- The Social Implications of Celtic Art -
nobility standing aloof. Two young men had been buried with 'carts' and their
magnificent (but locally made) swords in their scabbards with red enamel embellish-
ment, of the third century Be. These men had been laid on either side of the tomb
of a youngish lady, who had a small cylindrical box of sheet-bronze with line
ornament exactly like that on the men's scabbards, a family group (Dent 1985). One
small detail, the central wavy relief ring on top of the bean-box, links this nobility
with the great Wandsworth and Lincolnshire shields, among the finest displays of
aristocratic wealth in third-second century Britain. Only a quarter of a mile away
another man had been buried with similar fine sword and covered by a chain-mail
tunic (placed upside-down), not a local product and most likely a prestige gift from
a potentate visiting from a distance, even perhaps from east Celtic lands (d. Ciume~ti,
Romania: Rusu 1969; Stead I99Ia: 54-6). But why should such a potentate visit a
Yorkshire chief? Do we see here the early rise of the Yorkshire wool and cloth trade
(Crowfoot, in Stead I99Ia: 119-22), or was there some other staple source of
Yorkshire wealth, such as horse-breeding? But much further research is still needed
to show the kind of houses in which this Yorkshire Celtic aristocracy actually lived.
These examples are enough to illustrate how artworks can show the interrelations
between the Celtic aristocracy and their various kinds of residence, temporary or
less so, in the country, in hill-forts or oppida; they have shown us chiefs and their
retainers on the move, the relation between their sumptuous tombs, their artwork
and their living quarters.
ROMANIZATION OF THE CELTIC WORLDAs in Gaul a century earlier, so in Britain from the mid-first century AD onwards,
expression of Celtic self-awareness was curbed, and some Gauls and Britons would
no doubt have wished to be seen as much abreast of new life styles from the
southerly world as wedded to old Celtic ways. Their dress and eating habits saw
some changes, with better class utensils and crockery (platters, from which
few Britons had previously taken their food). But even then there were under-
currents of resistance to change: at Colchester, for instance, at the Sheep en site the
old huts seem to have been left standing through the 40S and 60S and occupied by
natives (probably as a source of labour for the citizens of the nearby Roman colonia
(started in AD 49). But though they increasingly used good crockery and had some
table-and window-glass (Hawkes and Hull 1947: passim), the food-refuse bones are
mostly cattle, and old butchering habits show that the British had retained their old
eating ways (H.M. J ope 1984). Here we see the fluctuations of personal taste in visual
art (mainly ceramic) in relation to lifestyle operating in day-to-day life.
In both Gaul and Britain 'Celticity' had a subtle persuasive influence on Roman
provincial artistic work (as indeed it must have done in more easterly Celtic
provinces). We see this in the Bath gorgon (Cunliffe and Davenport 1985; Toynbee
1962: 161-4; 1964: 130-3), in capitals at Cirencester (Toynbee 1962: 165, pI. 97-100)
or among the rural temples of Gaul and Britain. A stone head from Corbridge in
Northumberland, second-third century AD (Figure 21.12; Toynbee 1962: 146, pI. 49)
shows well how in Roman Britain people who esteemed themselves 'Celtic' could395