4

r

BRITISH MUSEUM

Celtic

1 LArtIan Stead

/

vir '

Boston Public Library

Celti1C

ArtIn Britain before

the Roman ( onquesl

I. in s

I larvard l 'niversirj Pi

( ambridgc, Maisachusetti

t 1985, 1996 The Trusteesof the British Museum

First published 1985

Second edition 1996

BR BR

NK6443.S71996

Library of Congress Catalog

Card Number: 96-77539

ISBN 0-674-10472-2

Designed by Carroll AssociatesTypeset in Van DijckPrinted in China by Imago

Jacket illustration The central

panel of the Battersea shield,

raised in repousse and with red

'enamel' decoration.

Right Bronze boar figurines:the three on the left are from

Hounslow and the other (height

32 mm^ is from Camerton.

Contend

Introduction 4

l Metalworking tc< hniq

\rt M\lrs 20

3 Dress and jeweller}

4 I [earth and home 52

5 Weapons and armoui

( hariota and harness

7 Ritual

Further reading 94

Acknov ledgemeni

InJi

Introduction

1 Air photograph of the settlementat Gussage All Saints in the course

of excavation. Ditches define the

settlement (c.100 x 120 m) andsome of the buildings; the other

prominent features are pits, one ofwhich produced an important

collection of metal-working debris.

THIS BOOK is concerned with the British Iron Age, the five hun-dred years or so before the birth of Christ, when England, Walesand part of Scotland were inhabited bv the Celtic-speaking

Britons. Their language, British, was spoken but never written, so it ishardly surprising that their written history is brief, comprising a few ref-erences in Greek and Latin mainly by writers who knew very little aboutthose remote islands at the edge of the world. But three Latin writers didvisit Britain, and the earliest and most important was Julius Caesar, whoorganised military expeditions here in 55 and 54 bc. Before Caesar histo-rv has little to say about Britain, and not a single Briton is known bvname. A little can be gleaned from accounts of their relatives, the Gauls,where one of the most important sources is Posidonius T 35-51 bc), aGreek ethnographer whose lost work was used in the first centurv bc bvDiodorus Siculus, Strabo and even Caesar. But most information aboutthe Britons has to come from the discipline of the prehistorian. Bv the

studv of artefacts, excavation, field-work and aerial photographv massesof facts can be accumulated about certain aspects of their life; but in the

Introduction

absence of the rutin word much about the Britona will never be know n.Without chronicle* .1 time w ale haa to be constructed, and this is .1

laborious process bedei illed by uncertainties. Modern techniques are ollittle help: ( arbon 14 dating for instance, which is vital lor the earlierstages of prehistory, ia of little use t be between 155 and 2 n em . but t lu-

chances of the true date falling within these limits is only 68 per cent.

I lu- margin of error is huge, and such dates arc- in any case only rarely

associated with significant artefacts. Dendrochronology, the counting ol

tree-rings, is .1 far more exact technique: it has shown, tor instance, that

.1 wooden shield found near the edge of Lake Neuchatel in Switzerlandwas shaped from .1 tree felled in 22' em . Hut well-preserved wood survivesonly in exceptional circumstances. For the material in this hook chronol-

ogy is derived from artefacts their typology and associations.I he first attempts to construct .1 chronology tor European prehis-

tory were made in the nineteenth century and were based on the materi-als used Tor basic tools: three Ages were defined, ol Stone, Broti/e and

Iron. The latest, the Iron Age, was subdivided in 1872 into two periodsnamed alter important assemblages recently unearthed. I he first tookits name from a huge cemetery near the salt mines at I [allstatt in I'pperAustria, and the second was called l.a 1 ene after a site on the shores olLake Neuchatel, where an impressive collection of objects had beenfound when the water-levels of the .Swiss lakes were re-aligned. I he twonames are applied because, in a very general way, those sites producedartefacts typical of their respective periods: they are no more than type-

sites, and there is no suggestion that the cultures they represent origi-

nated at those sites, still less that those names would have meant any-thing at all to the peoples thus labelled by archaeologists.

The l.a I ene period, which is the mam concern of this book, wassubdivided into Early, Middle and Late as long ago as lXXiS on the basisof the typologies of brooches, swords .md scabbards, which throughout( t-lt ic Europe developed along roughly similar lines. At the turn of thecentury two parallel classifications were established: La I ene I - 1 1 1 in

France, and La Tene A-D in Germany With various sub-divisions thesetwo systems still operate today But relative chronology is not an end initself: it provides .1 framework to w Inch absolute dates must be attached.Although dendrochronology is already of some help here, it has vet tosupersede traditional approaches which rely on dates given b) contactswith the literate civilisations l Greece and Italy Greek and Latin his-tories, the occasional discovery ol Greek and Italian objects in ( eltic

I, and even the odd ( eltic object m a classical context enableabsolute dates to be applied to ( eltic antiquities. I he resulting chronol-

I ene period can be stated only in the most general ofterms La Tene 1 4S :^n (l , .11 250-100 a and 111 100 em to theRoman conquest).

the centuries Iron Age artefacts must have been found andrded wherever the ground was tilled or otherwise disturbed. M\ tin-

eighteenth century; with the industrial and agricultural revolutions, the

Celtic Art

ort iron sword with bronze

handle and bronze scabbard, found

in the River Witham, but now lost.This illustration was published by

Franks in Horae Ferales ("7563).Full length said to be 380 mm.

3 The Witham shield as illustratedby Franks in Horae Ferales

(7S63J). This illustration showsclearly the outlines of a boar

which once decorated the shield.

Length 1.13 m.

N?

pace of those disturbances and consequentdiscoveries increased and coincided with agrowing interest in history and antiquities.One of the earliest recorded Iron Age artefacts inBritain is a Celtic bronze carnyx (trumpet) - stillthe most complete example known - foundwhen the River Witham in Lincolnshire wasbeing dredged in 1768. It was acquired bv SirJoseph Banks, a local worthy and a scholarwith an international reputation, who alloweda zealous scientist to destroy it in order to

determine its composition. Other antiquitiesdredged trom the Witham have also been lost,including a remarkable short sword in a bronzescabbard: the hilt is of bronze and its pommelwas represented (perhaps misrepresented) as akind of Lincoln imp [2]. In the eighteenth cen-tury some antiquities tound their way into cab-inets ot curiosities, but in the nineteenth cen-tury collectors took to the field: in 1815 theRevd E.W Stillingfleet 'joined a party, whichwas formed for the purpose of opening a groupof barrows' at Arras (East Yorkshire) and cameacross Iron Age skeletons with some impressivegrave-goods. Bv the middle of the century a con-siderable number ot Iron Age antiquities were known, mainlv chancefinds, including some remarkable pieces dredged from the Thames andthe Witham. Many were published bv A.W. Franks in an outstanding con-tribution to Horae Ferales (1863) [2, 3, 5]: Franks saw the British antiqui-ties in a European context, and was ahead of his Continental colleaguesin recognising them as Celtic. From the end of the nineteenth centuryarchaeological excavations became more sophisticated and recoveredartefacts in contexts that enabled them to provide ever more informationabout the past. In recent years the hobby of metal detecting has pro-duced a huge haul of artefacts, including one or two really fine pieces [4].

For every metal object that was buried, either deliberately or bychance, there must have been many more that were used until they werebroken, worn or obsolete and then recycled. The surviving sample isminute. Caesar mentioned 4,000 chariots retained by the British kingCassivellaunus, and each of those chariots would have been drawn by twohorses, each with a horse-bit and with shared harness using five terrets(rein-rings). Of those 8,000 horse-bits and 20,000 terrets is there a sin-gle one in our museums today? Probably not. Even the small sample now

available for study may be distorted, because objects that were deliber-ately buried may well have been specially selected and need not be typi-cal of the objects of the day With pottery the problems are not somarked: pots are fragile and readily broken, but once they are buriedeither complete or in sherds they are well-nigh indestructible. As well as

metal and pottery a vast range of organic materials such as wood, skin

Introduction

and fabrics was much used by the Celts, as by all primitive peoples. Thesematerials gradually deteriorate in use and only a small percentage wouldbe buried; unless they were deposited in an exceptional environmenttheir deterioration would then be accelerated. In our climate only water-logged conditions will preserve organic materials, and the sample avail-able for studv is negligible.

Most Celtic art takes the form of abstract decoration on func-tional objects, which would have appealed to the Celt because of its mean-ing or usefulness but which is also in tune with current taste. Sensitiveand appreciative modern writers have made valiant efforts to interpret itsmeaning, but the imagination of modern people is an unreliable guide tothe aims, beliefs and feelings of their primitive forebears. ( )nlv the Celticartists and their patrons could explain Celtic art, and as they never setpen to paper their knowledge died with them. This book attempts toapproach the subject on fairly solid ground, starting with techniques ofmetalwork (because most surviving examples are of metal , then follow-ing the development of certain patterns, and finally giving examples ofdecorated artefacts used bv the Britons in various walks of life.

4 A small bronze booked bladewith j fine decorated handle.The decoration is in the

'Witbam-Wandswortb Style'(see p. 29), and the overall shapeis comparable with motifs on the

Wandsworth round-boss (fig. 80).Found by a metal detectorist at StStephen (Herts). Length 110 mm.

5 Augustus Wollaston Franks

(1826-97) joined the BritishMuseum's staff in 1851, wasKeeper of the Department ofBritish and Medieval Antiquities1866-96 and one of the Museum'sgreatest benefactors.

Chapter One|Metalworking .techniques

6 The central panel of the

Battersea shield, raised in repousse

and with red 'enamel' decoration.

Diameter 290 mm.

