Horse-Shaped Cheek Pieces with Bridle Bit and Rings

In an elaborate horse bit of this sort, the horse would have held the connecting bars in its mouth, while the horse-shaped cheek pieces would have been on either side of its mouth, and straps would have been passed through the large rings. The cheek pieces are highly stylized, each depicting a large horse carrying a smaller horse on its back. The large horse has a broad, flat face, with the eyes rendered as small protuberances on either side of the head, and the mouth is represented as slightly open. The ears are high pointed triangles, separated from the head. The mane is a high curving crest, perhaps reminiscent of the helmet crests of Italic warriors (1). An angled bar juts out from the bottom of the mane to connect to the body at slightly less than a right angle. The body is a long bar, with a central circular opening for the bridle bit rods to pass through. It widens slightly at the rump; the tail is a thin curving bar connected to the back hooves. The forelegs and hind legs are rendered together in two bars tapering down to the hooves, which are circles. An elaborate, curving bar connects the front and back hooves, rising up in the center where another thin bar connects it to the central ring in the body of the large horse. Two small, stylized animals appear facing each other on the bottom bar. The small horse (4.2 cm long) that is standing on the larger horse resembles the larger animal in most respects, except that it has fewer details, a proportionately shorter body, and larger rump. It is attached to the larger horse via a vertical bar from the muzzle to the central ring, the fore hooves, hind hooves, and tail. F.-W. von Hase ascribes this piece to the second variant of his Volterra type (2), dated to the Early Iron Age. Many examples of horse-shaped cheek pieces and bridle bits include decorative pendants, attached to the various loops on the lower bar, which do not appear here. Horses were prestige animals, and elements of their tack could be quite elaborate (3). Zoomorphic cheek pieces, depicting horses and moufflons, were also used in the ancient Near East during the Iron Age (4). NOTES: 1. See 1977.216.2310. 2. The other objects of this type are all very close to the Harvard piece, and some are likely from the same workshop, although none of these have known findspots; see F.-W. von Hase, Die Trensen der Früheisenzeit in Italien, Prähistorische Bronzefunde 16.1 (Munich, 1969) 13, nos. 47-52, pls. A and 5. 3. See ibid., 53-56, for a discussion of known find contexts for horse-shaped cheek pieces in general, which are most often found in graves, sometimes with prestige goods. 4. See 1962.68 (horse), 1956.7.A, and 1956.7.B (moufflons). Lisa M. Anderson