Gold Lunula

What is a gold lunula?

A gold lunula is a type of Bronze Age collar or necklace named after its crescent moon shape. The culture of making gold lunulas was believed to have started in Ireland and the majority of known examples have been found there. Little is known for certain about them, so they are still quite mysterious objects.

Lunulae are made from beating out a gold ingot or rod into a thin sheet, which makes it lightweight, flexible and more comfortable to wear. They have never been found as part of a burial, which is unusual for objects from the Bronze Age. This suggests that they weren’t connected to a particular individual within the community but may have been collectively owned or related to a position or role. Experts think they may have been related to sun worship.

Gold lunulae are often deposited in or near water or boggy ground. Many of the examples from Ireland were found buried in peat bogs. They are often found in good condition which, alongside the cost and rarity of the gold material, suggests that they were treasured objects.

Why does the lunula look the way it does?

The Craven lunula was found near Grassington in 2023 in a stream. It was rolled up when first found, hence its wrinkled appearance. Several of the lunulae in the National Museum of Ireland’s collection were also rolled or suspected to have been rolled.

As well as being rolled up, much of the decoration on the lunula has been worn away. It may be that this was done intentionally as a way of ‘decommissioning’ it or for some other symbolic reason before it was deposited.

Although the rolling process has contributed to the shape of the lunula, it was probably still asymmetrical when it was new. This is very unusual for lunulae, which are usually meticulously symmetrical. However, there is another known uneven lunula, which was found in the Tarrant Valley, Dorset.

What does the lunula tell us about Craven in the Bronze Age?

There are several known Bronze Age sites in Craven, and in the Grassington area specifically. The High Close field systems above Grassington are thought to date from the Bronze Age and show that people have inhabited this area for a long time.

The Craven Museum collection holds several items from Hare Hill Ring Cairn, which is an Early Bronze Age site with other high status items such as jet jewellery. The lunula further adds to the narrative that well connected and wealthy people were living in Craven at this time.

Recent scientific studies into the gold used to make lunulae points to the fact that many of the lunulae found in Ireland may have been made using gold mined in Cornwall, even though there are gold deposits in Ireland. If the Craven lunula was made using techniques originating in Ireland, and possibly from gold mined elsewhere in Britain, it represents a spectacular insight into the way communities were connected 4,000 years ago.

The Craven lunula is only the second complete, or almost complete lunula found in the north of England, and they are very rare finds outside of Ireland.

There are often pre-conceived ideas about the people who lived in this period; that they were isolated and inward looking, but this amazing object shows us in many ways, why this was not the case.

Acknowledgements

The gold lunula was purchased with support from the Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, Art Fund and the Friends of Craven Museum.

www.vam.ac.uk/purchasegrantfund

https://www.artfund.org/professional/get-funding/programmes/acquisition-grants