Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd

Classical Art Forms and Celtic Mutations: Figural Art in Roman Britain by Claire LindgrenReview by: Edward JamesIrish Historical Studies, Vol. 23, No. 89 (May, 1982), p. 85Published by: Irish Historical Studies Publications LtdStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30008246 .

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CLASSICAL ART FORMS AND CELTIC MUTATIONS: FIGURAL ART IN ROMAN BRITAIN.

By Claire Lindgren. Pp xii, 149; 96 plates. Park Ridge, N.J.: Noyes Press. 1980. $24.00.

IN an earlier version this book had the unusual destinction of being awarded a prize by the International Confederation of Art Dealers. That is not the only feature which might prove off-putting to the academic reader: the shaky orthography and syntax, the confusing flow-charts (which are sadly beginning to be de rigueur in archaeological publications), the poor quality of some of the illustrations and the jejune summary of Romano-British history it presents in Part I, will all militate against its general acceptance. And this will be regrettable, for it does have some importance, although in a more limited way than its title suggests. The main body of the work is in fact a comprehensive catalogue of the ninety-three representations known from Roman Britain of the four Roman deities Mercury, Venus, Minerva and Mars (in that order of frequency). All are illustrated and described, with full bibliographical details. Each is analysed in terms of its motif, its format and its technical rendition (the author's phraseology), in an attempt to determine whether it is an example of 'Roman art in Britain' or 'Romano-British art'. That distinction is a useful one, although difficult to make in practice (particularly when the author ignores the possibilities of imports); nevertheless there is at least an attempt to provide a more scientific and objective set of criteria than has hitherto been seen.

Professor Lindgren chose these four deities because they had easily defined Mediterranean prototypes, and deviation from those prototypes along provincial and 'Celtic' lines could be more readily detected and analysed. Her conclusions are hardly unexpected: Mediterranean taste dominated until the mid-third century, and thereafter a provincial Romano-British ('mixed Celtic/Mediterranean') style came to dominate. There is a strong likelihood of circular argumentation, given that the dating of individual pieces is often based on stylistic criteria. But, despite the failings, Professor Lindgren has made a contribution to an important subject. The development of provincial cultures within the Roman empire is a process still imperfectly understood by historians and archaeologists; far too often, in Gaul and Britain, scholars have been content to point to 'Roman' or 'Celtic' features, almost as if they were racially determined rather than produced by a particular context of cultural, industrial, social or even political developments. These western provincial cultures are very important; they lie behind the development of late Roman and Germanic art- styles, and behind the flourishing of the 'Hiberno-Saxon' style in the early Middle Ages in Ireland, in England and (if the Book of Kells can be assigned there, as seems probable) in Pictland as well. A new and perhaps more scientific approach to our understanding of provincial art-styles is certainly needed, and a possible direction is now outlined for us.

EDWARD JAMES

University of York

THE ANGLO-NORMAN ERA IN SCOTTISH HISTORY. By G. W. S. Barrow. Pp xxiii, 232. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1980. £17.50 (Ford Lectures).

PROFESSOR Barrow defines the Anglo-Norman era in Scottish history as the two centuries between 1094(or 1097) and 1296, and the purpose of this published version of the 1977 Ford lectures is to explore and assess the Anglo-Continental contribution to the formation during that period of a feudal kingdom of Scotland.

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Scotland was a land of opportunity for the younger sons of north-west Europe. Land and lordship were there 'if not quite for

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