The Archaeology of Celtic Art

LATER BRONZE AGE AND HALLSTATT ORIGINSdrinking cup. Beaten bronze cups in a succession of variant forms are characteristic ofthe Urnfield late Bronze Age and adjacent regions of Northern Europe, and have beenclassified into a typological sequence named after the hoards or rich burials in whichthey are found. Friedrichsruhe and Fuchsstadt cups, with decorated variants such asthose from the Dresden-Dobritz hoard (Pl. 2a), date from the end of Bronze D throughHallstatt A1 and A2 respectively, and for Hallstatt B, successively Jenosovice cups,Haslau-Regelsbrunn cups and Stillfried-Hostomice cups are typical. The bucket itself,also found in a variety of different forms, was for mixing and serving the alcoholicbeverage. Its ceremonial or ritual associations are suggested by the inclusion of sun-discand bird symbolism in repoussé, as we have seen, on buckets like the virtually identicalpair from Hajdúböszörmény and Unterglauheim. Both these hoards also includedexamples of another class of beaten bronze vessel, a hemispherical bowl with twin,looped handles attached by means of doubled T-shaped plates riveted to the body ofthe bowl. This distinctive type continues in modified form into the Hallstatt Iron Age,its distribution extending well beyond the primary Urnfield zone. A simpler variantwith single handle and A-shaped attachments has a more limited distribution inUrnfield Central Europe.In Atlantic Europe too, buckets and cauldrons were used for communal feasting anddrinking in the late Bronze Age, though without the range of accessory vessels thattypifies the hoards of Central and Northern Europe. Beaten bronze buckets occurwidely from at least the Hallstatt A2 phase from Transylvania through the Danube,in Italy and extending as far as Northern Europe, in a range of variant types. The Irishand British buckets were related to the later Urnfield Kurd Eimer (von Merhart, 1952,29–33), but with the significant addition of the loose ring-handles which Hawkes andSmith (1957) believed were assimilated from the Atlantic cauldrons. The cauldronsthemselves were not characteristic of Central Europe, though they had their counterpartsin the Mediterranean and Middle East. Formerly supposed to derive from theseMediterranean antecedents, the Atlantic cauldrons are now dated from the early firstmillennium bc, and regarded as an independent western development. In CentralEurope, the smaller hemispherical bowls with cross-handle attachments and relatedtypes persisted into the Iron Hallstatt C phase, before being superseded in Hallstatt Dby a larger form of hemispherical cauldron with inturned rim.The significance of these typological variations in terms of prestigious aristocraticfeasting rituals or communal celebrations is unclear. To argue that the immense volumeof the Atlantic cauldrons (Figure 2.6b), compared to the smaller vessels of theCentral European Urnfield or Hallstatt C assemblages, reflects communal festivities asopposed to rituals of a more selective aristocratic elite, might be unduly simplistic.But the fact remains that bronze vessels associated with feasting and drinking area notable component of the archaeological assemblage from the beginning of thelate Bronze Age through to the end of the pre-Roman Iron Age and beyond, andnot exclusively in regions that by any definition might be described as ‘Celtic’ or‘proto-Celtic’.Personal ornament and dressThroughout the Urnfield zone, and indeed in the cognate late Bronze Age cultures ofNorthern and Atlantic Europe, personal ornaments are an important component of32