It is not currently possible to prove that any of the iron age peoples who lived in central and western Europe in the first millennium BC definitely spoke a Celtic language or defined themselves as Celts. Because of that I have eschewed the use of the term ‘Celtic’ in this chapter, and propose to discuss the personal ornaments found in those areas of continental Europe where ‘cultures’ defined by archaeologists as the Hallstatt and La Tene were located, and in those parts of the British Isles and Ireland where comparable cultural material is found.
Recent years have seen an increasing number of studies of personal ornament and the way it appears to have been distributed in society. Questions of gender, social status, age and regional differentiation have been approached through the examination of the evidence for patterns of ornament use, largely from inhumation cemeteries, and various stimulating and persuasive answers have been offered to some, though not all, of these questions. In particular the work of Herbert Lorenz (1978, 1980) has shown that detailed analysis of the way rings (for the neck, arm, leg and finger) were worn in different parts of Europe allows the tentative identification of women who have moved from one group to another, perhaps demonstrating exogamy. In areas like the British Isles where most of such artefacts do not come from graves but are generally found unstratified, or at the very best on settlement sites, separated from the person who would have worn them, similar questions are almost impossible to answer.
Dechelette referred in 1914 to writers in classical antiquity who mentioned the Celts’ passion for jewellery, and he proceeded himself to examine the wide range of necklaces, bracelets, pendants, earrings, belts and brooches which he attributed to the taste for self-decoration which had developed since the mid-Hallstatt period. Then as now, care must be exercised in the Interpretation of burial deposits: while some rings, particularly certain solid bronze neck-rings, must have been introduced on to the body in childhood and must therefore have been carried throughout life and Into the grave, other items, such as the very large numbers of brooches deposited with some bodies in graves on the Swiss plateau, could well represent the total number owned by the deceased or her family rather than items worn together in life. Similarly, there is evidence from some graves that certain items were made specifically for the burial, which may confuse the ascription of a status assumed to be carried in life.
One further aspect of ornament studies needs to be mentioned. Skeletal, and sometimes cremated, remains from early excavations were frequently sexed on the nature of the ornaments found with them. When better standards of skeletal analysis allowed sexing without reference to associated artefacts, some ‘male’ bodies were found to be associated with ‘female’ ornaments. Transvestism was one explanation offered for such occurrences, but it is as likely that some correlations that had been suggested, such as paired fibulae with female gender, were not as simple as atjirst thought. Many combinations of ornaments have become part of the grammar of gender and status ascription, and it is certainly time for a full-scale reanalysis of the bones themselves (where they survive - unfortunately, those from some of the largest and most representative cemeteries have been lost or mixed together since excavation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), together with the artefacts, so that questions such as the status of women, or the possibility of cross-dressing males, can be addressed in a context free from circular argument.
World History
