The Army, Weapons and Fighting -CELTIC HELMETSAt the Gorge Meillet and at Diirrnberg Grave 44/2, the early La Tene chieftain
was accompanied by an array of grave goods that illustrated transalpine contacts, as
well as objects denoting princely or warrior status, including stout swords, spears,
arrowheads and pointed helmets with attachments for chin-straps (Penninger 1972).
Helmets are found in small numbers throughout the Celtic world, in some cases in
distinct chronological or geographical groups. Was it because they were proud of
their elaborate hairstyles that Celtic warriors did not generally wear helmets, or were
there more fundamental religious reasons? Neither the Britons nor the Germans had
helmets, writes Tacitus, but the Cimbri had helmets like the maws of frightful beasts
or the heads of animals, with crests that made them look larger than they really were
(Plutarch, Marius XXV.2). Only in Italy in the region of the Senones have helmets
been found in great numbers, in a style named after the burial ground of Montefortino
and characterized by a back peak to protect the neck and a top knob.
Richly ornamented helmets which show Italian influence in shape or decoration
occur in France, including Amfreville (Eure) and Agris (Charente); both are magnifi-
cent artistic achievements of iron, bronze, gold and coral and date from the fourth
century Be. From Canosa (Apulia) a helmet of iron, bronze and coral (of earlier fourth-
century date) bears side mountings to allow the addition of a crest. The helmet
from Agris has a finely wrought cheek-piece, while that from Amfreville has a
decorative motif on the side of the cap that may originally have been mirrored by
a cheek-piece that no longer survives. Excavations at Monte Bibele (Bologna) have
uncovered several warrior burials that provide archaeological contexts for such helmets
with decorated bronze cap decorations and cheek-pieces with triple rosettes, e.g. Grave
14 (Vitali 1985: 40-9; 1990: 202-6). A simpler helmet with a chin-strap and a top-knob
was associated with a late fourth-century cremation burial from Varenna, Como, with
sword and decorated scabbard and leech brooches (de Marinis 1977: 32, pb).
In Celtic areas in south-eastern Europe and on sculpture at Pergamon, in Asia
Minor, a small class of helmets continues the pattern of a side decoration that mirrors
a cheek-piece (Schaaff 1988: 300). The most spectacular example comes from
Ciumesti in Rumania, in a grave excavated in 196 I, in which a cremation deposit was
accompanied by a helmet, a mail shirt with decorated bronze rosettes, and a spear
(Rusu 1969). The helmet was surmounted by a bronze bird with hinged wings that
would have flapped as the warrior rode to battle. Few other helmet mountings
survive, but there are examples of bronze boars, and the Celtic helmets shown on the
Arc de Triomphe at Orange have a wide variety of motifs including horns and
wheels. The warriors on the Gundestrup Cauldron bear helmets with crests, horns,
boars and a bird. Two carefully fashioned objects of sheet bronze from La Tene have
sometimes been tentatively interpreted as helmet crests, but it is possible too
that they formed part of the battle standards (militaria signa) described by classical
writers (Vouga 192 3: 63-4).
'They wear bronze helmets with large projecting figures which give the wearer the
appearance of enormous size. In some cases horns are attached so as to form one
piece, in others the fore-parts of birds or quadrupeds worked in relief,' recorded
Diodorus Siculus (History V.30.2).
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