To reconstruct the bases of pre-Roman iron age belief systems is a hazardous task. At best we have to rely on classical descriptions which, even when contemporary with the cultures they describe, clearly see things in terms of their own society’s ideas. Use of much later Insular, if authentically Celtic, Welsh and Irish sources also carries the obvious dangers of projecting back in time and space concepts of probably limited regional and chronological applicability. Such as it is, the archaeological record suggests as much regional diversity in belief systems as in more tangible categories of material culture. Nevertheless, there are certain symbolic common denominators in La Tene visual art which support a view of its incorporation of ideas which are long-lasting and widely disseminated in space. A few examples must suffice.
From its very beginnings early Celtic art is concerned to depict not the whole human form - which in fact rarely occurs - but rather the human head either explicitly or ambiguously, as in the Cheshire Cat-like formulations of the later fourth century (Figures 20.1(1), 20.2, 20.6, 20.10 (below right), 20.13, 20.14). Even the insular material, generally abstract or aniconic, shows a few fleeting faces before the more definite first-century BC heads (Lambrechts 1954; Megaw 1965-6; Megaw and Megaw
1993). This recalls what we know from Insular tradition about the Celts’ veneration of the human head as the centre of the intellect and the spirit, the heart and soul of the individual. Then there is the frequent depiction of a restricted range of relatively naturalistic animals, longest lasting being the bull, the boar and the horse. It is the boar or, as a substitute, the pig, which is frequentl)' found as the champion’s share in early Celtic burials and which occurs right through to the Roman conquest as a common symbol on coinage as well as in the form of free-standing figurines and helmet crests. Cattle, in later prehistoric Europe an economic staple and, one may again surmise from later evidence, a recognized form of wealth, are represented from even before the early Hallstatt period, as are, if less commonly, sheep or goats and deer (Figure 20.12). Birds - where identifiable in particular water-birds and birds of prey - also have a long iconographic life from the bird-headed brooches of Early La Tene onwards (Figures 20.5, 20.10, 20.15, 20.17) and the highly stylized bird’s head-comma is particularly significant in the the pre - and post-Roman Celtic art of Britain and Ireland.
Combinations of humans and animals either in composite forms or associated one with the other are most clearly to be found in the strange imagery of the ‘Early Style’ gold rings (Figure 20.9) and the mask brooches (Figure 20.10), the latter reasonably interpreted as talismans to protect the wearer from an uncertain world populated by threats perceived and imagined (Pauli 1975, 1985). Imported imagery of Italo-Greek
Figure 20.14 Silver phalera with eighteen human heads and central triskel from hoard found at Villa Vecchia, Manerbio sul Mclla, Brescia, Italy. D. 19.2 cm. ’First century BC. (Photo;
Museo Civico, Brescia.)
Figure 20.15 Openwork ‘Ticino’-type bronze belt-hook with water-birds and ‘dragons’ from San Polo d’Enzo, Reggio Emilia, Italy. L. 8.1 cm. First half fourth century BC. (Photo: Museo Civico ‘G. Chierici’, Reggio Emilia.)
Orientalizing origin includes sphinxes, animals devouring a human head or arm and the human figure supported by a ‘tree of life’ comprising writhing bird - or ‘dragon’-headed lyre-shaped forms. Clearly symbolic and certainly not narrative in its intent this ‘master (or mistress) of the beasts’ is largely confined to one group of objects, the so-called ‘Ticino’ openwork belt-hooks of the early fourth century mainly from Switzerland and northern Italy; the ultimate oriental origin is ‘the ram in the
Figure i0,l6 Iron scabbards with incised dragon pairs: top - type 11 (the earliest) from Taliandbrogd, Vesz. prem, Hungary, W. 6.S cm, c.500 BC. (Photo; E. Neuffer Archive, courtesy Rbmiseh-Germantsche Kommission, Frankfurt); bottom-, type I dragons from Marnay, Saone-ct-Loire, France. W. j cm. Earlier third century BC. (Photo: Musee Denon, Chalon-sur-Sabnc.)
Thicket’ first depicted in ancient Sumer {Figure 20.15), certain that this
Heraldic group represents, as has been claimed, a trinity of sacred elements of Mediterranean origin which includes coral and the products of the vine (Kruta 1986, 1988). Equally, it is hard to interpret the meaning on early La Tene pieces — but also again on much later coinage - of such foreign beasts as the winged griffin or the sphinx, not to mention in at least one case a pair of lions. Do these simply represent the continuing attraction of the strange and new to a society clearly fascinated by the unusual and other-worldly?
Some motifs seem to be long-lived. Variations on the master of the beasts or the ram in the thicket resurface throughout La Tene times. The so-called dragon-pair scabbards of the fourth to second centuries BC certainly do not show dragons but variations on the bird-headed lyre seen on the Ticino belt-hooks, but without the central tiny figure (Figures 20,3 (left: i, 2), 20,16; cf. 20,15} (De Navarro 1972; Petres t982; Megaw 1971; Megaw and Megaw 1989b, 1991; Szabo and Petres 199a). The ‘inter-Celtic’ currency of these symbolic scabbards occurs from Romania to the Thames and even, in one locally adapted but clearly imported example, m Iberia, a region which had its own particular iron age but partially Celtic culture (Lenerz-de Wilde 1991: fig - 58:2). Whatever its origin, the dragon-pair sword may perhaps be regarded as an apotropaic symbol of special significance to people in new lands
Figure 20.17 Swiss Sword Style iron scabbard with chagrinage and bird-headed triskel found in a surgeon’s grave at Obermenziiig, Kr. Miinchen, Germany, Grave 7. W. c.4.8 cm. c. zoo BC, (Photo: Prahistorische Staatssammlung, Munich.)
In which fierce and exotic beasts may well have protected the owner; subsequently it may have become a symbol of rank and proven prowess in battle. Descendants of such creatures appear on items of the Ultimate La Tene style in Ireland such as the Petrie Crown, as well as the dragonesque brooches of Roman Yorkshire.
Finally, triplism is ubiquitous in early Celtic art (Green 1989). The writhing three-armed triskel, sometimes with bird-headed finials, is another motif which begins in fifth-century BC La Tene art and continues into the imagery of the early Christian gospel books (Figures 20.1(4), 4)> 20.11a, 20.14, 20.17). The
Waldalgesheim or Vegetal Style is essentially based on linked triskels (Verger 1986, 1987). Three human heads or simply a triple roundel like a pawn-broker’s sign are particularly common as the chief feature of a class of neck-ring peculiar to the southern Champagne region, as appendages to the spring on a subgroup of early mask brooches and on continental coinage, while triple-headed deities abound in the only partly romanized culture of later Celtic Britain and beyond.
It is hardly surprising that the makers of such magical material should have distinctive status in early Celtic society. An early La Tene skeleton grave in the Marne has, in addition to the arms typical for male graves of the period, a set of woodworking tools (Legendre and Piechaud 1985). Metalworkers’ implements have been found m a number of other central European graves while the status of another key figure amongst basically peasant societies, the healer, is confirmed by the discovery at Obermenzing near Munich of a middle La Tene surgeon’s burial marked by his ownership of a fine iron sword, manufactured in western Switzerland and decorated with a bird-headed triskel (Figure 20.17).
The chief elements of Celtic society seem to be those of a disparate collection of regional communities, often embracing many traits of the territories in which they found themselves but nevertheless largely sharing aspects of a similar economy and technology. Amongst all this variety, the binding element appears to be the art which, as material evidence for their belief systems, in many ways is the one common factor which best defines the Celts as a real identity in the making of Europe.
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