- Power, Politics and Status -
ranking is in a state of flux; many of the legal tracts date originally to the seventh and
eighth centuries AD, when the power of the church was expanding and the nature of
Irish kingship was changing dramatically. Some of the documents contain references
that are clearly archaic, and it is necessary to ask whether we are dealing with the
definition of a social organization as it actually was, or as it was ideally wished
for. Much of early Irish literature, including the law tracts, was the product of a
highly educated clerical elite, well versed in classical and biblical scholarship, writing
documents for the contemporary context, which should not therefore be taken
simply as giving an accurate reflection of earlier society (McCone 1990).
The archaeological evidence also clearly needs to be subjected to a process of
theoretical interpretation, since the aim is to relate the contemporary record of
material finds to the past pattern of social organization, and a set of ideas is needed to
form the basis of such inferences. Early iron age hill-forts in southern Germany, for
instance, have been compared to medieval castles, and their occupants therefore
equated to medieval nobles and their social organization to the feudal system.
There is, however, no reason to accept such a comparison, whether the pattern is
thought to be continuous or not, simply on the grounds of geographical identity.
Appropriate principles for such inferences can be derived from a wider consideration
of anthropological and ethnographic evidence. These might be based on arguments
for recurring types of social institution found frequently in Indo-European society, or
on an even wider consideration of the known nature of societies of an approximately
similar type.
Three categories of evidence have been particularly interpreted as indicators
of social organization. Burial traditions in the Iron Age were often marked by a
considerable variation in the treatment of the dead, including the wealth of the goods
interred with the body, and wealthier and more elaborate graves can be read as a sign
of higher social status. The nature of that enhanced social standing needs definition;
it has often been seen as a status based on political power, but it could also perhaps
be based on the authority of factors such as age. In any case, the burials were part of
the active process of social readjustment after a death, and they may tell us more
about the ideas of the survivors than the real identity of the deceased. Though they
cannot be taken as a simple record of social status, they do give us a valuable insight
into Celtic society. The burial traditions, however, were not uniform throughout
the Celtic world, and in some parts of western Europe there are long periods with
few known burials.
Archaeologists have long been recovering high quality artefacts of the Iron Age,
especially decorated jewellery of gold or bronze, often found in elaborate graves,
and have taken these as symbols of social distinction. Such use of prestige goods is a
well-documented strategy in many societies with differences of social ranking, and
the flourishing of craftsmanship in the Celtic world must owe much to the demand
for such symbols.
The evidence of settlements is rather more problematic. There is little sign that
domestic architecture was used as a means of displaying social difference, as it
has been in more recent times in Europe, but there are some sites which seem more
elaborately built, especially ones with impressive defences. There are also many areas
of iron age Europe with large defended hill-forts, which have often been taken as