Horses, Wagons, and Chariots

Abstract

It is hard to imagine the Iron Age without horses, as they played an important part in identity formation and status expression of Iron Age elites. This article illustrates their role as riding, pack, and draught animals in peace and war, as useful companions for hunting and partners in sport, as aids in agriculture, providers of milk and, in the end, meat and hides. Four-wheeled ceremonial wagons and two-wheeled chariots were status symbols in funerary and ritual contexts, and some Iron Age communities in central and eastern Europe even buried horses. Images of horses and their riders, and of gods and goddesses connected with horses further demonstrate their role in Iron Age religion across the continent. This chapter describes some of the regional patterns of how humans engaged with horses in Iron Age Europe.

Social Relations, Deprivation and Violence at Schleinbach, Lower Austria. Insights from an Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Early Bronze Age Human Remains

“…2 Rebay-Salisbury et al 2018. burial pit 60 as well as 1981/Grube 3 was revealed by proteomic analysis.…”

British Iron Age ‘Horn Caps’: Putting the Cart Before the Horse?

“…While horses can be ridden using a halter rather than a bridle, spurs also become more common at this time. As there is little evidence for saddles (Schönfelder 2002, 259; Rebay‐Salisbury 2018, 5), it is unlikely that horn caps were saddle ornaments. The evidence from Britain points to three‐link bits being made for paired draught animals because only one of the two rein rings of a bit is usually decorated, presumably the outer‐facing one (Macdonald 2007, 70).…”

“…It is long been known that horses were used as markers of social status throughout the European Iron Age (e.g. Frie 2018; Kmeťová 2018; Rebay‐Salisbury 2018). Reasons for this include the cost of maintaining horses, and if they were not bred by their owners, the cost of obtaining them.…”