I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM
Rhyd-y-gors Shield
▶ Listen · narrated
A copper-alloy sheet seven-tenths of a millimetre thick has survived from the late Bronze Age. That alone is reason enough to look closely at Rhyd-y-gors.
At a glance
- Date
- 12th to 10th century BC
- Material
- Copper alloy
- Diameter
- 667 mm (26.26 in)
- Thickness
- 0.7 mm (0.03 in)
- Weight
- 1929 grams (68 oz)
- Museum number
- 1873,0210.2
Look closer
Completely flat
The shield is completely flat. It is not dished or bowl-shaped. At 667 mm (26.26 in) across, that plane surface is a deliberate form: a wide disc rather than a curved board. Flatness is part of what you see before any question of use arises.
Sheet, not plate
The metal is only 0.7 mm (0.03 in) thick. That is a true sheet. The object still weighs 1929 grams (68 oz) because the disc is large, but the material itself is fine enough that the whole shield reads as a skin of copper alloy stretched to a circle, not as a solid slab.
A named type
It is classed as a Yetholm-type shield. The name comes from another find that defined the group, not from this Welsh example. Type names sort objects by shared form across Britain and Ireland; they do not name a workshop, a maker, or a single year of manufacture.
The story
The Rhyd-y-gors Shield is a large copper-alloy shield of Yetholm type from the late Bronze Age. It was found in Wales and is now in the British Museum, registered as 1873,0210.2.
Its measurements are plain and hard to set aside. The disc is 667 mm (26.26 in) across, completely flat, and only 0.7 mm (0.03 in) thick. It weighs 1929 grams (68 oz). A circle of that diameter beaten to that thinness is not a casual product. Copper alloy had to be obtained, melted, and worked into a wide, even sheet that could hold its form without tearing. The result is fragile by later standards of armour, yet substantial enough in mass and span to have been a serious object in its own world.
Who made it cannot be named. No signature or workshop mark is recorded on the piece, and the surviving facts do not preserve the identity of any smith or community. What can be said with more confidence is narrower: the shield belongs to a recognised class, the Yetholm type, known from a small number of comparable finds in Britain and Ireland. Classification by type groups objects that share form and technology. It does not collapse them into one maker or one event.
How the shield was found is equally spare in the record used here. The discovery location is Rhyd-y-gors, also referred to as Rhos-Rydd and less commonly Glan-rhos, near Blaenplwyf in Wales. The date of discovery, the condition in which the metal lay, and the precise circumstances of recovery are not established in these facts. The secure points are the findspot, the physical description, the type, and the later museum number.
The date assigned to the shield is the twelfth to the tenth century BC. That is a range of roughly two centuries, not a single calendar year. The dating rests on the type and on the broader chronology of late Bronze Age metalwork, not on an inscription or a fully published sealed context in the sources at hand.
So the object stands as a measured survival: Welsh in findspot, copper alloy in material, Yetholm in type, flat and extremely thin in form. What it refuses to supply — a named maker, a blow-by-blow find story, a fixed year — is as much part of the lesson as the figures that can be stated.
Why it mattered then
In its own moment, a copper-alloy disc of this size was not ordinary household metal. Producing a sheet nearly seventy centimetres across and only seven-tenths of a millimetre thick required skill, fuel, and a decision to put a large quantity of alloy into a single portable form. Whether such shields were carried in fighting, shown in ceremony, or deposited in the ground as gifts or offerings cannot be settled from the facts given here. The investment itself is clearer than the use. Someone organised labour and metal for an object that was wide, thin, and complete as a circle. That choice belonged to late Bronze Age communities in Britain and Ireland who already knew how to work sheet to a high standard. The Rhyd-y-gors example is one instance of that choice, fixed to a Welsh place-name.
Why it matters now
The shield still matters because large late Bronze Age copper-alloy shields are rare, and each intact example anchors the Yetholm type in real measurements and a real findspot. Diameter, thickness, weight and flatness can be compared across the group without guesswork. For anyone standing before it, the object is also a reminder that sophisticated sheet-metal work was made in the British Isles well before the Iron Age, and that Wales is part of that evidence. The British Museum number ties the piece to a nineteenth-century register, so it carries a second history of collection and custody as well as its first life as a made thing. Sparse as the find story is, the survival of the metal is not sparse at all.
The surprising detail
The shield is completely flat and only 0.7 mm (0.03 in) thick, yet it weighs 1929 grams (68 oz). Extreme thinness and nearly two kilograms of mass sit together because the disc is so large. That pairing is easy to miss if one hears only “thin” or only “heavy.” Both are true at once, and both are measured.
What is disputed
The findspot is recorded under more than one name — Rhyd-y-gors, Rhos-Rydd, and less commonly Glan-rhos — near Blaenplwyf, Wales. The exact circumstances of discovery are not established in the facts available here. The date is a range, the twelfth to the tenth century BC, not a single year. Maker and original use remain unknown.
How it got here
The shield is held by the British Museum under inventory number 1873,0210.2. The number indicates registration in 1873. Further detail of acquisition or earlier ownership is not supplied in the sources used for this lesson.
Remember this
A Welsh Yetholm-type shield: 667 mm (26.26 in) across, 0.7 mm (0.03 in) thick, copper alloy, twelfth to tenth century BC — rare sheet, sparse find story.
Test yourself
The Rhyd-y-gors Shield is completely flat and only 0.7 mm (0.03 in) thick, yet nearly two kilograms in weight. Why do those facts make simple claims about its original use harder to defend, not easier?
Because a sheet that thin and flat sits poorly with the image of a sturdy battlefield board, while its diameter and mass still mark it as a major object. Without fuller find circumstances or recorded wear in the facts at hand, form alone will not decide between combat, display, or deliberate deposition. The measurements open the question; they do not close it.
Go deeper
Image: Titus Gold, CC BY-SA 4.0. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source.