BRONZE HAD already been worked in Britain for over a millenni-um before the Iron Age began but it was still of prime impor-tance, particularly for decorative work. Most soils are gentler to

bronze than to iron, and apart from a usuallv greenish patina much ot itdiffers little from the day when it was lost or discarded. Bronze is analloy of copper and tin, and judging from analyses it was carefully mixedto obtain a precise balance between the two. Copper was mined in the

Metalworking techniques

south-west ol England, in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and Cornish tinwas well known in the ancient world and attracted explorers from as farafield as Greece. Bui foreign ores were also used in Britain, for ( aesarrecords thai bronze was imported and analyses have shown thai tinspractice went back into the Bronze Age. Sheet bronze w.is made In castingan ingot and beating it into .1 thin sheet; then it could be cut and de s

rarel) used technique |s|.Surface decoration was sometimes inscribed or scratched using .1

fine-pointed scriber to produce .1 sharp line. I his il was used alone insome designs, bui in others il was employed ir the preliminary mappinginn. More pronounced lines could have been engraved with a graver,which is pushed over the surface and held in the fingers rather .is onewould hold .1 pencil; .1 somewhat similar effect is produced by chasing, inwhich .1 tracer is hammered forward across the metal. It the marks arcwill preserved il ma) be possible to identify the tools thai made themand in some instances it has been possible to follow the development ofthe tool in the course of the work such .is the stages ai which its edgew.is chipped .nul subsequent!) resharpened [9], Unfortunately the finetools themselves are difficult to identify. More suhst.uiti.il tools arc easi-er to recognise and a collection from a grave at Whitcombe Dorset com-prised an mm hammer-head and file .is well as a chalk disc which couldhave served as the flywheel for a pump-drill. Iron files can sometimes beidentified with the aid of radiography, and examples from Fiskerton

,H ( Ipposiu

at Rat

1 colour )/'

Celtic Art

1 1 The end of a bronze scabbard

from Bugtborpe (East Torks^.The sheet bronze front-plate,

decorated with a graver or

tracer, is attached to an iron

back-plate by the binding strips of

a chape, also cut from sheet bronxe.

The chape-end has been cast-on to

the binding strips and its decoration

is part of the lost-wax casting.

Width of chape-end 43 mm.

(Lines) and Gussage All Saints (Dorset) hadspecks of bronze in the gro6ves, showing thatthev had been used by bronze-workers.

Sometimes the bronze-smith tried outthe effects of a tool on part of an object thatwould be hidden from view. On the Birdlipmirror, for instance, there are practice tool-

marks in the area subsequently covered bv thebronze handle. Similarly a design had beenroughlv worked on the inner face of a scab-bard-plate found in the River Bann iniXorthern Ireland. Bone would have been anideal medium on which to sketch designsintended for bronze, and a collection of bone[lakes with compass-drawn ornament fromLough Crew (Co. Meath) seems to have beenused in this wav. Their context is curious,because thev were found in a tomb whichwould then have been some 3,000 years old.Among the Lough Crew finds was what maywell have been a pair of compasses (now lost)and it seems reasonable to interpret the col-lection as workshop debris. Compasses wereundoubtedly used bv some Celtic artists andvery complex designs were constructed. Detailedstudv of the decoration on the back of theHolcombe (Devon) mirror has shown that it couldhave been formed entirely from compass arcs, andsome grooves on its surface can only have been made bv heavy scratchingwith compasses. Designs could have been laid out directly on the bronze

by first coating it with a thin layer ol wax and using something like atransparent slice of horn below the centre-point to ensure that it did not

mark the metal surface.Another way of producing decorative bronze-work was bv lost-wax

casting. The objeel was first modelled in wax, and sometimes elabor-ated decorated at this stage. I hen the mould was made bv encasing theobject in clay, heating to melt and remove the wax, and firing to hardenthe clay. Bronze of a slightly different allov from sheet bronze (lead was

added to increase the fluidity), poured into the clav mould, would takeon the exact form of the modelled wax. The fired clav would have to bebroken open so the mould could never be used again. Finally the bronzeobject was finished bv filing, polishing and perhaps by the addition ofmore detail using the tools already described tor decorating sheet bronze.

This method of production must have created a huge quantity of brokenmoulds, but very few have been recognised. The best collection was dis-covered in [Mi 209 on the settlement at Gussage All Saints (Dorset) (seefig. 1 where more than 7,0(1(1 fragments of moulds had been discarded

[10]. The Gussage bronze-smith made harness and chariot fittings, andhe would have had a workshop on the site but nothing of it survived: it

12

Mctalworking techniques

is know n onl) because some i i he debris w as swept up and dumped in .1pit. Among the rubbish were some i the t < < >K used for modelling tin-wax. Ironical!) these fragile bone implements are Mill in perfect condi(Km, whereas the hard steel tools used b) the same 1 raftsman have beenreduced to \ irtuall) unrecognisable lengths of corrosion products.

( ,i>i bronze .is used to make some complete objc< i s, but ii .is also.1 component i more complex objects. Sword scabbards were sometimesmade t bronze: i" scabbard plates would be cui from the sheet, onewrapped round the edges of the other, and their lower puis secured by .1sheet bronze chape |1 1|. Bui the very end l the chape w.is usuall) cast-on t the frame. I he bronze-smith must have worked in < lose co operationwitli the blacksmith sometimes perhaps the same craftsman carried ouiboth trades in the same workshop. Pil 209 ai Gussage All Saints included

scale produced b) forging iron as well as moulds tor casting bronze. Bronzew.is cast-on t mm to make vehicle fittings and harness |12|, and some-times iron u.in covered with bronze, either dipped in molten bronze or. .is from .1 cart-burial .it kirkbumwith the rings ol many horse-bits, encased in sheel bronze. / i Tori / 1 120 mm.

\ir 11I lincb-pins vritb iron

thanks and cast brotnu terminals,

13

Celtic Art

13 Some of the blacksmiths'' tools

from the IVdltham Abbey ho.tongs, anvil, head of a sledge-

hammer and file. The anvil and thehead of the sledge-hammer have beengrooved so that they could be used as

swages. The file is 232 mm long

14 Opposite page Head of aniron fire-dog found at Baldock; the

complete fire-dog is 700 mm high.

Iron was first worked in Britain in the seventh century B< . Morewidespread and plentiful, and therefore cheaper, iron ores were usuallyobtained from shallow opencast workings in close proximity to the wood-land needed to provide charcoal tor smelting. One of the earliest iron-producing sites in Britain might well have been at Brooklands, near\Ve\bridge 'Surrey ), where a well-known deposit of iron ore was stillbeing worked in the nineteenth century. The date of the Iron Age work-ings at Brooklands is difficult to establish because the only associated

artefacts are imprecisely dated, but it is tempting to link them with aHallstatt C bronze bucket found only 100 m away. Remains of iron-smelting furnaces excavated at Brooklands are no more than a simplebowl which would have been surmounted by a fired clay shaft: there wasno provision for tapping the slag which would have collected in the bot-tom, so that the furnace had to be dismantled to remove both bloom and

14

^ .'*.

4 / % '

Celtic Arr

-'

-

-

~0:

-" "We ' :^

' 1 ^WTjM

mm,;

i

\,hmf^ *v >

a*

-- ft

Celtic Art

which bars and rods could be bent) and were also grooved for roundingmetal rods. The rods would be shaped between an upper and a lowergroove, or swage: in the Waltham Abbey collection the anvils served asthe lower swages and the head of the sledge-hammer had been groovedto double as an upper swage. Multi-purpose tools like these suggest thatthe blacksmith was itinerant because he seems to have been anxious tokeep the number of heavv tools to a minimum. Ancient tools are bv nomeans common because thev would have been highlv prized and passedfrom one generation to another, and when worn out thev would havebeen recvcled. Unassociated iron tools are difficult to date because thesame forms remain in use tor centuries^ so most blacksmiths' tools of theIron Age are known onlv trom deliberate deposits in hoards or graves.The Iron Age blacksmith also had hammers, set-hammers, hot-chisels,and slices 'a long poker-like tool w ith a spatulate end used for controllingthe hot fuel).

One of the finest products of the Iron Age blacksmith is the fire-dog, and the head from one found at Baldock (Herts) is an especiallyimpressive piece of work [14]. The tall upright has been bent outwardsat the top to form the basis of the head, from which the snout has beenforged, the nostrils punched and the mouth and prominent jaw-line chis-elled. The horns would have been forged separately, welded on top of thehead, and their ends shaped into protruding eves. Iron could also beengraved or chased, provided the graver or tracer was hard enough, butsurface corrosion has lett us tew good examples.

Of other metals silver, listed bv Strabo as a British export, wassometimes alloyed with gold but was rarely used as a predominant metal.The most ancient silver artefact from Britain is a finger-ring from ParkBrow ^Sussex) belonging to a distinctive type found mainly inSwitzerland and dating from the third century BC. Otherwise untilrecently the earliest silver objects from the British Iron Age were coinsand a few brooches dating from the second half of the first century B( .

But in 1990 the picture was transformed when hvc hoards of torquesburied about 70 i were found at Snettisham Norfolk : they contained

1 1 kilos of silver and a similar quantity of gold [ 15]. Silver occurs natu-rallv as an alloy of gold, and when it is a significant component the alloyis known as electrum, but at Snettisham some torques were relativelypure, w ith alloys including up to 89 per cent silver.

dold was used much more frequently than silver, and had a muchlonger history: the earliest gold artefacts in Britain date back to the sec-ond millennium BC. Always valuable, gold objects suffered especiallyfrom recycling and many a work of art must have been consigned to thecrucible to produce Britain's gold coinage. Alone among the metals, golddoes not corrode and comes out of the ground as bright as when it waslast seen in the Iron Age. Although thev would have worked it in thesame way as bronze, the Britons hardly ever used gold tor brooches, and

onlv very rarely for bracelets, but gold torques feature prominentlyamong British antiquities.

