Horse Tack from Stillfried

Bronze Age. 950 BC. Stillfried an der March, Lower Austria.

The bronze horse tack from Stillfried is some of the oldest metal tack found in Austria, and indicates links with the Eurasian steppes.

EASTERN INFLUENCE
The fertile loess soils at Stillfried an der March are ideal for agriculture, which is why people settled in the region in the sixth century BC. In the first millennium BC a fortified hill settlement was built on a bluff in the region of modern Stillfried, which soon developed into a location with flourishing textile crafts and high-quality metalworking. Its advantageous site directly on the most important trading route from north to south, today known as the Amber Road, favored extensive trading relations and contacts with foreign cultures.
This horse tack probably belonged to the trove from a rich funeral pyre in Stillfried, which was destroyed by earthworks in 1879. The tack was in a clay vessel, and was purchased in 1895 by the NHM. The bronze sidepieces, which prevent the snaffles from slipping in the mouth, terminate in horseheads.
Similar tack is known from several graves of the late Bronze Age cemetery at Stillfried. The fact that it is made of metal in a region where previously tack was made exclusively from bone, and the specific decorative style indicate contact with the nomads from the eastern steppes.
Mounted warriors had high social status in the farming culture of the Bronze Age. Until the first century BC, horse tack is found only in graves of the upper class. In central Europe at that time, only the leaders of war bands were mounted. Mounted armies only reached these latitudes with the Romans in the first century AD.