- The Army, Weapons and Fighting -
from La Tene I, but many are known from La Tene II both from burials and from
votive depositions. Several waterlogged deposits have allowed the preservation
of organic remains, but only on sculpture do we have any impression of the variety
of painted or applied decoration. One third-century burial, chosen from many
because of a careful reconstruction drawing of the warrior, is that from Rungis,
Val-de-Marne (Figure 4.4) (Andrieux and Rapin 1984; Kruta and Rapin 1987); here
an oval shield with central midrib was furnished with a strip boss with semi-circular
side flanges with central rivets and a longitudinal rib across the boss. The warrior
had been armed with a sword hanging from a chain from his belt and a spear. In
many burials the shape of the shield may be determined by the outline of fragments
of the binding strip. Excavations in recent years have also revealed a considerable
variety of individual decorative motifs as well as the binding strip; that from Grave
14 at Menfocsanak, in Hungary, for example, appears to have had four matching
rosettes and criss-cross metal covering to the central spine rather like the topping of
a hot cross bun (Horvath et al 1987: 23-5, pl.xv-xvi; Szabo 1988: fig. 13). Ritual
deposits at La Tene show the use of a series of vertical planks pinned together
to form the board. The sculpture of a warrior from Mondragon, Vaucluse, illustrates
a more complex form of diagonal planking. The large numbers of bosses found
at Gournay-sur-Aronde allow a local sequence of boss shape to be proposed, illus-
trating changing fashions throughout the third and second centuries BC (Rap in
1983b; Bruneaux and Rapin 1988). Local sequences from weapons associated with
burials have been worked out for several discrete geographical areas, notably
Bohemia where there are changes in style of sword, shield-boss, spear and butt
at a similar period (Waldhauser et al. 1987: 34, fig. 3). Circular bosses are found in
first-century BC contexts and are represented on sculpture, for example on the
Arc de Triomphe at Orange. The circular boss does not, however, necessarily
betoken a circular shield, as those on the Arc de Triomphe, on the model from
Saint-Maur-en-Chaussee (Oise) and on the Gundestrup Cauldron demonstrate. The
representations of shields at Orange illustrate many decorative motifs, either as
applique or painted patterns, evidence of which has not so far been found elsewhere.
The outline figure of an elongated boar can still be made out on the shield from
Witham, in Lincolnshire, as well as the rivet holes by which this applique decoration
was fixed to the surface of the bronze shield; the shield was subsequently refashioned
and the figure was replaced by the famous boss, spine and roundels which are
the most noteworthy features today. Among the few examples of decorated bronze
bosses from continental Europe are those from Nogent-sur-Seine, Aube (Rapin
1983 c).
Although the shields of Celtic warriors were clearly effective on the battlefield,
classical authors were not always complimentary; Diodorus Siculus, for example:
'For arms they have man-sized shields decorated in a manner peculiar to them. Some
of them have projecting figures in bronze, skilfully wrought not only for decoration
but also for protection' (History v.30.2), whereas other authors mention that the
Celts had no other defensive armour than their traditional oblong shields and assert
that the Gallic shield would not cover the whole body. Their shields were long but
not wide enough for the size of their bodies, and moreover, because they were flat,
they offered poor protection to the bearers. Wooden shields were thought to be a