In the first century B( British metalworkers experimented withmeans of making base metals appear more valuable. Bronze was some-

18

Mctalworking techniques

times plated widi silver-copper alloy to give it the appearance ! silver, 17 Brom fitting

and sometimes gilded by coating it with an amalgam ! gold and mercur) kcorated with red cbamptand then heating t drive off excess mercury /. from the Polden llilh board.

Metalwork, especially bronze, was occasionally enhanced by the Length 151 mm.

addition t coloured ornaments. Precious coral from the Mediterraneanwas applied in the form of knobs or snips to .1 variety ol objects, oftenattached by bronze puis or runs. Some brooches from the Yorkshiregraves have huge amounts ol coral, tin- colour of which has been reducedfrom pink to white as a result of centuries m the earth sec- fig 40 . TheWitham shield lias knobs of coral thai still retain their original, veryJeep, colour |lo]. ( )n tin- ( onnneiit coral is rarely used alter I. a Tcne I,but in Britain it continued into La Tene III: indeed coral in tin- PoldenHills Somerset hoard shows that ii was still employed at the time ofthe Roman conquest

. Shell, amber and stone ornament s are also know n,but the most common alternative to coral was red '_;lass or 'enamel'. Theglass usually has an opaque 'sealing-wax red' colour which is given bycrystals oi cuprous oxide. It was used in small lumps which could be softened h\ heating and then shaped into small pellets to be attached b\bronze pins; secured onto roughly keyed surfaces; or held by cut outbronze frames sec fig By the first century u> champleve enamel wasmade m some quant it v: with this technique a slightly sunken field is pre-pared either in the original casting or In subsequent cutting, and theenamel is applied as .1 powder and fused in an oven. I he effect is to pro-

1 ll.it field of enamel whose surface is flush with that of tin- Mirrounding metal |17|. Britain was famous for its enamel work, asPhilostratUS recorded carb m the third century U>: 'they S3) that the

rians who live in the Ocean pour [these] colours on to heatedbronze and thai the) adhere-, and grow hud as stone, keeping tlu- designsthat are made m them'

/^

Chapter Two|Art Styles

INSULAR CELTIC (or La Tene) art must be studied in a Europeancontext, for in the early stages Britain is an outlying proyince of theContinental tradition. But from the third century bc British art

recei\es a new impetus, takes its own original direction, and its master-pieces outclass the products of Continental workshops. La Tene art wasfirst classified by Paul Jacobsthal [18], a distinguished classical archaeol-ogist who left Nazi Germany in the 1930s and settled in England. Hepublished a detailed study of Continental Celtic art in 1944, but henever completed his work on the British material. On the Continent herecognised three styles: an 'Early Style' strongly influenced by Greek artbut with some 'Oriental' and native traits; followed by the'Waldalgesheim Style', named after a rich grave in the Rhineland; andthen two contemporary sub-styles - the 'Sword Style' (though decorat-

1

8

Paul Ferdinand Jacobsthal

(1 880- 1 95 T) . Professor ofClassical Archaeology at MarburgUniversity 1912-35.

19 Opposite page Bronzechape on a sheath from

Wandsworth, a lost-irax casting

featuring concentric circles. Length

of chape 66 mm.

20

ibbards and not swords and the (Plasti< Style'.His study ended within La I ene II and did not extendto the Roman conquest. Jacobsthal's classification isvilli iimJ.iinrm.il, although subsequent scholars haveindicated us imperfections and suggested improveHunts. For the 'Earl) Style' more material is no*know n from Eastern I urope, the geometric native ele-ment is iimrc- pronounced, and the precise source ofthe 'orientalising' influence is unclear its maininspiration might well have been the imagination ofthe Celtic artist

. The 'Waldalgesheim Style',once seen .is the creation of .1 Waldalgesheimmaster, (lows readily from the Early Style ofeastern France, though there may be furtherinfluence from Italy Many more examples ofthe Sword Style .ire now known. .1 'SwissSword stxlc-' h. is been distinguished from the'Hungarian Sword style', and there has beenan increase in the number of decorated scab-hards from France.

British Celtic art was classified by |.M.de Navarro, a Cambridge archaeologist, in ashort paper that started life as one of a series

o! popular lectures before being broadcast andeventual!) published. Jacobsthal's three styles

were numbered and de Navarro added a Style IV toCover British masterpieces of the third century i;< .

Apparent!) ).u bsthal disapproved of this simplification, but it doeshave the merit ot providing a framework to guide the general readertlr ough the complexities of La Tene art. .\ classification related to the( ontincntal scheme but at the same time distinct from it is ideal becauseeven in the early stages the British material seems to have been home-made, and in the second and first centuries u< it is only remotely linkedto ( ontincntal developments. The numbered sequence has the merit ofclarity, and recent research confirms its validity as a relative chronology,but the use of the word 'style' creates problems: it would be more accu-rate to label the development in Stages rather than Styles.

Stage I. Jacobsthal's 'Early Style', is represented by geometricHallstatt elements and designs ultimate!) derived from (.reek art, butthere are none of the ( ontmental 'orientalism...' human masks and ani-mal figures. 1 he Hallstatt designs are extremely simple, such as strings

-s hatched triangles, lozenges and compass drawn arcs and dots,engraved or chased on bronze or iron artefacts dating from the fourthCentury and the vnd of the fifth centur\ i;tlll

lotui prr.ili mi .in mpo\

motijEcury-sur-C

St I'ul ; I

from Cerrig-y-Drudion

21

Celtic Art

2 1 Part of the decoration on

the flange of a bronze helmet

from Cerrig-y-Drudion Qee alsofig. 20y a version of the palmetteflanked by lotus petals. U

of flange 28 mm.

patterns, but in eastern France similar motifs were linked to form con-tinuous flowing designs that influenced British Celtic art. A design basedon a floral frieze of palmettes flanked bv lotus flowers was especially pop-ular [20], with elaborate variations engraved on helmets, harness andeven on an imported Etruscan flagon, objects that have survived becausethev were deliberately buried, in graves. In Brittanv similar motifs were

used on pots. Work in this style is represented in Britain, and it may havebeen widespread, but only a little early metalwork survives becausegraves of the period are rare and this form of ornament was never usedon British pottery. ( me of the few burials with metal grave-goods, foundin a stone cist at Cerrig-y-Drudion (Clwvd), had been robbed and exca-vation in 1 924 revealed onlv broken fragments of bronze. However, someot the fragments were from a decorated flange and sufficient survived topiece together halt ot a design that features palmettes and 'lotus petals'

[21]. It was once thought that the flange was from a hanging-bowl, butthis has now been disproved and it seems more likely to have been from

a helmet. There is another version of this design on cast bronze finialsfrom a remarkable sword-handle found bv a metal detectorist atFiskerton (Lines), on the banks of the River Witham [22]. A thirdBritish artefact with Stage I palmettes, part of a scabbard whose bronzefront

-plate has a series of small crude palmettes flanked by large S-shapes

[23], was acquired more than L50 years ago bv 'Philosopher' Smith ofWisbech ( ambs and presumed to be of local origin.

The principal motif of Stage II the 'Waldalgesheim Style') is influ-enced bv the wave tendril in Greek art and takes the form of a string oftriangular shapes each linked at two corners and with a tendril sproutingfrom the third. Simple friezes of this type decorate elongated fields, suchas sword scabbards and the bows of brooches. There are typical examplesin northern Italy, where the Celts came into close contact with classical

influences after their invasion early in the fourth century isc , but others

are found throughout Celtic lands from I lungary to England [24]. One otthe finest examples, bordering the spine of a shield from Ratclifte-on-SoarNotts , is very similar to one from Moscano di Fabriano (Italy), and is

22

22 Tin bandh of4 wordfoundtkerton. Fitted with In-

intuit ornamented with

m derived from (ireek

' (a - c). 1 ouldmt l^o mm Imi^.

Celtic Art

23 Upper part of a bronze

scabbard-plate from Wisbech with

a palmette (c/., Jigs 20d and f)flanked by lotus petals or lyres.

I Lite brJ triangles down the sidesare in the Hallstatt tradition.

Width 48 mm.

24

' \ lev

comparable with ( ontinental work ol the highest quality. Another friezeof tin- same type is "ii the antler handle of an iron rasp found with other

tools and weapons on an archaeological excavation .it Fiskerton lams .the- site where the Stage I sword-handle was found. Bui the Fiskertonexample, cruder) executed in pointille, is muddled and \er\ inferior.There are slightly different Waldalgesheim tendrils on .1 heav)bronze bracelet from .1 grave at Newnham ( roft < ambs . where theornament is in .1 band w rapped .11 an angle round the bod) of the braceletSuch angled banded ornament can be matched on the ( ontinent,ciallj on sword scabbards. I he Nc nham ( roft bracelet is very worn, butsome hatching survives and there are hints that the entire backgroundwas so treated. I his version ol the design is also dose to ( ontinentalmodels, such as the scabbard from Liter, Hungary, and there is .1 rather

similar rendering on the scabbard found in the River Thames atStandlake Oxon . The scabbard must have been made ol wood or leather,but

Celtic Art

25 Bronze %om-cap' fromBrentford. Height 62 mm.

26 Opposite Terminal of theGrotesque Torque from Stuttisbam

(see fig. 50).

Stage III accounts forJacobsthal's third Continental style, which he

sub-divided into two contemporary developments, a 'Plastic Style' and

Sword Style'. The 'Plastic Style', three dimensional high-relief orna-ment, in contrast to the linear or low-relief work of the Early,

Waldalgesheim and Sword Styles, is still virtually unknown in Britainthough it strongly influenced one major work, the 'Grotesque Torquefrom Snettisham [26]

.

