Artwork, which here must include costume, is full of social implications. First, it has given a fluid, often vivid, means of communication between people, as individuals (sometimes eyeball-to-eyeball; Jope 1987: pis: xia, viiia; fig. 3b), as groups, or as institutions. Second, Celtic art has been a means of displaying social rank (or aspiration thereto); there can be no doubt of the hierarchic nature of societies who possessed display works like the Agris helmet (p. 380). It can give some guidance concerning social level and context within the changing structure of Celtic communities through more than a millennium, not least during the complex processes of conurbanization (often oversimplified in discussion) in ‘barbarian’ Europe from the sixth to first centuries BC. Artwork has further been a potent factor in expressing cultural taste and human relations with the supernatural, which profoundly affect relations between people. It can sometimes also give clues to the life style and living conditions of different social strata.
Artwork is one of the few means we have of penetrating the social and higher cultural infrastructure of non-literate or non-recorded peoples, and it can give some clues to the amount of leisure time available to people of differing social levels (Jope 1983). The taste shown m everyday items, such as knife handles, can reveal whole facets of humbler personal taste, as, for higher levels, do the grander works for aristocratic display and ceremony. The latter, whether earthly or supernatural, have been powerful agents in persuading unity in a common cause, such as allegiance to a chieftain, or subtribal unity. The carved monoliths atop the ‘princely’ burial mounds could be examples (Figure 21.i; Jacobsthal 1944: pi. 6-15; Bittel et al. 1981: 90-1, 121; Moscati et al. 1991: 88, 126).
The very concept of ‘Celtic art’ seems itself to carry a certain coherence, as though distilling an essential social ethos, to represent the visual sensitivity of ‘Celticity’, a common cause among those ‘barbarian’ peoples who had the urge to feel themselves ‘Celtic’ (Jope 1987: 120; Bodmer 1993). It arose from a profound feeling of dissent from the often rather staid conventions of Greek-style ornament (Jope 1987; Megaw and Megaw 1990), thereby seeming to assert ethnic individuality.
The artwork itself can sometimes tell us directly about the life style, occupation, costume or social position of individuals depicted. This may be through the eyes and minds of classical or near-classical artists, or of Celts themselves (Figures 21.2;
Figure 21.i Monolith figure atop a princely burial mound (Bittel et al. 19S i: 121).
Bienkowski 1908; Piggott 1965: 197-9). proud nudity of Gauls in battle
Or ceremonial (Bittel et al. 1981; 91, fig. 28), Celtic dress (e. g. Jacobsthal 1944; it, pi. 6, 59-60; Megaw 1971; pi. 24, 25, 231 (brooch holding cloak)); east Celts (Szabo 197II pi. 72-5); formal processions (Moscati etal. 1991; 538f.); horse-play Qope 1983, probably situla-inspired, cf, Bittel ef al. 1981: 167), or a Celtic ideal of feminine beauty (Powell 1958: 236, pi. 6). A coin of Cunobelin (Figure 21.3; Allen 1958; 53, pi. v,38) shows a fully accoutred, very un-Roman-looking foot-soldier (perhaps the best view we shall ever have), with animal-crested helmet and Celtic side-seamed trousers bunched under the knees. Various forms of multiple and single human sacrifice arc shown by Jacobsthal (1944: 8f., 165, pi. 2, 4; see also Moscati et al. 1991: 362-3), though Rome’s true motives in suppressing druidism - politically civilizing urge, or merely security - can only be assessed through contemporary writings (Last 1949), Celtic artists had their own subtle ways of portraying their very distinctive nature; note the profoundly un-Greek mouths of the Roquepertuse heads (third century BC; Jacobsthal 1944: pi. 2, 4, pp. 4, 105; Jope 1987: 98, pi. iii); witness also the supremely economical expression of Celtic aristocratic aloofness in Britain of the third century BC (Figure 21.2: the Wandsworth ‘mask’ shield; Jope and Jacobsthal in press: pis 70-5; Jope 1987; 108, pi. v). A similar manner of arrissed modelling has been used to emphasize a very non-aristocratic strain in the little face on the pottery vase from Novo Mesto in Yugoslavia (Moscati et al. 1991; 116).
Some items of artwork have overt (or accepted) status implications (e. g. a crown, a neck-ring, a dagger, a brooch - for the kind of dress it implies (Hawkes 1982), or the luxury silks of the Hohmichele (Hundt 1969). Others are meaningful for the connections with wealth or authority they imply (e. g, vehicles and horse gear, or
Figure ii. i ‘Celtic aristocracy through Celtic eyes’; face in relief beaten bronze at top of spine of shield from river Thames at Wandsworth, Later third century DC. (Restoration S.
Rces-Jones. Photo: R. E.H. Reid, Queen’s University, Belfast. British Museum.)
Hand mirrors Jope and Jacobsthal (in press): pis 238-49). Control and authority over material resources, and over skilled ateliers is also revealed through artwork.
Gold itself seems to have a special status among Celts already in the seventh century BC (at Halstatt marking off an elite of about j per cent of females: Hodson 1990: 80). In early Celtic Britain gold hardly appears before the first century BC; it is all concentrated in East Anglia, above all at and around Snettisham in Norfolk, which must have been a royal repository and where alone in Britain we find a good gold-working tradition in the third-second centuries BC (Stead 1991b; Jope and Jacobsthal in press: 123, map). The Snettisham deposits show the systematic burial of gold treasure as a form of banking (Stead i99tb). The full political significance of this East Anglian concentration of the gold has yet to be assessed (see also Chapter 18). Here the world of coinage must be considered also (Chapter 14).
Figure 21.3 Coin of Cunobclin. A British foot-soldier - the best view we arc likely to get ¦ early first century ad. (Photo courtesy of D. E Allen; Allen 1958: pi. v.38.)
World History
