; however, Hill was able to divide the materiał into three broad groups based upon their structured deposition. He believed that he could use this to approach an understanding of MIA man’s classificatory scheme of naturę. On the one side there were domesticated stock (cattle, sheep and pig), and on the other were wild animals, but three species formed a sep ara te category: dogs, horses and humans.

... we can understand the position of horse and dog in terms of their projrimity (metaphorical and real) to humanity (or at least one form of it), and also in terms of their relationship between domesdc and wild. However, it may be wrong to assume that because horse and dog held similar classificatory positions that it was due to identical reasons and qualides — Horses were probably brought to Wessex settlements from outside, sińce they do not appear to have been bred on Wessex sites but probably in semi-wild herds outside the Chalk Downlands akin to New Forest or moorland ponieś today. In contrast, dogs were raised on Iron Age settlements (neo-natal /

ynnng dog___are common). Both horses and dogs may have been

considered to have personalides, even to be subjects in some sense, but like humans both horses and dogs reąuire training, disciplining, to fulfil their roles or act as companions. Horses, pardcularły if raised in semi-wild herds, had to be broken and trained in order to be ridden or used to draw vehicles. It is this process of bringing in from the wild, taming, controlling, that madę them a potent metaphor to express ideas about culture and naturę within sodety. (Hill 1995:107-8)

Certainly in the Wessex Chalklands the archaeological evidence appcars to sup-port the idea of horses being wild animals, tamed from naturę, but treated with a reverence which most dosely oorrelated with human and dog remains, the only other social animals. Horse bones rarely showed butchery marks, suggesdng that such fiesh was only eaten on excepdonal occasions. These facts help us imagine that horses had a special place in the MIA belief system in this area. They also help us understand the