Likewise the influence of the Continental Sword Styles is seen in

subsequent British developments, though close links are few. One majorpiece, the Ratclifte shield-boss, was found in three pieces in the bed ot

the River Trent. ( classified as horse-armour, it resided in the reserves ot

a provincial museum for many years before being acclaimed as a master-

piece of Early Celtic art in 1994 - a century after its discovery! TheWaldalgesheim Style friezes bordering the spine have already been noted

in Stage II see fig. 24b), but the ornament on the central boss is an elab-

orate Sword Style creation, a complex of swirling tendrils emanating

from a couple of fantastic beasts see fig. 8). Of the four Waldalgesheim

26

TV

r

,

4

Celtic Art

2~ I'pper part of an iron

scabbard with dragon-fair

ornament, from Hammersmith.

of scabbard 5 J mm.

28

Art styles

Style friezes, two terminate in very similar fantastic beasts. Two otherBritish pieces with close (

Celtic Art

'

I

I

I

&

vt.

30

bronze, it ii shaped in repousse with an outline thai crosses the sworddiagonal!) like someol the Hungarian Sword Style designs, rhe overallshape of tins panel ma) itself be .1 distorted half-palmette, and that motifcertainly inspired some i tin- engraving that adorns it. Another distimtive feature is the tendril thai 1 rosses itself, .1 motif thai >< 1 urs on hot

h

tlu- Witham shield and the Wandsworth round-boss [28a, bl. It can beparalleled in Hungarian Sword Style ornament, and features prominent-ly in the central design on the Ratclifle shield-boss

The 'Witham-Wandsworth Style' is only iu- of the elments iIV I he related Yorkshire and Irish 'Scabbard Styles' ire based n

s iimnis and wave tendrils, some greatly elaborated and .ill enhancedwith varied filler-motifs including tightly coiled spirals, triangular andlobe sli.i|H-s. hatching and stippling (3o|. Musi of the designs .ire essen-tially symmetrical and repetitive, bui one of the Bann scabbards has .1variety ol tendrils occupying every available space. I he overall wave is

' / - '. 'in' from II

! 1 i

31

Celtic Art

32 Decoration at the mouth

of the iron scabbard from Fovant

1filts). Width 45 mm.Photograph of a replica.

33 Opposite page Bronze mirror,decorated on the back, from Aston

QHerts). The mirror-plate was

found by a farmer in 1979;

the handle was discovered in a

subsequent archaeological

excavation. Width 194 mm.

apparent despite the complexities, and there are bordering bands thatrecall the geometric borders of Late Hallstatt sheaths. The decoratedscabbards have La Tcne I chape-ends, derived from the Continent beforethe middle of the third century K . But unlike Continental scabbards,those found in Yorkshire have central suspension loops, and that mayhave been the Irish practice too, which would suggest that the twoScabbard St vies diverged from an insular rather than a Continental tra-dition. There is one remarkable artefact decorated in the Scabbard Style-that is not a scabbard. Made of sheet bronze and ornamented on everyavailable surface, it looks like a cvlindrical box, but it is completelysealed and has no lid [31]. It was found in the grave of a woman at

Wetwang Slack Hast Yorks) and the excavators called it the 'bean-tin'because it would take a tin-opener to get into it: its owner never neededto open it, perhaps because there was nothing inside.

There are hints of other regional stvles in Stage IV, such as the ironscabbard from Fovant Wilts with a confronted motif surely derivedfrom a dragon-pair [32]. But the graceful Fovant design is far removedfrom the mainly limited repertoire of Continental dragons, and its spri-als and filler-motifs recall the decoration on the Bann scabbard. In east-ern England another scabbard-plate, from Sutton (Notts), and a crownfrom Deal (see fig KM) are decorated in related designs in which motifsare dissected and rearranged.

To Stage V belongs the art style studied especially by Sir ( lyril Fox.He did not call it Stage Y; indeed, he gave it no overall title, although one

32

' vies

Celtic Art

34 Diagrams showing how a lobeand cusp design Q> and cj), derivedfrom a half-palmette (rf), could

give rise to a trumpet void ("*/):

) Saulces-Champenoises (Ardennes,France^); b_) Sutton (NottsJ; c_)Wetwang (East Torks^).

35 Openwork sheet bronze cover forpart of a shield-boss, from a grave

at Deal (KenQ. Length 99 mm.

aspect of it he called the 'mirror-style'. His interest was aroused by thediscovery in 1943 of a huge collection of metalwork at Llvn Cerrig Bach(Anglesey), acquired when he was the Director of the National Museumof Wales. The collection included two magnificent decorated bronzes, aplaque and a shield-boss, whose art-work was clearly related. In a seriesof publications Fox analysed the designs and traced the principal motifsin other works across Britain. He was keen to identify regional art styles(schools) and, by tracing the evolution and devolution of designs, heattempted to organise the material in a tight chronological order towhich he applied tentative absolute dates.

Stage V includes tendril designs in elongated fields, as well as frag-ments of tendrils in minor panels and more ambitious designs in circularor rectangular frames, shapes are more curvilinear than in Stage IV, fill-ings are confined to hatching (compare fig. 62 with fig. 30), used withinthe design or as background, and often the hatching is interrupted by acircle. Tendrils terminate not in a spiral, but in a distinctive 'trumpet'shape which, with an adjoining circle, gives the impression of a bird-headwith huge eve and beak - sometimes an open beak [33]. The voids asso-ciated with these designs can be as distinctive as the pattern itself, andFox drew attention to one particular shape, a 'trumpet' void construct-ed from three lines, one compound curve (concave/convex) and two sim-ple curves (one concave and the other convex). This shape, seen in manyStage V designs, occurs already in the Yorkshire Scabbard Style (on theKirkburn scabbard) and could have been derived from lobe and cuspdesigns which m turn evolve from half-palmettes [34]. In origin it was anegative shape, but it came to occupv a positive role as well. A shield-boss decorated with a random arrangement of trumpet voids was toundin a grave at Mill Hill, Deal (Kent) and shows that the motif developeda life of its own as early as < . 200 B( [35].

Engraving and chasing were not the only means of producing Stage

V patterns. Repousse was popular, and the plaque from Llyn Cerrig Bachis a good example, with a design in a small circular panel and the repousseexecuted m two planes (36]. The motif is basically a tnskele or triquetra- a three-limbed device used throughout the histon of Celtic art and

perhaps best known on the Isle of Man coat of arms. On the plaque the

34

itriskele is buili from repousse lobes; each limb ends in .1 'trumpet' and .1l*>ss. and the whole is framed by lobes. < >n other pieces Stage V ornament

hieved by lost-wax casting, which can produce relief lobes andhatched backgrounds. Sometimes .1 single pun- has ornameni in differenttechniques, presumably made in the same workshop: the Bugthorpe

V.rks scabbard has engraved ornameni n the front-plate and .1rated cast chape-end see fig ll . whereas .1 Little Wittenham

ibard combines lost-wax casting with repousse.With Stage V, in the second and first centuries n . the compara

lively isolated developmenl of British art comes to an end in southernnd. In the second half of the first centur) r.< the neighbouring

(..mis were under Roman control, and increasing!) Britain u.is drawninto tlu- same sphere B> Vugustan nines decorated Roman objects werein use and for the Am time in the Iron Age there arc undoubted importsfrom the ( ontinent. In the north and in Scotland .1 distinctive ari style

nued to flourish, bui workshops in the south of England copiedin products, and British traditions were influenced In Roman taste

16 R :' . oration on a brotrtt

plaque Irmn Uyn Cerr \ I

voidi

'

refou

Chapter Three|Dress and jewellery

37 Part of the bronze handle of aswordfrom North Grimston (SorthTorks^). Height of head, 28 mm.

rHE GAULS are tall in stature and their flesh is very moist and white,while their hair is not only naturally blond, but they also use artificial

means to increase this natural quality of colour. For they continually

wash their hair with lime-wash and draw it back from the forehead to the crownand to the nape of the neck ... the hair is so thickened by this treatment that it

differs in no way from a horse's mane. Some shave off the beard, while others

cultivate a short beard; the nobles shave the cheeks but let the moustache grow

freely so that it covers the mouth. (Diodorus Siculus)

The description by Diodorus Siculus contrasts with the modern image ofthe short dark Celt and illustrates the dangers of generalisations thatignore chronology and geography. Caesar confirms that the Britons too'wear their hair long, and shave the whole of their bodies except the headand upper lip'. Very few British skeletons have been studied, and most ofthem are from Yorkshire, but they suggest that men were on average 1.69m (5 ft 6'A in) tall and women 1.57 m (5 ft 2 in), while life expectancy wasabout thirty years, w ith only 8 per cent of the population over the age offorty-five. Representations of Britons include the bronze head on thehandle of the North Grimston (North Yorks) sword, clean-shaven andwith long hair down to the neck [37]. The three bronze heads from a bur-ial at Welwyn (Herts) have their hair drawn back and sport impressivemoustaches in accord with ( aesar's description [38]. Bronze razors areknown in Hallstatt times, but there are no La Tene razors in Britain untilthe end of the first century B< , when large triangular 'razor-knives' were

36

cllcrv

used. The shears with which they must have cut their hair arc rarelyfound before the end of the first century i , when they occur in gravesat Hertford Heath Herts and Alkham Kent).

'All the Britons dye their bodies with pitrmm, which produces a bluecolour, and this gives them .1 more terrifying appearance in battle.

