The Celtic World (Routledge Worlds)

(Barry) #1

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


JEWELLERY AND ADORNMENT


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Sara Champion


I
t is not currently possible to prove that any of the iron age peoples who lived in
central and western Europe in the first millennium Be definitely spoke a Celtic
language or defined themselves as Celts. Because of that I have eschewed the use of
the term 'Celtic' in this chapter, and propose to discuss the personal ornaments found
in those areas of continental Europe where 'cultures' defined by archaeologists as the
Hallstatt and La Tene were located, and in those parts of the British Isles and Ireland
where comparable cultural material is found.
Recent years have seen an increasing number of studies of personal ornament
and the way it appears to have been distributed in society. Questions of gender,
social status, age and regional differentiation have been approached through the
examination of the evidence for patterns of ornament use, largely from inhumation
cemeteries, and various stimulating and persuasive answers have been offered to
some, though not all, of these questions. In particular the work of Herbert Lorenz
(1978, 1980) has shown that detailed analysis of the way rings (for the neck, arm, leg
and finger) were worn in different parts of Europe allows the tentative identification
of women who have moved from one group to another, perhaps demonstrating
exogamy. In areas like the British Isles where most of such artefacts do not come
from graves but are generally found unstratified, or at the very best on settlement
sites, separated from the person who would have worn them, similar questions are
almost impossible to answer.
Dechelette referred in 1914 to writers in classical antiquity who mentioned the
Celts' passion for jewellery, and he proceeded himself to examine the wide range of
necklaces, bracelets, pendants, earrings, belts and brooches which he attributed to
the taste for self-decoration which had developed since the mid-Hallstatt period.
Then as now, care must be exercised in the interpretation of burial deposits: while
some rings, particularly certain solid bronze neck-rings, must have been introduced
on to the body in childhood and must therefore have been carried throughout life and
into the grave, other items, such as the very large numbers of brooches deposited with
some bodies in graves on the Swiss plateau, could well represent the total number
owned by the deceased or her family rather than items worn together in life. Similarly,
there is evidence from some graves that certain items were made specifically for the
burial, which may confuse the ascription of a status assumed to be carried in life.

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