A great deal of La Tène art concentrated on jewellery and items of personal domestic use such as mirrors and combs, as well as weapons and decorated harnesses for horses. One of the richest expressions of Celtic art, however, is to be found in the production of Celtic coinage.
The Celts had developed their own distinctive coinage by the late fourth century BC. It is safe to say that it was inspired by Greek coinage and had resulted from Celtic trade with the Greek world. Greek coinage had come into being at the end of the seventh century BC. To put the Celtic development of coinage into context, the Insubrean Celts of the Po valley were minting their own coins some fifty years before Rome started to do so; Roman coins also resulted from contacts with the Greek city states of southern Italy and were based on the same weight standard as that used by the Greeks.
Dr Daphne Nash is inclined to believe that Celtic coinage arose because of the payment in Greek coinage to Celtic mercenaries selling their services to the Greek states from the fourth century BC. She is not inclined to take into consideration the continuous trade between the Celts and Greeks which dated back to the seventh and sixth centuries BC. I consider this to be an omission.
Coinage is to be found in all parts of the ancient Celtic world, with the significant exception of Ireland. No native coinage appeared to have developed here until the Christian period was well under way. Some Roman coinage has been discovered. Early references imply that gold rings were used as currency. Caesar had said of first-century BC Britain: ‘For money they used bronze, or gold coins, or iron ingots of fixed weights.’ Certainly coinage was being used in Britain by the second century BC, with each major tribe and its king issuing stamped coins.
Throughout the Celtic world, coins were minted by first casting the metal, which was generally gold, silver or bronze, in moulds of burnt clay that had been prepared beforehand. This resulted in the production of coins of exactly equal weight. The pieces were then finished manually, by hammering them between the two stamps. Most of these coins bore images which could have been of religious significance.
We are extraordinarily lucky in that a great many of the Celtic coins survive, although what has been lost by melting down the gold and silver of many hordes can only be guessed at.
When names or human heads begin to appear on the coins in the mid-second century BC, they are personal names of rulers, comparable with the names of Roman consuls of the republican period and the emperors of the later period. We have the coins of many famous Celtic kings and rulers such as Cunobelinus (Cymbeline), who was issuing his coinage in the years before the Roman Claudian invasion. We have coins, and some rare gold coins, of Vercingetorix, the great Gaulish king who fought Caesar and is considered the last ruler of the ‘free Gauls’.
The majority of the late Celtic coins have heads on one side and a pattern based on an animal on the reverse. Some experts consider the heads to be gods or goddesses. I ammore inclined to believe that the heads are those of the actual rulers, male and female. Early coins do have representations of deities but it is always quite clear what they are. For example, a second-century BC bronze coin of Belgic Gaul, issued by the Remi tribe, shows a figure in a lotus position holding accoutrements very much like the figure on the Gundestrup Cauldron. The heads of deities seem clearly to be identified as such. The later heads are of bearded and unbearded males and of females with elaborate individual hairstyles.
The animals on the reverse are often horses, sometimes with a chariot, and even a charioteer. Sometimes a horseman is represented. The next most popular figure is a boar. Less frequently coins carry representations of lions, bears, cattle, goats and ravens. The zoomorphic emblems are usually accompanied by other artefacts above or below them. These undoubtedly possessed a symbolic significance which we can longer discern. The man-headed horse and the goat-headed snake are particularly Celtic and are found in many pieces of artwork. Severed human heads also abound.
No examination of the Celtic world is complete without a consideration of these coins, whose sheer exuberance and artistry illustrate so many Celtic concepts. Their composition also gives us invaluable information about the metallurgy and metrology of the period.