1

( .ics.ir's observation is expanded by Herodian, describing the names inorth Britain in the third century \i>: 'they mark their bodies with var-ious figures of all kinds of animals and wear no clothes lor fear ol con-

cealing these figures'. ( aes.ir's word '\ it rum' is usually translated as

woad, an important source of blue dye in more recent tunes, hut that is

bv no means certain. It has been argued that two ancient bodies fromlandow Moss see p. 86 were painted with a copper-based pigment thatmight have been ( aes.ir's 'vitrum'. But even it the landow bodies werepainted, no patterns can be distinguished now. What might have been acommon British art-form has disappeared without trace.

irding t Diodorus Siculus, the Gauls 'wear a striking kind ofclothing - tunics dved and stained in various colours, and trousers, which

they call bv the name of bracae; and they wear striped cloaks, fastenedwith buckles, thick in winter and light in summer, picked out with a var-iegated small check pattern". Very occasional]) fabric has been preserved,

either in waterlogged conditions or where the structure of small puceso! cloth has been replaced bv corrosion products from adjoining metalartefacts. Replaced fabric on an iron brooch from Burton Fleming lastVorks showed a complex construction of stripes and diamond twill withsome details added by needle, making it one of the earliest attempts atembroiders known from England.

the dress described by Diodorus Siculus the most that thearchaeologist can expect to find is the buckle, or brooch, which fastenedthe cloak. Although then- are Hal IStat I brooches m Britain, types that

tnmonb found in Italy, not one comes from an undoubtedly ancient\t and they may be Comparative!) recent imports Instead, bronze

or iron pint were used But from about 400 i;< La I ene brooches are fairK frequent: some were perhaps imported, though the vast majoritjmust have been manufactured locally. Such brooches were usuall)bronze, and the pro tot v |X-s were made in one pio c. I he- del Orative bod)

Celtic Art

39 A typological sequence ofBritish La Tern bronze brooches:

J, Wood EatOiII. Wetwang (^East TorksJ;III I 'nprovenanced.

Lengths 47, 69 anJ 67 mm.

would be cast; then a projection from the head would be hammered anddrawn into a long wire to farm the spring and pin. The spring was coiledfirst to the right of the bow and then to the left, always in the same wayso that the pin was engaged in a catch-plate on the left side of thebrooch. From the catch-plate extends a foot which turns back to thebow

-; both foot and bow are sometimes decorated in the original castingand occasionally, especially on the foot, provision is made for an applied

knob of coral or 'enamel' inlaw Iron brooches were made to thesame pattern, but were entirely forged and not cast. This La

Tene I type ot brooch was popular for a couple of centuries,and then the design was improved by lengthening the freeend of the toot, which was liable to get bent and broken, and

clasping it to the bow with a separate collar, a development dis-tinguishing the La Tene II brooch. It was then a short step, although ittook about a centurv to achieve it, to cast or forge the bow and the end

of the foot together in one piece, the distinctive feature of the

La Tene III brooch. This classic typological sequence is used todistinguish the three stages of La Tene chronology [39], butit does not accommodate all La Tene brooches, and Britain in

particular has several peculiarities.

The manufacturers of British La Tene brooches occasionally usedsprings in the Continental fashion, but they also experimented with var-ious hinge mechanisms. In one ot the more popular forms the bow ter-minated in a single ring which superficially resembles the coil of a spring;the pin was manufactured separately with two linked coils to fit on eitherside of that ring and the junction was secured by a rivet. Other Britishbrooches had a pin simply pivoted between two projecting lugs. But thehinge was not the only British peculiarity, for at a comparatively earlystage the foot was cast in one with the bow. This development, which dis-tinguishes the La Tene III brooch on the Continent, is seen in the much

40 Bronze and coral brooch

from the Queen's Barron; Arras

~East Torks^ . Length 66 mm.

38

.in J jeweller)

41 Broi

nm.

earlier Queen's Barron at Arras East Yorks , where the brooch is other-vise of Lai ene I shape and has elaborate ornament suggesting influencefrom the La Tene I 'Munsingen' brooch n the ( ontinenl [4(i|. Man)British La Tene II bronze brooches have the fool and bow cast in onepiece, although iron brooches were still made with .1 foot which had to hesecured to the bow by .1 collar.

The distinctive 'involuted' brooch developed in Britain in La I eneII and may have lasted into the early years of the first century w . I hehow s on some British brooches of La I cue I form were much (latter thanthose fashionable n the ( ontinent, and the) seem to have given rise tothe involuted brooch. When securing the pin in its catch-plate it wouldlx- natural to press down on the centre ol the bow, and a long tl.it bowcould easily become dow n-curved, or involuted |41 1. Many brooches weredeliberately manufactured m this w.iv. and an interesting sequence olgraves at Wetwang Slack East Yorks has shown how the long involutedbrooch was gradually superseded b) a shorter and more curved variety.

In the first century i;< . and especially after ( aesar's expeditions,British brooches again came under the influence of the Continental tra-dition. New forms may have been imported, perhaps including some olthe silver brooches found m cemeteries m south-eastern England: theyresemble Italian silver brooches, and were used at a tune when otherItalian imports were certainly reaching Britain. Mut other I. a line IIIbrooches in Britain are sufficiently distinctive to show that there must

have been a flourishing native industry. Brooches wen- now occasionall)worn in pairs, sometimes linked b\ a chain, m a wa\ known on the( ontinent since the tilth century u< . B) the first centur\ \i> brooches ofmany types were in common use all o\ir southern England: tew of themhave other than the simplest decoration, but occasion. ill\ an elaborate

( eltic design is found. The most ornate is the surprising!) large gillbronze brooch from Aesica the latin name for Great Chesters,

rhumberland found in a small hoard of jeweller) in 1894 [42].rdsol the discover) are unsatisfactory, but the hoard seems to have

been concealed at the end of the third centur) id, although the brooch

Celtic Art

40

.irul jewellen

was probabl) made two hundred years earlier '< i its kind probably themosi fantastically beautiful creation thai has come to us from antiquity',enthused Sir Arthur Evans, but toJ.M. de Navarro ii was 'rather flam-boyant, not n> s.i\ \ u|

Pins arc- a simpler form of dress-fastening, used in Britain beforethe introduction of the brooch and noi complete!) ousted in Latimes, though the) were quite rare-. I here were only lour pins from the44

Celtic Art

44 Bracelets from Cowlam(centre fronQ and Burton Fleming(East Torks^): the one on the leftis made of jet (diameter 84 mm^)and the others are bronze(diameters c.60 mm^).

ornate pins from Yorkshire graves were found immediately adjoining theskulls, suggesting that theyimay have been hair-pins, but because of theway in which the skeletons had been bundled up, a dress fastening fromthe upper part of the body could easily have fallen bv the skull.

Bracelets were occasionally worn, but thev were far less commonthan brooches: whereas up to a third of the Yorkshire burials wereaccompanied by a brooch, no more than 5 per cent had a bracelet [44].The finest bracelets were made of bronze and some had decorative set-tings for inlav. Thev fitted fairly closely round the wrist so variousdevices had to be used to allow them to be pushed over the hand: somehad a simple opening in one side, others had a projection at one end ofthe break to fit in a hole at the other (a mortice-and-tenon fitting) anda third tvpe had overlapping terminals. A few shale or jet bracelets havebeen found, and some made of iron belonged to the later stages of theWetwang Slack cemetery. The bracelets in these Yorkshire cemeterieswere always worn bv women, but according to classical writersbracelets were worn by both men and women in Gaul. The cremation atSnailwell (Cambs) seems to have been that of a male; the grave-goodsincluded a shield-boss and a razor-knife, but one of the finest objectsfound there was a spirally twisted bracelet with 'snake-head' terminals

[45]. This is the only bracelet of its tvpe from England, though thereare others from Scotland. A related type is the 'massive armlet', foundonly in Scotland and Ireland, cast by the lost-wax process and some-times with enamel or glass ornament in the terminals [46]. The decora-tion of the mctalwork is consistent with other pieces from northernEngland and Scotland dating from the end of the first century and thesecond century ad. Thev have never been found on a skeleton and

and jeweller)

indeed these ungainly objects could perhaps have been intended ir 4S Bronzt bratgods rather than people. ( onceivabl) they could have been worn round (L'jmhf). Diameter 105 mm.the ankle-. Anklets were certainly worn on t he ( ontinent and one is sup-

posed to have been found on one of the Arras skeletons.In the- Wetwang sink cemetery more than 500 glass beads were

found, mosi of them in I" different necklaces: 80 per cent of the headsweTe plain and only 6 per cent contained colours other than blue. Threeother Yorkshire skeletons had head necklaces, including one from( owlam that has one large bead decorated with inset white rings andixty-nine with white scrolls. White ornament on a blue base was popu-lar and circles were created either by insetting annulets in channelled

rings or by inserting a white disc in a hollow and superimposing a centralblue dot 'stratified eve bead' . All the types of beads (bund so tar inYorkshire are represented in the- necklace from the Queen's Barrow atArras, including translucent beads with a greenish tinge decorated withwhite or yellow scrolls [47]. ( )t' the 100 beads said to have made up thenecklace when found, 67 still survive.

1 he majority l the Yorkshire burials are w ithoul grave-goods andthe rest are but poorl) equipped. I he Queen's Harrow group, however, iscomparatively rich. Found in 1816 in a shallow grave under a small bar-row, the skeleton had been adorned with the necklace ol '^lass beads, anamber ring, bronze and coral brooch see fig, 40 . two bronze bracelets, abronze and coral pendani oi belt fitting and the onl) gold finger ringfrom Iron Age Britain, now unfon unately lost Fingei i ings ol am metalare rare, v Uliously, toe rin^s seem to have been more common.

