- Chapter Six -
familiar to modern readers. It would be tempting to think that these categories were
unproblematic, but we do not really know the conceptual structure that underlies
them.
The difference between the categories of adult and child is more varied. The best
archaeological evidence is from cemeteries; most regions show a significant under-
representation of young people, which may suggest that the very young were
thought of as a separate category not to be treated in the same way as older people.
The treatment of oldex: children also differs from place to place; in some cases they
are buried with the same rites and accompanying goods as adults, but in others they
have distinct rites and sets of ornaments, suggesting a variability in the way that
differences between adults and children were constructed.
The Irish laws show the practice of one particular region. Until the age of
7, children were reared in their parents' household, but then left to join the family
of foster-parents; this was a common practice, but we do not know whether it
was universal or limited only to particular levels of Irish society. After the end
of fosterage at the age of 14, females were ready to join new households through
marriage, but young males could not establish themselves as full members of the
adult community with their oWn household until they had inherited land.
There were thus large numbers of. young landless males of intermediate status
who joined together in bands or fianna, which engaged in hunting, fighting and
on occasion acts of brigandage. Such age-grade institutions can be found in
other Indo-European societies, and may originally have been more widespread
(McCone 1990: 2°3-17). They are not documented for the prehistoric Iron Age, but
the regular occurrence of Celts as mercenaries in the armies of the Mediterranean
states may well be connected with such a tradition of young men's wandering and
fighting.
SOCIAL DIFFERENCES
All the archaeological and literary evidence suggests that, within whatever social
groups may have existed at any time and place, Celtic society was hierarchical and
inegalitarian. Individuals were not equal before the law; it was, rather, a society
based on variations of status and honour, and the preservation or enhancement of
that honour was a vital concern. The most rigid formulation of this structure is to
be found in the early Irish law tracts, where each grade of society is assigned its
honour-price (Kelly 1988: 8-10). This value established the limits of the legal
rights of an individual, so that no one could offer a surety beyond the level of his
honour-price, and an oath was outweighed by the oath of a person with a higher
honour-price. It also set the level of compensation for an offence t6 be paid by the
offender to the victim or the victim's kin, for the severity of a crime, and hence
the extent of recompense due, was judged by the honour-price of the victim.
At a more general level, both the classical and the Irish sources agree in r~cognizing
the existence of free and unfree classes, and of a higher rank of more exalted status.
The unfree class was of little interest to the classical geographers and historians, and
even the Irish laws cannot add much. There certainly were slaves who seem to have