While Greek and Latin terms have subsequently been given to these coins (such as stater and tetradrachme), Dr Bernhard Maier has rightly pointed out that we do not know what the Celts named their coinage. The only native evidence we have is from early Irish sources from the time the Irish kings started to use a coinage system. The value of currency in eighth-century Ireland, the period from when our evidence comes, was fixed on the cow. A full-grown cow or ox was the general standard of value not only in Ireland but throughout the Celtic world. Greek coinage developed from the value of an iron cooking spit (obelos), hence the obol, six obols being equivalent to one drachma. For the Irish the value represented by one milch cow was usually called a séd. Cormac’s Glossary lists a classification of the séd from the milch cow (the top value) to a heifer (called a dartaid) or the worst value. The Irish law system later seems to have adopted a miach, or sack of corn (oats or barley), as a general standard of currency.
In early times we find a native coin called a crosóc, whose tabular weight was entirely different from later coins. It was reckoned to be eighteen grains of wheat (13.5 troy grains). This coin was marked with a cross, but we should not immediately conclude that this was a Christian symbol for the Celts used cross motifs as solar symbols, including the swastika-style cross which evolved into Brigit’s cross. The crosóc fell out of use when the screpall and pinginn came into being around the fourth and fifth centuries AD.
These two coins were both of silver. The pinginn weighed eight grains of wheat or 6 troy grains while the screpall, also called a sical, weighted twenty-four grains (18 troy grains). It has been pointed out that the words screpall and sical must undoubtedly have been borrowed from the Latin (scrupulus and siculus in turn derived from the Hebrew shekel). But on closer examination we find there are several native names for these coins (puingcne, opuingc, oiffing, faing and fang were all alternative names for the screpall, and píss was an alternative for the pinginn).
The evolution by the Celts of metalworking was the foundation of their technological advancement. Their proficiency in iron working was a significant step in European progress. How the Celts came by these techniques is impossible to say. It may simply be that they developed them through the process of working other metals. The first peoples to emerge as advanced in such techniques, in the late second millennium BC, were the Indo-European Hittites. Iron ore was abundant in the Anatolian mountains where they had settled, and iron became a valuable metal among the Hittites. It was worked by a few skilled craftsmen. King Anittas received as tribute from the city of Puruskhanda an iron sceptre and an iron throne. Iron swords began to be produced here but not in such quantity as to make a significant difference in warfare. However the Celts, experimenting over many centuries with smelting and forging techniques, probably arrived at their knowledge without outside influence.
In ancient Celtic society, the smiths were accorded a high status. They were considered to rank with the professional intellectuals and were thus part of the intellectual caste of society. Perhaps this was because they were regarded as possessing some Otherworld knowledge; some magical skill in that, by means of fire, water and their art, they produced strong metal from the rough iron ore.
The Celtic god of smiths seems to bear a single name throughout the Celtic world, represented by Goibhniu in Ireland and Gofannon in Wales. In Ireland, the smith god appears as a triune god, as Goibhniu, Luchta and Credhne. In some texts the trinity is Goibhniu, Cian and Samhain. Goibhniu was the smith, Luchta the wright and Credhne the metalworker; all three combined to produce weapons or wheels or whatever other artefact came from their combined skills.
In the famous battle between the children of Danu and the gods of the Underworld, the Fomorii, each of the gods made a different part of the weapons: Goibhniu made the blade, Luchta the shaft and Cre
dhne the rivets. Goibhniu’s weapons were always accurate and inflicted a fatal wound. Curiously enough he was also made host of the Otherworld feast in which he provided a special ale and those who drank of it became immortal.
In Welsh myth, Gofannon, the smith god, was the son of Dôn, the equivalent of Danu, who features in the Tale of Culhwch and Olwen.
The Celtic god is clearly the equivalent of the Greek Hephaistos, who also prepares the feast of the gods while his ale preserves their immortality, and the Roman Vulcan. Figures of smith gods are found throughout the Celtic world but they are particularly prevalent in northern Britain. While the Continental name for the smith god does not seem to have survived in epigraphy, we may speculate from the insular Celtic forms. There are many representations of the god Sucellus carrying a long-shafted hammer or mallet, and the name has been interpreted as ‘the good striker’. Yet the immediate identification of Sucellus as a smith god could be an over-simplification, for his hammer might symbolise something entirely different.