< >ne objet t oil en as sen i.ued with the ( cits is the torque: nun Honed

Celtic Art

46 Bronze armlets with enamel

ornament, from Castle Newe

(Aberdeenshire^) and (right

J

Drummond Castle (Perthshire^.Diameters 141 and 147 mm.

several times by classical writers, it is also shown on representations, andfound in graves and hoards.' The torque is a collar, or neck-ring, and itsname comes from one of the more common varieties, the hoop of whichis a twisted strand of metal: a Roman, T. Manlius, took a collar from aCeltic warrior and earned himself the cognomen of Torquatus. At theBattle of Telemon 'all the warriors in the front ranks were adorned ingold necklaces and bracelets' (Polvbius), and that was not an isolatedoccurrence. But in Celtic graves torques are usually associated withwomen rather than warriors, and are made of bronze, rarely of iron, buthardlv ever of gold. On the Continent thev are best known from gravesin Champagne, where thev were extremely popular until La Tene II, butthen thev became rare and they are never found with La Tene III burials.

In Britain torques are absent from graves. The Yorkshire inhuma-tions have bead necklaces instead, and the La Tene III cremations insouth-eastern England resemble contemporary cremations in northernFrance and the Rhineland and have no torques. But their absence fromgraves does not mean that they were not worn by some of the Britons,for there is a rich collection of material - often gold - from other sources.Cold torques must have been valuable always, and thus vulnerable: when

Ilrrv

they were broken, damaged or unfashionable they would have been 47 Necklaceoj glati

melted down, and u is hardly surprising that they are noi found in from the gpeeii't Bagraves. They found their way into the metalsmith's crucible in recenl as /well .is ancient times: the survh ing fragments from ( llevedon Avon arethe remains of a find made before 1897 and 'mostly melted by Parson &son. Bristol

1

[48]. A most unusual burial was said to have been found aiMildenhall Suffolk in is 12 - 'a human skeleton of large dimensions,stretched ai its full length between the skeletons of t\w> horses ... on oneside ot the warrior lay a long iron sword, on the other his celt: he had atorque of gold' but the torque was immediately melted down by a sil-versmith .it Bury st Edmunds.

I he gold torques thai do survive, however, are verj impressive.One found ai Broighter ( o. Urn in 1896 is a magnificent pieowork which has .i somewhat chequered history [49]. Found In a ploughman with .i i urious assemblage of other gold obja is. two torques of Jiifcteni types, a model boat, a bowl and two fine chain necklaces, it was

Celtic Art

46

and jewellery

bought by the British Museum but then claimed .is Treasure [rove by 48 Opposite /

the Royal Irish Academy A famous trial ai the Royal ( ourts of Justice inLondon in L903 decided in favour of the Irish and the collection is no*

exhibited ai Dublin. Subsequently iu- reputable archaeologist claimed

th.it the Im.iril had been collected and buried in the nineteenth century,

and another declared thai it had been found in an lil umbrella in .1 ditch!

But the authenticity of the association is no* general!) accepted, and

there is n doubt at .ill that the torque is .1 genuine La I ene antiquil

is made t two hollo* tubes whose terminals are linked by .1 swivel-jointtli. it can be opened In turning iu- half through ( "i degrees, and there

would have been a decorative 'muff' to secure the two ends at the back.

The rich chased decoration not repousse seems to have been executed

before the tubes were shaped. The high-relief 'snail shells1 have been

separately applied, and the background t the design h.is been covered by

fine .iris for which the compass-points can still be distinguished.

1 hree rather similar but less ornate tubular torques, one large and

two small, were found with the remains i' .1 fourth torque in .1 field at

Snettisham Norfolk in 1948. Each had .1 tubular body, made in t\\

halves like the Broighter torque, with buffer terminals and .1 band to

cover the ]mt at the back. That field .it Snettisham produced five hoards

in the course t" deep-ploughing in the- autumns f l ('4S and 1950: four ol

them were within 25 m i one another and the fifth was about 55 m away.

Between 1964 and 1973 tour isolated torques were found in the course t

agricultural work, and after that it seemed very likely that the- site- had

been completely wrecked by ploughing But in 1989 Charles Hodder, ol

Kings Lynn, started to survey the field with lus metal detector, and in

Ins second season he struck gold. He- discovered .1 hoard of mainly bro- v> Goldtorqu

km gold and silver artefacts, with .1 total weight of 9.2 kg. Clearly the Diameter 195 mm.

:: - t'

1

Mi

V.fc

and jewellery

lite had noi been complete!) wrecked In ploughing. With the enthusias-tic support of the landowner, Sir Stephci ireen, and the activeparticipation of ( harles I (odder, the British Museum launched an immediatc excavation and found five more hoards [50J. Subsequently Hodderdiscovered .1 hoard of silver lumps, and a clandestine metal detectorisi

made "it with a huge hoard t coins.The 'Gold Field' ai Snettisham has produced .it least 12 and per

haps 14 hoards, including 75 more >>r less complete torques and

ments nt 100 more. The entire treasure, some 20 kg ol silver and 15 kgild, is surc-K more than the s.i\ ings ol an iridic idual and must repre-

sent the wealth oi .1 community. Perhaps it was .1 tribal treasury.Extensive excavations in the immediate vicinity ol the hoards failed tolocate any evidence of contemporary activity, but they did identify a

huge 8-hectarc enclosure defined In .1 ditch. It was not possible to date

the construction of the enclosure, but the ditch had been abandoned andallowed to sili about \i> 100, more than .1 century and .1 half alter thetorques had been deposited. It is tempting to relate the enclosure to thetorques that were found near its centre; the ditch was not an impressive

defensive work hut it miuht have defined an ana that had had more

50 ( >p|X>s|t.

51 Til rom

IHt. Pi. 1)1,

Celtic Art

52 The Ipsrrub torques. Diameters

181 to 197 mm.

formidible defenders, such as ghosts or gods. Whatever its function, theSnettisham site lost its significance in the first centurv AD and theBritons never recovered their treasure.

The multi-strand torque from Hoard E at Snettisham, the GreatTorque [51], is one of Britain's finest antiquities. Its hoop is made ofeight strands twisted together, and each strand in turn comprises eightlengths of swaged wire. The ends of the wires have been secured in hol-low terminals made bv the lost-wax process. The decoration on the ter-minals, which would have been modelled in the wax, is formed bv low-relief lobes, some of which define trumpet voids with matted hatching.Details, including the small knobs with triple dots, show a close rela-tionship with the terminal of a similar torque from nearbv Sedgetord andmore surprisinglv with a comparable terminal from Cairnmuir in.Scotland. A small Gaulish coin trapped within the Snettisham torque(but not necessarilv deliberately concealed by the manufacturer, as orig-inally reported) is contemporary with other coins from the site and sup-ports that notion that all the torques were buried about the same time.

A hoard of five torques was found at Ipswich (Suffolk) in 1968,when a machine was moving earth on a new housing estate: a sixth torquefound two years later in a nearbv garden may have been displaced fromthe original hoard [52]. They were made of a gold alloy 'on average 80

***%

{*,

^*s^^>H

and jeweller)

PCTccni gold andfiveol them are quite similar, with twisted hoops and Si Gold torquefrom \loop terminals, one undecoratcd and tour with relief designs like those Forest. Diameter I ? IontheGreai Torque. Bui the sixth torque is different, with ring termi-nals and a more complex twist, and it may be no coincidence thai it wasbund apart from the others. Experiments showed ho* the torques withlp terminals would have been constructed: from a casi ingoi a long

d wire was formed, beni in half, and the two strands twistedtogether; the terminals were then cast-on using the lost-wax process.I wo.,1 the decorated torques were left 'as cast' from the mould, bui theother two were worked over with a tracer which has obscured most of thetool-marks modelled in the wax. East Anglia is not the only source ofgold torques, bui the onl) other marked concentration is m

rdshire, where they have been found on lour sites within 20 milesoi one another. Two of the torques in this -roup, from Glascote and

o,,d Forest, have multi-strand hoops onto which broad loop ter-minals have been cast [53J. Like most surviving gold torques in Englandthey seem to date from the firsi centurj n . Bui torques were still usedin the middle of the following century, according to the description of

licca given In D... < assius: 'in stature she was ver) tall, inippeai ince mosi terrifying, in the glance ol hereyemosi fiercei and her

ras harsh; a greal mass ol the taw niesi hair fell to her hips; aroundk w.is

., large golden necklace'.

Chapter Four|Hearth and hQme

rHEIR HOUSES are large and circular, built of planks andwickerwork, the roof being a dome of heavy thatch. (Strabo)

n4 Iron fire-dog from Welwyn.

Height 970/985 mm.

55 Iron frame Irow Welwyn.

Height 1.43 m.

Strabo's description of a Gallic house might well be applied to Britain,but such structures leave little trace for the archaeologist. Remains ofdomestic architecture are restricted to plans of circular huts usually

from 5 to 9 m in diameter, but some up to 15 m, in theform of a ring ot post-holes or a rough stone founda-tion course, and the only refinements are the occa-

sional porch and a trench to divert rain-water. Veryoccasionally finds add a touch of colour, as in the hillfortat Hod Hill (Dorset), where some huts had collectionsut sling-stones, presumably once in bags, stored readyfor action bv the doorway, and one hut thought tobelong to a chieftain had a spearhead in a similar posi-tion. Perhaps the buildings were decorated inside with

fabric wall-hangings, but these and any other fit-ments have long since perished and significant arte-facts are limited to the latch-lifter that opened thedoor. Of furniture there was probably very little: inGaul 'when dining they all sit not in chairs, but onthe earth' and 'their custom is to sleep on the

ground upon the skins of wild animals" Diodorus Siculus). Animal skinsmust include those ol the brown bear, because two cremations in south-ern England produced terminal phalanges - the claws that would havebeen left in a treated skin.

