The Origin of the Coritani

Extract

It is well known from Ptolemy's Geography (11, ii, 10) that he places the tribe of the Parisii in east Yorkshire with its capital at Petuaria, the position of which has recently been established at Brough-on-the-Humber by an inscription found by Philip Corder, F.S.A. The obvious assumption that this tribe had migrated from the region of the Seine is supported by a comparison of their chariot-burials in the King's Barrow at Arras, at Hesslekew and at Seamer, all in east Yorkshire, with a chariot-burial at Nanterre near Paris of La Tène II age, where in both the British and Gaulish cases horses were buried with the chariot, contrary to the custom in the Marne chariot-burials. The Yorkshire graves are not anterior to 300 B.C., according to Déchelette, although the first migration of the tribe may possibly have taken place several generations earlier. In a grave at North Grimston, also in east Yorkshire, a short sword with bronze anthropoid handle (fig. 6) was found together with a typical La Tène II sword, and it is clearly closely related to an anthropoid sword found near Chaumont (Haute Marne) (fig. 5.) This Yorkshire example was probably a sword belonging to the earlier generation of the Parisii who migrated into Yorkshire presumably about 400 B.C. Two similar anthropoid short swords are known from the same part of Yorkshire, i.e. from Lord Londesborough's collection and from Clotherholme near Ripon.