This ostentation of the sixth and fifth centuries BC could only have existed if it was backed by well-organized productive communities through much of the Celtic world. Hodson’s (1990) study of the great Hallstatt cemetery (Kromer 1959) of over 2,500 graves (902 informatively analysed for ranking therein) reveals something of the infrastructure of one such community, one primarily concerned with trading its product, salt, distantly across much of temperate Europe, as seen through its burial conventions. In this, the artwork for both female and male dress adornment, as well as the male weaponry, and the luxury ceremonial items, though not all that gracious, is the major evidence. Figures 21.4a and b show the accepted ranking of female and male burial attire among this specialized community. It ranges from almost no metal accessories to ornate weapons and luxury items such as specialized tools, feasting gear, and metal vessels (many imported from the south) in the top-status graves. The elite tended to be buried in a secluded part of the cemetery (Flodson 1990; 98). There seems a dearth of leading males in the later phase (H2), and no obvious leader among them, which has suggested a rising female dominance (Hodson 1990: 99), but it must be remembered that more males would tend to meet their end on distant journeys. A composite diagram can be conceived to fill the missing highest ranking male for H2 (e. g. Sm4 (H2); Hodson 1990: 83, fig. 29). This would stress the emergence of the snake brooch (Schlangenfihel) a design perhaps of southerly inspiration (Mansfeld 1973: 4, 154-82) seen in e. g. G116, G749, G207, and some twenty other graves at Hallstatt. This snake brooch is a main brooch type at the Heuneburg fortress in the later sixth to early fifth century (Mansfeld 1973: 160-81) and in the very rich burials of Hochdorf (Moscati et al. 1991: no). These brooches of the earlier fifth century were a herald of the softly curving shapes (Megaw 1971: pi. i, 2) which were to become so essential in the ensuing Geltic art from the mid-fifth century BC onwards, the age of the chariot burials, when artwork became more flowing (Megaw 1971: pi. I, 2, 6).
Can be seen also in later Celtic cemeteries (e. g. Miinsingen-Rain, Switzerland (Hodson 1968); Diirrnberg-Hallein (Pauli 1978). Hodson (1990: 9of.) estimates the ritually burying population here as about 400 at any one time, around its peak in the sixth century BC. He sees a small elite - salt-barons, both male and female, who controlled the mining and the trading of the salt - and a more numerous but still privileged group, and then a yet larger number who were allowed some sort of ritual burial.
There remains a non-ritually-burying residuum (comparable perhaps to the serf populations in England of AD 1086, some 15—20 per cent of total population (Darby et al. 1952-72, indices under ‘serfs’). These people perhaps had no metal artwork, but their clothing might have been held with thongs and bone or wood pins, and some of their wood or bone knife and tool handles might be pleasingly shaped; such people were not always insensitive to graceful things.
Salt production was technologically much developed around 700 BC with a Europe-wide network, around the time of the beginning of the Hallstatt cemetery (Hodson 1985: 198 ff.). The decline of Hallstatt as a wealthy power in the later fifth century was probably also economic; the Diirrnberg-Hallein community farther to the west with its more easily accessible salt resources gradually took over the trade (Barth 1983; Pauli 1978).
Hodson has shown social ranking at burial by highlighting status-significant items such as wrist-rings, pin-and-coil head-dresses, belt - and shoulder-ornaments buried with the women (with gold and animal symbolism marking off an elite upper 5 per cent), and weaponry and other items of iron with the men (Hodson 1990: 99), imported luxury items such as sheet-bronze vessels, again marking off an upper elite. But were the armed men a deliberate force intended to protect the commercial value and safe passage of the distant salt trade? Or were the weapons (daggers particularly) more a mark of personal prestige (note Moscati et al. 1991: 84)? Some of the daggers at Hallstatt were probably locally made (Hodson 1990: 66; Sievers 1982: 24) but most were not, and Grave 555 shows that the salt-traders could draw upon the crack weaponsmiths of Swabia in the sixth-fifth centuries BC (Figure 21.5; Jope 1983), as well as the cista-makers of the Kurd area of Hungary (Stjernquist 1967; Jope and Jacobsthal in press: pi. 12 notes), and other graves (e. g. G696-7, 507) display the skills of the Este engravers (Megaw 1971: pi. 7; Jacobsthal 1944: pi. 59-60; Hodson 1990: 68-9).
Daggers were numerous in the Hallstatt cemetery (Kromer 1959, n. 67; Sievers 1982: pi. 8, 10, 55). They can be very instructive as prestige indicators, some worthy of a Hochdorf chief (Bittel et al., 143, 1981: fig. 70). They were carried widely across Europe, as personal weapons, exchange gifts, or in pursuit of trade, and their ranking in the Hallstatt cemetery may be cautiously exploited (Figure 21.4; cf. Hodson 1985: 197, fig., quoting Barth’s work).
One of the earliest daggers in the Hallstatt cemetery (a ‘dirk’ in Grave 555, about 650 BC; Sievers 1982: pi. i. i) has a hand-grip of intricate construction made of very thin iron, exactly like that of a dagger from the Thames at Mortlake (Hodges, in Jope 1961: 309, 329-30, pi. XVII-XVIIl). This kind of hilt construction seems to have been produced by the craft tradition of the Swabian area (Jope 1983).