The Gauls dined next to 'hearths blazing with fire, with cauldrons

and spits containing large pieces ot meat' Diodorus .Siculus); here metalartefacts come more into the picture. Iron

fire-dogs are known especially from graves^j

in south-eastern England, a ritual deposi-

tion that gives no idea of their original dis-

tribution [541. They were used m pairs liketheir recent counterparts, to contain the logs

of the fire. But the Iron Age hearth was in thecentre of the room, not against the wall, and

the lire-dogs could be viewed from all sides sothey had a head at each end. Their excep-tionally long necks have never been satisfac-

torily explained: an elaborate example from( apel darn-ion (Gwynedd) has loops ateither end of the uprights which could haveheld cross-bars to support spits, but no other

fire-dog has such attachments. A curious iron

frame found in a La Tenc III grave at Welw \ n I lerts) looks

52

I li-.irtli .mil hmt each w m^-. the four shapes andtheir ornameni arc .ill slightly different [63]. It is hard tn the con-trary, they had been used to 'kill' the corpse: the spears had beenthrown into the grave, around and into the body, with souk- actuallypenetrating the bom-.

Daggers and swords were doubtless more prestigious weapons, and

were certainly more complex in construction. As on the ( ontinent, dag-gers were used in Late Hallstatf times and ai the very beginning of La[*ene I, but in the fourth century w their place w.is taken by the longsword, whose- arrival presumably indicates .1 change in warriors' tactics.

The blades themselves were- undecorated, Inn scabbards and sheaths

64 /'

ing .1 typol

! 1

lefi m

centre, Barn Elms; n.

irwortb. Full lengtbi 341,

295, and M 2 mm.

Celtic Art

65 Geometric decoration on the

front-plate of a La Tene I bronze

sheath from Richmond.

66 Opposite page, let":bronze La Tene I chape from

Northern Ireland. Length 104 mm.

67 Opposite page, right Sheetbronze chape from Little

If'irrenham, with openwork andengraved decoration and a i.nt-onchape-end. Length 165 mm.

62

ottered great scope to the artist. The earliest:dagger-sheaths were made bf wood, some-times wrapped with strips of bronze andsealed at the bottom with a ferrule, but mostLate Hallstatt sheaths in Britain were madeentirely of metal. They have two shapedplates, a bronze front-plate (often decorated),the edges of which are wrapped round an ironback-plate, which has a suspension-looptowards the top. The tip of the two plates issecured at the bottom bv a chape, which gavefurther scope for decoration and was subjectto quite rapid typological development. Atfirst it was tubular, terminating in an anchor-like form; then the vulnerable projectingarms of the anchor were curved back andattached to the bottom of the sheath to forman open ring-like ending [64]. The very fine cast chape from Wandsworthstands aside from this sequence, although its decoration and that of thesheath is quite in keeping with the Hallstatt tradition (see fig. 19).

When they are decorated Late Hallstatt and La Tene I sheaths havesimple geometric motifs, such as lozenges, triangles and sometimes com-pass-drawn arcs and circles down the borders of the front-plate. Theposition and torm of some ot this ornament suggests that the inspirationcame from stitching along the sides of leather sheaths [65].

Scabbards, used to house the long sword introduced in La Tene I,were often made of wood or leather, but the best surviving examples areof metal. Like the earlier sheaths, they were made of two plates, theirends clasped by a chape in the form of a frame whose top is bridged atthe back and clamped at the front [66]. Few La Tene I iron scabbards aredecorated, but one has chased decoration down the edges m the LateHallstatt fashion and there are two from the Thames decorated withdragon-pairs 'see fig. 27" and one from Fovant Wilts see fig. 32) witha related design.

Sonic I. a Tene I blades, such as those from Standlake (see fig. 24

and the River W'ltham see fig. 29), had wood or leather scabbards fittedwith metal panels and chapes. The back of a bronze chape from LittleWittenham Oxon) sports a cut-out design including trumpet voids, butthe linear decoration is more reminiscent of Mage IV [67]. The scabbardfound in a grave at Deal Kent follows this tradition, with a bronze

chape and a bronze panel at the top [68]. The design executed in repousseon the panel is essentially two interlocking S-shapes, formed by lobe andcusp motifs embellished with repousse details very like some of the

engraved fillings of Scabbard Style art. But central to the three nodes are

trumpet voids typical ot Stage Y.

The decorated Yorkshire and Irish scabbards of the third centuryB( have front-plates made entirely of bron/e. In Yorkshire the back-platesand chapes were iron, but in Ireland some, perhaps all, were of bron/e.

Three of the Yorkshire pieces were recovered complete from graves. The

>ns and armour

^rs-?-

-*-:/-.

m>

\/M&ML

gf

ms and armour

fourth, from Ferrybridge Wesi Yorks isimilar but fragmentary: it had been pur-posefully beni and broken before it was discarded, and onlj p.irt of n has been roered. Such deliberate mutilation of weaponsw.is practised bj some< ontinental La Tenecommunities, but is rarely recorded inBritain. I In- Yorkshire scabbard thus ritual-istically killed was left in the ditch of .1 rel-gious monument, which mighi seem veryappropriate, except thai the monument wasNeolithic, erected some 2,000 years earlierThe mx decorated Irish scabbards, too, wereprobably deposited in the course of religiousceremonies. Three came from the- Bann, .1river comparable with the Witham and soond only to the I hames in terms of Ironartefacts. The other three were found at theend of the nineteenth century in .1 bog atLisnacrogher ( o. Antrim

. Over severalyears about seventy metal artefacts wererecovered from the \ inanity, and it may havebeen .1 votive deposit comparable with Llyn( errig Bach and indeed La I ene itself

I he overall decoration on the Yorkshireand Irish scabbards is in the form of waves orS-motifs, and one of the Lisnacrogherdesigns combines the two [69]. S-motifs oneither side of the central ridge an- paired,alternately facing and backing; in each rowthe- S-motifs arc- adjacent, not linked as onthe- Wisbech scabbard sec fig 23). The- over-

all effect is oi balanced waves and symmetrical tendrils, but in the fillingot the- upper tendrils there is no attempt at symmetry, with spirals,lobes, dots, concentric fillings and hatching all mixed together.

I he La I ene I and early l.a Tene II scabbards held weapons withblades between 550 and 650 mm Ion-, and the decorated Irish scabbardswere lor even shorter ones. But in the second and first centuries r.< there

marked increase in length, and some line scabbards entirely ofbronze were made lor blades from 700 to870 mm Ion-. ( >ne found in 1982>t little Wittenham Oxon is m excellent condition: decorated withrepousse ornament in the top panel, featuring trumpet shapes and v., ids,11 also has fine chased 'laddering' tor the length

Celtic Art

70 Upper part of a bronze scabbard

from Little tl'irteiib.wu with

repousse ornament. Width 63 mm.Photograph of a replica.

71 Right Bronze scabbard fromIsleham, with inscribed ornament.

Length 767 mm.

nearly new when it was. dropped, or thrown, into the RiverLark. It has a squared instead ot campanulate mouth, a round-ed tip without a chape, and on the back its suspension-loophas an appendage stretching the lull length of the scabbard:others ot this type have been found in both the Witham andthe Thames.

The Isleham sword, removed from its scabbard in thelaboratory, proved to be in very poor condition, but towardsthe top ot the blade was an armourer's mark. How tar a cratts-man specialised as an armourer rather than as a general black-

smith is unknown, but certainlv the production ot swordsmust have been a highlv skilled branch ot the trade. Whilesome seem to have been torged from a single piece of iron, oth-ers have been constructed trom several different strips andsome very hard blades were achieved. Eight other Britishswords have armourers' marks, including one, found in theRiver Lark at West Row Suffolk), little more than a mile fromIsleham, which was stamped twice on one side and once on theother [72]. The West Row blade is in excellent condition: 'itssuppleness is extraordinary and it could be bent back uponitself without breaking' wrote T.C. Lethbridge in 1932 (did hetry? . Lethbridge, who frequently brought drv archaeologv tolife, went on to speculate about the loss of the handle: 'nodoubt the whole weapon flew out of the owner's hand as hewas striking a blow and the unfortunate warrior was left grip-ping the hilt only. It is to be presumed that he did not longsurvive this mischance'. More mundane archaeologists wouldargue that the handle is likely to have perished after the swordhad been discarded, because very few survive - even when thesword is still in its scabbard. Handles were usuallv made ofwood, often in three parts (pommel, grip and guard) separat-ed by iron washers and slotted over the tang. The mostimpressive is on a sword found in a decorated scabbard in agrave at Kirkburn (Last Yorkshire) [73]. The pommel andguard are made ot horn framed with iron inset with red "enam-el", and decorated front and back with domed "enamelled"discs. The ynp, probably made ot horn too, is encased in aniron tube decorated with 'enamelled" panels.

British warriors seem to have worn little in the way ot

body armour. Tacitus comments that in their encounters withthe Roman army thev 'lacked the protection of breast-platesand helmets', but archaeologv shows that iron mail was not

unknown. Indeed, Varro, writing in the first century i ,implies that the Romans adopted mail from the Celts. A second

grave at Kirkburn included a complete mail tunic that had beendraped over the buried corpse. Made of thousands of small ironlings, each with a butt-joint and each linked to four other rings,it was found in a small group of burials unlikely to date later

than the third century W . The Kirkburn mail is as early as any

66

us .uul ai

from Europe, but such armour u.is never common: tour other English

sites have produced examples dating from the hrst centuries ft and \i>.It is conceivable that mosi British fighting men won- nothing .it all, forsome of their < iallic counterparts .ire- said to have gone naked into battle,and there are ethnographical parallels tor warriors stripping to avoid

being en< umbered In clot lu-s. Some Brii i^li i oin-i ypes show .1 naked .irnor. although he may represent .1 god or mythical ancestor.

rhere 1- evidence thai ( elti< warriors protected the head, butagain it comes more from representations and the writings of classicalauthors than from archaeological remains. Several British coins seem toshow warriors with leather helmets, and Diodorus Siculus records th.ittin- Gauls won- 'bronze helmets which possess large projecting figureslending the appearance ol enormous stature to the wearer; in some caseshorns form one piece with tin- helmet'. I he bronze heads which serve ashandle-mounts on the Aylcsford bucket wear large crested helmets,those on the Baldock buckets have what seem to be leather helmets \\ nli

flabb) drooping horns [74|,.mkI their counterparts on the Alkham buck-el have curling ram-like horns [75]. Horned helmets are shown on theGundestrup cauldron from Denmark, and on stone- reliefs from France,but this tradition is represented In only one surviving helmei in the

72 Stan aj .m iron

from the River Lark at '>

imp, showing .1 :

(truck once on >;

and faphotograph tmpi

II"tdth ol blade 41 mm.