Celtic craftsmen were also skilled in the production of glass and in enamelling. The Celts had learned how to make glass by the sixth and fifth centuries BC but it is only from the fourth century BC that the first traces of Celtic glass-producing workshops survive. Glass was used chiefly in the production of jewellery and other artefacts, particularly coloured beads and ornaments. Glass animals abound from this period. A fascinating example of how advanced the Celts were in making coloured glass figurines may be seen in the miniature glass dog found in Wallertheim, Germany, dating from the second century BC. The technique used was spinning semi-molten ribbons of variously coloured glass on a rod.
Glass beads were very popular during this period, as were glass bangles. Several statues and Celtic heads were clearly made with glass eyes, such as the figure from Bouray, Essome, dated to the first century AD, who is seated in the lotus position, a torc around the neck, and with a blue and white glass eye – the only one remaining in situ.
The production of glass and enamel in Britain and Ireland had become extremely sophisticated by the first century BC. The enamelling technique would eventually influence the gospel illumination of the Christian period in these areas.
In 1987 archaeologists uncovered a spectacular third-century BC sword at Kirkburn in Yorkshire. It is now in the British Museum in London, and demonstrates the high degree of craftsmanship among the Celts. It is of iron, bronze and enamel with patterns engraved on it, and the pommel is of horn. It was found to have been assembled from over seventy components, each item crafted with considerable skill. The overall length was 697 millimetres with a blade of 570 millimetres.
Enamelling was also carried out among the Continental Celts. The craftsmen had learned how to fuse the glass on to the surface of copper alloys, creating a true enamel working. They used a variety of colours but the favourite was red. A typical example of this type of work is the late-fourth-century BC bronze helmet from Amfreville-sous-les-Monts, Eure, France, which is stylistically decorated with gold and red enamel. Another example, from a bronze belt chain of the second century BC, is a pendant in the shape of a dragon-type animal, which has red enamel inlays. This was found in Nové Zámky, in the Czech Republic.
Some of the most outstanding examples of Celtic art may be found in the mirrors, especially as represented by the Desborough, Northamptonshire, bronze mirror, dated to the end of the first century BC. The bronze back surface is engraved with fascinating Celtic designs that could only have been achieved with the aid of a compass. The Holcombe, Devon, mirror of the same period is similar in style. Very few Celtic mirrors have survived on the European mainland but we are lucky in having a whole series of insular Celtic mirrors found mostly in Britain from East Anglia across to Cornwall.
Celtic potters had progressed to the use of the wheel from the end of the Hallstatt period. They fired their pots in techinically advanced kilns which were designed to allow oxygen to be introduced; the potter could thus control the colour of the vessel, depending on its clay. By the La Tène period, the potters often stamped their pots with animal designs. Later the pots were painted with bands of red or white or black patterns such as cross hatching. This was done by applying liquid clay before firing. Some Celtic potters added graphite to the clay to achieve a metallic appearance.
The insular Celts tended to make their pots by hand, particularly the north Britons. In fact, both the north Britons and the Irish appeared to produce very little in the way of pottery at all, preferring, it seems, to use intricate metalwork bowls or carved wooden vessels, which were much more labour intensive but durable. The evidence shows that the Celts even used lathes to turn out wooden bowls and tool handles.
Woodworking was advanced among all the Celtic peoples, which is not surprising as wood was their environment. Great forests covered all the Celtic lands and once iron had been introduced into their tools the Celts fell to work with a will to fell the forests for constructional work in building their homes, towns and roadways. Celtic carpenters were as skilled as their metalworkers. The great trees were felled with axes and split into planks using wooden wedges. From the early La Tène period some constructional timbers have been recovered up to 12 metres in length along with a variety of woodworking tools. These included small saws and even adzes.
Celtic woodworkers were little different from their Roman counterparts in using mortises and tenons or pegged joints. There are traces of elaborate wooden structures, such as gates to towns, or doors to buildings and so forth. There are even references in some classical works to elaborate wooden bridges being found in Gaul across the rivers.
