The Archaeology of Celtic Art

LATER BRONZE AGE AND HALLSTATT ORIGINSLate Bronze Age and Hallstatt ornamental stylesLate Bronze Age ornamental styles, as exemplified on bronzes, could be regarded asessentially geometric. Two techniques are particularly in evidence on metal-work,engraved and repoussé. From Northern Europe, through Central Europe and includingparts of the Mediterranean, geometric curvilinear and linear motifs are widespread andrecurrent, so that it would be difficult to assign these styles expressly or diagnosticallyto any one regional or chronological grouping. Within the Urnfield culture, sword-hiltsand pommels exemplify the range of combinations of lozenges, zig-zags, triangles, stars,circles, arcs, running spirals or linked S-motifs (Figure 2.5). The style is also characteristicof bracelets and related ornaments, and is particularly well exemplified on theannular arm or leg-rings of the Hallstatt B1 phase in a hoard from the Wasserburg,Buchau, settlement, which included a complex if repetitive composition comprisingconcentric engraved circles, semi-circles and linear panels. To see any of these, or thedesigns on other items of Urnfield metal-work, as antecedents of later La Tène styles(Sprockhoff, 1955) is unnecessary, but that is not to say that Urnfield art did not fulfil arole analogous to that of later Celtic art styles. The use of curvilinear designs is in factnot nearly so prominent an element in Urnfield metal-work as it is on the swords andshaft-hole axes of the Tumulus culture in eastern Central Europe, or in the middleBronze Age of Northern Europe and southern Scandinavia. Geometric compositionscan also be rendered in repoussé, on beaten bronze armour such as greaves, on beatenbronze vessels, or on belt-plates. By the Hallstatt Iron Age, cummerbund-like beltplatesare elaborately ornamented with geometric designs in this fashion. To describethese ornamental designs as an early ‘geometric’ Celtic style might be unwarranted,but they are part of a widespread tradition of fairly simple and repetitive geometric art,involving the use of rectilinear and curvilinear motifs, which characterizes especiallythe Urnfield late Bronze Age and the Hallstatt Iron Age. In fact, it continues into theLa Tène period, even though eclipsed by the more dominant curvilinear styles.Pottery, too, can bear simple geometric ornament, though as with metal-work notnearly as elaborate as some eastern Central European Tumulus culture ceramics, onwhich curvilinear motifs can be highly developed. Horizontal rilling and vertical ordiagonal fluting are characteristic of Urnfield pottery, as is the geometric style ofKerbschnitt ornament, excised from the clay like chip-carving in woodwork, a techniquethat again distinguishes the open dishes and globular jars of the Hallstatt C Iron Agein southern and south-western Germany.In addition to this geometric style, however, there is the stylized representationalart that includes the bird and sun symbolism, most frequently rendered, as we haveseen, in repoussé on sheet bronze, or in the form of cast pendants, protomes or finials.These too continue in fashion in the Hallstatt Iron Age, with the cast versionssurviving into La Tène Celtic art. Figural art, on the other hand, is not a characteristicof the Urnfield zone, unless it was deployed on perishable organic materials,though it is an element in the rock art of Northern Europe and the Italian Alps.From the Hallstatt Iron Age, however, a striking example of figural art in highlystylized form can be seen on funerary pottery from Sopron in western Hungary(Figure 2.7). Here a variety of activities is depicted, both domestic, such as spinningand weaving, and recreational or ceremonial, such as playing the harp and boxing,dancing or praying.34