We have seen how, along the Atlantic coast of Europe, the use of gold contracted dramatically at the end of the Late Bronze Age. In southern Britain it seems to have vanished altogether but there was a limited survival to the north and west in the form of ribbon torques. There is some difficulty in deciding exactly which of these torques belong to this period. There was a limited vogue for simple, loosely twisted versions in the Middle Bronze Age and these match other contemporary goldwork in composition. Those that can be assigned to the Iron Age with some certainty on grounds of either composition or association tend to be much more tightly twisted from carefully shaped gold strips with a variety of terminals soldered on (Eogan 1983b). The two groups of torques may have no ancestral relationship at all; after all, twisting a strip of gold alloy is a simple and obvious thing to do with it; certainly there are no associations with late bronze age objects. The key iron age associations are Somerset, Co. Galway, with a Navan-type fibula and other obviously La Tene bronze, and at Clonmacnois, Co. Offaly, with an elaborate, tubular, buffer-terminal torque almost certainly made in the middle Rhine area around the beginning of the third century BC (Raftery 1984; 175-81). These finds not only confirm the La Tene date of the ribbon torques, but show that even areas as remote as central Ireland had some links with important areas of the Continent. How long this peripheral gold industry lasted is unknown. There are two or three ribbon torques of uncertain provenance made of refined, almost pure gold, which could be dated as late as the Roman period (Northover unpublished). There are no associations with iron age Celtic metalwork on the mainland of Britain, and certainly none in either the Snettisham treasure or in the Broighter hoard, which must date to the first century BC.
The Broighter hoard is a remarkable assemblage whose find circumstances have been the subject of controversy, although it is now accepted as a genuine hoard. It contains undoubted imports in the form of wire bracelets from the Eastern
Mediterranean but the other objects are more difficult to assess. Two twisted rod bracelets may be local copies of Roman types but in the apparent absence of a substantial gold industry in Ireland at this time this must be uncertain. The famous tubular torque uses techniques, such as the use of beaded wires joined to small gold beads, which are not part of Celtic goldworking anywhere in Britain but, on the other hand, it is decorated in a distinctly Irish style. The most plausible answer is that the torque has a continental origin and its body was either renewed or at least decorated in Ireland. The boat must have been modelled on typical Celtic ships, such as those of the Veneti referred to by Caesar. Model boats in precious metal have a long history, with a fourth-century BC model canoe from Hallein in Austria and the twelfth-eleventh-century BC gold ornamented shale model from Caergwrle in north-east Wales (for illustration see Eluere 1987a: 29, 98). The analyses of the Broighter gold show a significant platinum impurity which has been associated with both European and Mediterranean sources.
In contrast to this small-scale use of gold on the north-western fringe of the Celtic world, two other areas, the lower Danube and the Balkans in the east, and Iberia in the south-west, were major consumers of precious metal. There is an important parallel between the two in that a large proportion of the work was in silver, barely known in the core area. The most magnificent and enigmatic creation in silver of this period must be the Gundestrup Cauldron (Bergquist and Taylor 1987; Kaul 1991). For just over a century this vessel has been one of the principal icons of Celtic art throughout Europe. The evidence for its Celticity is chiefly its Iconography, for example the wearing of torques, the blowing of a Celtic form of carnyx, and the attributes of some of the deities apparently portrayed, such as the horned god Cernnunos. The cauldron, found dismantled, is composed of thirteen silver sheets worked in repousse, assembled in two friezes facing outwards as well as to the interior. The base is bowl-shaped with a gilded ornamented plaque in the bottom. A rim with a circular section is clipped on while the plates themselves are soldered together with pure tin (Northover unpublished).
Since its discovery, numerous theories for the origin of the cauldron have been put forward; the two most favoured are Gaul and the lower Danube area. The former region was proposed because of the specifically Celtic motifs on the cauldron, a number of which are most frequently found in Gaul. However, present opinion, for good reason, has settled on the area of present-day Romania and Bulgaria. The use of high-relief designs in partially gilded silver sheet with distinctive styles of chasing and engraving are typical of Thracian craftsmanship. The mixing of this with a partly Celtic iconography has led to the inspiration for the cauldron’s being attributed to the territory of the Scordisci, a Celtic group living on the south-eastern borders of the Celtic world in a close relationship with the Thracians (e. g. Moscalu 1990). Other products of the silversmiths of this area were brought west, one of the best known being the iron-cored silver torque from Trichtingen, Baden-Wiirttemberg (Fischer 1987; Eichhorn 1987).
In Iberia, too, the styles of precious metalworking represent a fusion of Celtic designs and motifs with local ideas and influences from the Mediterranean civilizations of the Phoenicians and the Greeks. The result, often referred to as Celtiberian, was stylish and inventive. As in the lands of the lower Danube, silver was probably the more important metal. Familiar forms are re-interpreted in silver, such as torques formed from twisting silver bars alternating with beaded or twisted wires. Some of the silver torques make more inventive use of their component bars and wires, with knots, side-loops and other ornaments incorporated into the hoops. Such features are not unique to the Celtiberian silver but appear in Switzerland and in some Roman jewellery. Copper alloy types are also repeated in silver, for example fibulae, spiral armlets and small vessels. Gold is particularly characteristic of the smaller jewellery, fibulae and earrings, where the basic forms are embellished with wire wrapping, filigree, soldered beads and granulation. Some large hoards, such as Arrabalde I, Zamora, Spain, display the full range of techniques (Delibes de Castro and Esparza Arroyo 1989; Perea Caveda and Rovira Llorens forthcoming).
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