We will deal with the construction of houses in the next chapter and have already remarked on the building of ships and land vehicles in which carpenters played a central role. But the Celtic woodworkers also produced an intricate range of portable objects, including metal-bound wooden buckets, or barrels, such as those found at Aylesbury in Britain or Manching in Germany.
We have seen that the Celts were skilled in the production of fabrics, and that the British woollen cloak or sagum was the height of fashion in Rome in the second and first centuries BC. Cassius Dio, in his description of Boudicca, says that ‘she wore a tunic of diverse colours over which a thick mantle was fastened by a brooch.’ Unfortunately, fabric only survives in exceptional circumstances, but we do have a fur cape and a wrap-around skirt from the fifth century BC, preserved in a bog at Huldrenose, Denmark. The skirt is of a fabric similar to tartan. Other finds from the Hallstatt period include check patterns and the colours, although faded, are reminiscent of the tartan so characteristic of Celtic clothing according to the descriptions in classical sources. Wool and linen were the main fabrics for clothing although silks, obviously imported, have also been discovered.
Leather working was widespread and leather sandals, shoes, belts and other accoutrements have been found throughout the Celtic world. Combinations of wood and leather were also used by the Celtic shoemakers.
Once again, we have to conclude from the remarkable evidence left from the ancient Celtic world that the Roman descriptions of barbaric savagery are less than fair to a society highly advanced in the field of arts and crafts.
12
CELTIC ARCHITECTURE
There are two popular views of Celtic builders and both are erroneous. The first is that the Celts constructed the great megaliths of western Europe but, as these were built in a period long before we can safely identify a Celtic culture, we must disregard this theory. Jacquetta and Christopher Hawkes have suggested that the megaliths might have been built by an early Indo-European people and that these people were proto-Celts, but as we simply have no way of proving this it remains an hypothesis. The second view is that the ancient Celts lived in wattle huts, often huddled behind earth ramparts, and did not build anything substantial at all. That is how the Roman propagandists would have us see them. That also is untrue.
Celtic architects and builders, in their northern homelands, were faced with pr
oblems which their Greek and Roman counterparts did not have to contend with when it came to constructing buildings that would last. Nevertheless, despite the test of nature and time and the destructive intervention of subsequent generations, remnants still exist. There are constructions in Scotland, for example, originally built in the fifth century BC, which still stand to a height of 12 metres.
Early Celtic Hallstatt culture was basically rural and many of the constructions were wooden farmhouses. For the Celts, dwelling among the vast European forest regions, wood was the major source of building material. On the other hand, the great royal centres had begun to spring up. Strongholds such as Heuneburg, in the sixth century BC, and Entremont developed into cities, with a royal residence surrounded by clusters of houses and set out on street patterns with shops and other places of business.
Archaeologists call these royal sites, enclosed by fortifications, oppida, the plural of the Latin word for town. Built from the sixth and fifth centuries BC, these oppida differed from early sites in their size and in the fact that they were centres of trade and crafts as well as providing means of protection in case of threat.
At the open air museum of Asparn, near Vienna, one can see reconstructions of the typical Continental Celtic farm dwellings, rectangular houses that would not be out of place among modern Canadian log cabins. These rectangular Celtic houses varied from a single large room to great multi-room buildings with a central corridor leading to the various chambers. It was not uncommon to have a second storey on these buildings.
There is an interesting contrast between early Continental Celtic housing and insular Celtic housing for the constructions in Britain and Ireland were mostly round houses, as demonstrated by the recreations at Butser Farm and the Chiltern Open Air Museum. These museum constructions were based on the plan of a house excavated at Pimperne, in Dorset. The idea of the round house came from the older Atlantic coast tradition of building. The British and Irish Celtic round houses continued into the late La Tène period with exceptionally large constructions such as that at Navan, Co. Armagh, built about 94 BC.
A Brief History of the Celts Page 15