HALLSTATT

Metallurgical issues surrounding the end of the conventionally defined Bronze Age and the adoption of iron as a utilitarian metal in what became Celtic Europe are complex and often misconstrued. The period is also one of considerable social change. There are stark contrasts between the increasing wealth and power of the chiefdoms in the core area of the Hallstatt culture, evidenced by the princely graves, and the periphery, where regions such as the British Isles saw a rapid decline in the availability of finished metal despite apparently adequate resources of copper, tin, iron and even gold. The production of gold, and the uses to which it was put have to be seen against this background. One of the principal effects was that the accumulation of large numbers of near-identical objects in hoards, as in late bronze age Ireland, ceased and gold begins to be deposited in high-status graves. In other words gold has ceased to be a measure of wealth with, perhaps, a primitive value system attached to it, and has become a symbol of power. No one has ever made any calculations but a casual impression is that the weight of gold available for use was much less than in the Late Bronze Age. Silver, virtually absent from much of the Bronze Age in northern and western Europe, also begins to make an appearance.

Metalworking in the later Bronze Age, especially in Atlantic Europe, was dominated by casting technology: objects were cast close to their finished shape with often only minimal mechanical working and finishing. The transition to the ironusing system of the Hallstatt C-D periods significantly increased the emphasis on wrought products, especially of sheet, culminating in such enormous pieces as the cauldron and couch from the Hochdorf tomb (Biel 1987). The same is true of much Hallstatt gold with embossed and decorated gold sheet the dominant form: the Hochdorf tomb again is prominent with the sheet-gold mounts for drinking-horns, shoes and a dagger sheath and hilt (Eluere 1987a; Furger and Muller 1991). There may have been several reasons for this shift. If gold was indeed now a symbol of power rather than simply of wealth, then the display of gold, and the cladding of large objects in gold, would have been more Important than the quantity of gold actually owned, which might anyway have been more restricted than before. The contemporary aesthetic for fine metalwork also shifted to the sort of embossed, chased or engraved figures, patterns and textures that could be made In thin sheet (e. g. Situlenkunst). Finally, there was, perhaps, some affinity with the forming of the new metals, iron and steel, which at that time could only be forged; with these tendencies It may have happened that the availability of moulding and casting skills became much more limited. An extensive use of sheet-gold was not new; the earliest bronze age gold In north-west Europe was almost entirely sheet (Taylor 1980) and bronze age gold In Denmark was dominated by sheet and wire products.

Besides the sheet appliques and scabbard plates exemplified by the Hochdorf tomb, more three-dimensional objects were being made. Many are In the form of bracelets and collars made up from the same embossed, thin gold sheet, for example In the tomb of Hundersingen, Baden-Wurttemberg (e. g. Eluere 1987a: pi. 85-8), but new ideas and techniques are beginning to enter the world of the Celtic goldsmith. Finds In Switzerland, notably at Ins and Jegenstorf In Canton Bern, show jewellery with wire loop-ln-loop chains and the embossed textured surfaces of the sheet-metal replaced by the application of granulation and filigree (for bibliography see Furger and Muller 1991: 114-17). These may have been made by the Celts’ neighbours south of the Alps, the Etruscans, who had learned these new skills from the Greek and eastern Mediterranean civilizations. It Is also possible that one or two Celtic smiths had also mastered the new style and that some of the items were made in Switzerland. One of the finest and most controlled applications of filigree is In the terminals of the Vix collar. This collar, with a thick, smooth sheet body and complex multicomponent terminals with cast, chased, punched and filigree ornaments, is unique but contains several pointers to developments in the La Tene period, the classic period of Celtic art from the fifth century BC onwards (Eluere, 1989b).