Celtic Art

73 The handle of a sword (length

137 mmj) and the top of itsdecorated scabbard, from a grave

at Kirkburn (East Torks^).

74 Opposite page Cast bronzehead, a handle-mount from a bucket

found at Baldock. Height 51 mm.

whole of Europe. Found in the River Thames near Waterloo Bridge atsome time before 1866, this unique object with short conical horns wasonce regarded as a jester's cap [76] . It is covered with a meanderingasymmetrical design whose relief-work reminded Fox of theWandsworth round-boss and which also has an affinity with the decora-tion on the Torrs chamfrein, but the small repousse lobes and shapeswith hatched background are more reminiscent of the style of the GreatTorque from Snettisham. It seems likelv that the Thames helmet datesfrom the first century B< .

The only other helmet from Britain is of unknown provenance and

68

Weapons and armour

*f-

\was formerly in t lu- Meyrick ( ollection [77]. It too ii made ol bronze,bin in wr\ different in slu|x- and decoration. Its form, a 'jot kr\ t ap\ lias.1 loiii; history on the ( ontineni and the British example, whose long

'peak1

which would have been worn at the back, to proteci the i

bears .1 lymmetrical repousse* design, probably dates from shortly after

the- Roman conquest.In the absence ol bod) armour, the ( eltic warrior defended himscll

with a shield which was usuall) made ol wood r leather. The typicalshield, known from representations and from some waterlogged finds nthe- ( ontinent, is oval in shape, with .i central circular or oval holi

ered n the from by .1 wooden spindle-shaped boss. < >n the back the holeis crossed horizontally by a strip ol wooJ or iron which forms the handle,so the hand was accommodated in the central hole and protected by theboss, rhe only wooden Iron Age shield from the British Isk-s is fromClonoura Co. Tipperary : covered in leather, it is rectangular with

rounded corners, unlike- the typical Celtic shield. However, there is .i

shield of the classic La Tine I shape from ( Ihertsey Surrey , found in anold watercourse of the River Thames and made not ol organic materialsbut entirely of bronze, the only bronze La I ene shield from Europe [7S|.The ( hertsey shield was discovered in 1985 by the driver of a drag-line,

Opposite p.i

76 Hi . InuiiJ in

the Kn '

I

Celtic Art

77 Bronze helmet, provenance

unknown. Height 165 mm.

78 Opposite page The backof the bronze Cbertsey shield,

showing the kindle across the cavity

under the boss. Length 836 mm.

who dredged it from a waterlogged gravel pit and then successfullysearched tor its missing handle. This unique bronze shield is more likelyto have been made for display or votive purposes than for use in battle,and the same explanation may account for the two complete bronze-facedshields also found in English rivers, and also unmatched elsewhere mEurope, the YVitham shield and the Battersea shield.

The shield found in the River YVitham near YVashingborough(Lines) about 1826 has the buss, spine and two terminal roundels coveredby a single piece of bronze while the rest of the face of the shield is con-structed from two sheets see fig. 3). The boss itself, which is slightlyabove the centre-line of the shield, is exceptionally wide. Its repoussedesign springs from the spine, is symmetrical across a diagonal line andseems to be based on a palmette motif. At the centre is a roundel holding

three oval knobs of deep-coloured coral with two similar pieces, but cir-cular, at either side (see fig. 16). Each terminal roundel had a central

petalled boss (only one survives) ringed hv an engraved scroll teaturingthe half-palmette, and supported bv what looks like the head of a fantas-tic animal with large close-set eves, petalled ears, and an engraved pal-mette on a snout [79]. This magnificent shield has been still further dec-orated across its full width with wh.it seems to have been a boar with

72

Weapons and .

Celtic Art

~4

iin .irul armour

incredibl) spindl) legs. < >nl\ the outline of the creature and the rivet-holes which were once used to attach ii car be distinguished

\ \c-r\ similar shield is represented In a bronze boss found in theI Ii.iiihs.ii Wandsworth: it too may have been entire!) faced with bronze,but only the boss survives [81]. Much shorter than the correspondingpiece on tin- Wnli.mi shield it differs in having had separate terminalroundels. Ilu- one surviving end of the spine-cover expands i .1 maskfrom which it takes its name, the Wandsworth mask boss, and tins wouldhave supported tin- roundel as on the Witham shield. Ilu- arrangementof decoration, too, resembles that on the- Witham shield, in that itsprmp from the spun- and is diagonal!) balanced, Inn the repousse hereis in higher relief and recalls some of the cast 'Plastic Style' works ,, thec ontinent. There is on!) a little engraving, featuring typical Stage IVtightly coiled spirals.

It ma) be that another form of shield is represented by a circularbronze boss also found in the Thames at Wandsworth [801. TheWandsworth round boss has engraving distinctive of Stage IV, much

*T

\ m )

1 J A U

Weapons and armour

the most famous of ..II British Iron Age antiquities, the Battersea shield. 82 < >pposiiLike the Witham shield, the Battersea shield is in faci the bronze /

face and binding of .1 shield probably made of wood [82J. Despite theirmarkedly difTereni bosses the i\\ shields are in some way related, forboth have circular terminal panels which are linked to the central ele-ment b) features which remind us of animal heads. On the Withamshield, and the Wandsworth mask boss, these heads face inwards bthey are supporting broad roundels and narrowing through the snout tothe spine of the shield; bui on the Battersea shield the position isreversed the broader element is at the centre and the animals face out-wards. These Battersea animals have wide spreading antlers, and aremade in one piece with the terminal roundels but quite separately fromthe central boss. The three panels, .ill with highly accomplished, steephprofiled repousse decoration, form the central pan of .1 shield whosebackground is filled with lour shaped bronze sheets, each occupying .1quadrant, attached by rivets that pass through panel, sheet bronze andthen the underlying wood. The repousse" design on the central panel isbased on an enclosed palmette which gives rise to triangular shapes oneither side. Strands from the other two corners of the triangles then meetto form .1 circle. I his motif occupies one half of the panel and is almostmirrored by the design in the other half; almost mirrored, but not quite,because there are slight differences in some of the infillings. The endpanels earn similar but not exactly identical designs based on interlock-ing S-motifs. Prominent on both end and central panels are a series ofroundels built from east bronze frames into which a soft and malleablered glass, or 'enamel', has been pressed from the underside.

All the shields mentioned hitherto are oval with rounded ends, buta shield ol very different shape was popular in the second and first cen-turies it. It was equally long, but in-curved at the ends, so that it hadpointed corners and resembled the shape of a hide. Fragments from thebindings of the distinctive corners ,.| these shields have been known formany years, but their correct identification was a mystery until a collec-tion ot bronze miniature shields appeared on the antiquities market in1988 [83J. Research showed that they had belonged to a huge collectionot Bronze Age and [ion Age antiquities found a few years previously m ahoard near Salisbury Wilts

. Miniatures were often made for votivereasons, to represent the full-size originals ai temples; the) are faithfulCopies, and in the case of the Salisbury shields they even have tinyhandles riveted across the space behind the boss. | he face of the finest"I them is partitioned into eight compartments, alternate!) decoratedand plain. Doubtless this engraved ornament accurate!) represents thedecoration that would have been painted on the wooden or leather origi-nal, lor shields 'were decorated m individual fashion* according toDiodoms Siculus, Within months of the appearance of the Salisbur)shields the remains of a lull si/e hide shaped shield, 1.19 in Ion-, wasfound in a grave at Deal Ken. lis organic parts had rotted, but Usshape was preserved by the bronze binding, ...id there were fragmentsiron, decorative bronze panels, including a piece with openwork orna 83 Bmmen, that had covered par, ol the boss see fig \5 sslhkn

Chapter Six|Chariots and harness

FOR THEIR JOURNEYS and in kittle they use two-hone chariots,the chariot carrying both charioteer and chieftain. If 'hen they meet withcavalry in the battle they cast their javelins at the enemy and then

descending from the chariot join battle with their swords. (Diodorus Siculus)

The account bv Diodorus Siculus refers to Gaul, where the war-chariotbecame obsolete by the time of the Gallic Wars, but when Caesar invad-ed Britain he found chariots used in the same way, and more than a cen-tury later some tribes in northern Britain were still employing them toresist Agricola. Some idea of the large number of chariots in Britain isgiven by Caesar's claim that after the British king Cassivellaunus had dis-banded most ot his troops 'he retained only some tour thousand chario-teers, with whom he watched our line of march'.

It may be that the Britons used the same vehicle tor journeys and

( hariots and h

s4 i Ipposii

I

tup ill

iron

". mi

and mi the left ./ lit

and a ion

If bad roti

i. iririii in the toil .'

cavitu

'/r the occasional cavity. I he mm h grave, at Garton Mat ion. w .isslightly different: the wheels had Ken leant against the wall of the grave,and indi< .11 ions

Celtic Art

86 Bronze and iron harness fromthe King's Barrow, Arras: a three-

link horse-bit with cast bronze links

and rings of iron encased in bronze;

a Imch-pin whose iron shank has

corroded and broken, but the cast-onbronze terminals survive in good

condition; and two terrets - thecast-on b