A Late Bronze Age Hoard of Fragmented Flesh-hooks in Normandy

A hoard consisting only of fragments from one or several flesh-hooks was found in 2012 in Normandy by a metal detectorist. The fragments have made it possible to identify at least one object belonging to the class 3 defined by S. Needham and S. Bowman, and similar to the one found in Dunaverney, Ulster. The ornamental bird models are not corvids or palmipeds, as on the Dunaverney example, but more likely wood pigeons. A Late Bronze Age III date has been put forward for this hoard. This raises the question of the symbolic meaning of the various animal figurines, either birds or quadrupeds, decorating flesh-hooks and articulated roasting spits from the Late Atlantic Bronze Age as a possible ethnic or lineage identity marker.