Key:
Iron daggers and bronze cordoned buckets with swing-handles. Daggers with composite spindle-shaped handgrip (as from Mortlake and Hallstatt grave 555). Other relevant broad-bladed daggers; with bi-cone ornaments: on sheaths; on pommel. Cordoned swing-handle buckets, type as from Weybridge (Brooklands, Surrey) and Kurd, Hungary (after Stjernquist, with additions). Cordoned buckets of closely related variant types. L, London (Mortlake); W, Weybridge (Surrey); Ha, Hallstatt, Austria. The concentrations of black in the Swabian area of the Upper Danube suggest the production area of daggers with these features. Large spot indicate numerous buckets.
Figure 21.5 Map showing distribution of iron daggers across Europe, late seventh-third centuries BC. Some of these daggers had been carried great distances, partly through the custom of prestige gift-exchange. Qope 1983 with additions.)
This weapon from the Thames had, however, been carefully re-sheathed in the distinctive British manner (retaining just the top bar of the old sheath), with twin-loop suspension and fold-over bronze strips Qope 1961: pi. xvii), as though handed on as a family possession, perhaps a mark of chieftaincy, a symbol of rank and perhaps of territorial domain. In Britain we have no cemeteries of this age, and it is quite possible that elite body-disposal might have been in some ways riverine Qope 1961: 320-5; Bradley 1990; Torbriigge 1972; Cunliffe 1974: 269).
This dagger at once suggests that the social standing of some chiefs from the Thames valley lands of the seventh-sixth centuries BC would have been acceptable among the higher rankings of the Hallstatt community (e. g. Figure 21.4b, Sm3 (H2)), and that it was realized through a convention of distant prestige gift-exchange (Kromer 1983). A sword from the London reaches of the Thames (Brailsford 1953: 60, 65, fig. 23.1; Sievers 1982: pi. 38.2; but note Stead 1984b), and the Weybridge (Brooklands) bucket (made probably in the Kurd region of Hungary, Jope and Jacobsthal in press: pi. 12 notes) are other pieces that might have travelled for the purpose of gift-exchange. This seems to speak of a prosperous southern Britain at this time in continental Celtic eyes. Further away in the north of Ireland the enigmatic two swans and three cygnets confronting two ravens on the Dunaverney flesh-hook could be additions to a native implement (Brailsford 1953: pi. iv; Jope and Jacobsthal in press: pi. 7, cf. Figure 21.6b; Spindler 1976: pi. 21) and are perhaps best explained as exotics coming by gift-exchange (as also the roundel from Danebury).
In Europe these daggers have come mostly from burials. In Britain, as we have noted, there are virtually no rich burials of this age and nearly all these daggers come from the Thames (or its tributaries). The Thames system has yielded twenty-seven iron daggers (some nearer ‘dirks’), many with their sheathing of thin sheet - or strip-bronze, lined with wood (or bark), of the seventh to third centuries BC. Only two were imports, and one of these (from Mortlake), as we have noted, had been carefully re-sheathed in distinctive British manner, presumably as a prized family possession, to be passed on through the family line, as a symbol of rank and privilege and perhaps of specific territorial rights. At least ten of these Thames daggers might be seen as denoting rank comparable with the Mortlake piece. If we suggest that about 5-10 per cent of all the daggers made and used during this time-span might be known to us today (the Thames has been well dredged), this would mean that about 100-200 such daggers were made during these four centuries (say about five to ten dagger-chieftains per generation) for territory bordering on some 70 miles of the Thames (all seven of the earliest come from the east London reaches). This hints at something of the order of 500 square miles of varied terrain (some wooded, some open downland, other areas with water-meadow) as a chieftain’s subtribal domain in the fifth-third centuries BC in southern Britain.
The seventeen daggers with the specifically British twin-loop suspension reveal a continuity of British armourers’ craft practice along the Thames valley area, and hence of life style at chieftain level through four centuries. This is about the same time-span through which the hill-fort at Danebury 50 miles to the south has shown similar stable continuity of life (Cunliffe 1989: 199). It Is difficult to surmise relations between chieftainry centred upon the Thames valley and a hill-fort community 50 miles away, but someone at Danebury in the fifth century BC does seem to have had a small openwork disc (Figure 21.6c), made in Celtic Europe (probably in the Taunus region north of Wiesbaden), which had probably graced a small cylindrical box of fine wood (Jope, in Cunliffe and Poole 1991: 331-2), which could have been a small prestige gift for a lady of rank commensurate with the Thames valley chieftain, and who, it seems, lived (at least part of the time ) in Danebury (for its houses, see Cunliffe and Poole 1991). Another remarkable exotic piece of this age (which could also have been a prestige gift) is the Weybridge bucket, made probably in the Kurd region of Hungary (Jope and Jacobsthal in press: pi. 12; cf. Hodson 1990: pi. 18-19).
