A History of the World in 100 Objects - Dr Neil MacGregor [52]
What sort of object was it that these fragments had once composed? When had it been made? Who had worn it? As more archaeological discoveries were made in the nineteenth century, it became clear that the Mold burial dated to the newly identified Bronze Age – around 4,000 years ago. But it was not until the 1960s that the gold pieces were put together for the first time. All the conservators had were flattened fragments of paper-thin gold; some large, some small, with cracks, splits and holes all over them, altogether weighing about half a kilo, or just over a pound. It was like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, and solving it took nothing less than the relearning of ancient gold-working techniques that had been lost for millennia.
We don’t know who made this cape, but it’s clear that they were very highly skilled. These were the Cartiers or the Tiffanys of Bronze Age Europe. What kind of society could have produced such an object? Its sheer opulence and intricate details suggest that it must have come from a centre of great wealth and power, perhaps comparable to the contemporary courts of the pharaohs of Egypt or the palaces of Minoan Crete. And the careful drawing and planning necessary for such elaborate design suggests a long tradition of luxury production.
But archaeology has revealed no obvious palaces, cities or kingdoms anywhere in Britain at this time. There are the vast ceremonial monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury, and there are hundreds of stone circles and thousands of burial mounds which would have dominated the landscape, but little survives of any dwelling places, and what does remain indicates that these were extremely modest – thatched wooden houses that would normally suggest tribal farming societies, led by chiefs.
In the past, it was easy to dismiss British prehistoric societies as primitive people existing before recognizable civilizations emerged; and with few settlements and only burials to work from, it was often entirely reasonable to make such assumptions. But, partly through the discovery of rare objects like the Mold Gold Cape, in recent years we have come to see these societies very differently. For, while it’s unique in its complexity, the cape is just one example of several precious objects that tell us that societies in Britain must then have been extremely sophisticated, both in their manufacture and in their social structure. They also tell us, like the jade axe from Canterbury (Chapter 14), that these societies were not isolated but part of a larger European trade network. For example, the collection of small amber beads that was found with the cape must have come from the Baltic – many hundreds of miles away from Mold.
By studying these precious objects – gold, amber and, above all, bronze – we can track a web of trade and exchange that reaches from north Wales to Scandinavia, and even to the Mediterranean. We can also identify the source of the wealth which made this trade possible. The Mold Cape was buried relatively close to the largest Bronze Age copper mine in north-west Europe, the Great Orme. The copper from there, and tin from Cornwall, would have provided the ingredients for the vast majority of British bronze objects. A peak of activity at the Great Orme mine has been dated between 1900 BC and 1600 BC. Recent analysis of the gold-working techniques, and the decorative style of the cape, dates the burial to this very period. So although we can only guess, it’s likely that the wearers of this extraordinary object were in some way linked to the mine, which would have been a