There are only three other examples of this distinctively British Thames dagger-sheath with twin-loop suspension outside the Thames area, one from upland peat in
(a)
(b)
Figure 21.6 Possible prestige exchange gifts: (a) Flesh-hook of bronze, from Dunaverney, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland: sixth century BC. The five swans, cygnets and ravens seem separately added through newly made holes in the shaft; they are quite unusual in the British Isles at such a date: they seem to have been added to this native type of flesh-hook, and perhaps they came by gift-exchange from Celtic Europe; (b) shows a similar bird (to be similarly fitted) from the princely burial at the Magdalenenberg, in the Black Forest; (c) Bronze openwork disc, 9 cm across, from Danebury, Hants; probably of Continental making, later fifth to earlier fourth centuries BC. The only means of attachment is a very slender pin at centre, which suggests it may have been the central mount on the top of a trinket box of very fine wood, the fineness of the pin intended to avoid splitting the wood (no sign of resin to hold it in place was detected). Such a piece might well have been a prestige gift to a lady of rank, ((a) Photo: British Museum; c 1:2; (b) Spindler 1976: pi. 2; (c) E. M. Jope)
Somerset Qope 1961: 311, 336; Stead 1984a), another from ‘Hertford Warren’ near Saffron Walden in Suffolk (with analogies for the dagger hand-grip across the North Sea; Clarke and Hawkes 1955: 20of., 208, 226; Jope and Jacobsthal in press; pi. 22), and one in Belgium (Marien 1963). Perhaps exchange gifts are again a likely explanation for these exotic pieces. Much, indeed, could be said about the distant human relationships implied by such items as the Mortlake dagger.
We still do not know where any British dagger-chief had a Herrensitz or what his residence might have been like (but see p. 393), or his relations with hill-forts; the Heath Row ‘temple’ was presumably not a residence, but there might have been one nearby. The occupation site near the find-spot of the Weybridge bucket (cf. Moscati et al. 1991: 84) certainly merits further exploration for such evidence.
So we see how in several ways the daggers and other artwork can shed light on the social infrastructure of Celtic Britain in the seventh to second centuries BC.
In the latter years of the Hallstatt cemetery, in the later fifth century BC, there is one of the finest Celtic long swords with decorated scabbard, with a lively scene of warriors, clearly showing its Atestine sources as well as Celtic items of dress (Megaw 1971: pi.; Jacobsthal 1944: pi. 60). Fighting prowess was so much admired among Celtic peoples that fine swords might be expected to reveal some social grading. Such long swords with ornate scabbards must have denoted high rank (e. g. the armed medical specialist of the small Obermenzmg family burial-ground (Megaw and Megaw 1989: pL; Megaw 1971: 17; de Navarro 1955; Moscati et al. 1991: but
It seems hardly possible to discern any widely accepted sword protocol (Pleiner 1993: 35-70). The wide dispersal across the Celtic world (and through a long time span) of scabbards with dragon - or bird-pairs at the head (Megaw 1971: pi. 16) we might like to associate with mercenary activity, but this cannot be justified (Stead 1984b; Megaw and Megaw 1989: 99k; Moscati et al. 1991: 333-6). The emergence of the belt-chain sword suspension systems in the third century BC (Moscati et al. 1991: 324—7) is really a manifestation of the upper-middle class levelling of Celtic noble society.
The social patterns of Celtic Europe changed greatly during the sixth-second centuries BC. The swaggering Celtic nobility gave way in the fifth-fourth centuries to less prodigiously wealthy chiefs (but still often buried with a chariot), and Duval 1986: 21) feels already able to write of ‘peaceful village chieftains’. Even this more modest wealth steadily became plebeianized in the fourth-third centuries: we see the growth of large mainly middle-class cemeteries, e. g. Munsingen-Rain (Hodson 1968); they were highly organized, of almost urban character, yet apparently serving a scattered rural population, the artwork plainly showing their middle-class bourgeois manners. Yet we know almost nothing of their dwellings; perhaps these cemeteries provided the places (and occasions) for such a rural population to meet.
During the second century BC the well-fortified quasi-urban settlements, the oppida, proliferated over Celtic Europe; we really know little of how these grew up. Manching is too large a site to clarify this problem by itself. Their existence seems based on industry and trade - was the ritual bough with gold leaves at Manching (Moscati et al. 1991: 530) a ‘civic’ emblem? A smaller site might be more informative on origins, such as Pont Maure, a small rectangular enclosure in the Correze, but with nevertheless some show of distant trade; Campanian glossy black ware (Ward Perkins 1941: 49-51> 79-8i), and part of a La Tene iron brooch (identified by the author while working on site and finds with the excavator, N. Lucas-Shadwell, in 1938); this brooch must have come from far away to the north-east (cf. the Dux-type brooch with Agris helmet (Moscati et al. 1991: 292). Then we still need to know much more about oppidan relations with the hinterland, in economy and cultural matters (see Nash 1976: 111-14). They do seem to have consolidated Celtic Europe into a politically viable pattern of tribal territories, as Caesar later recognized, and as the coinage (its art charged with meanings) can demonstrate.
World History
