- Chapter Sixteen -
work will also be influenced by the specific properties of gold and silver alloys, in
particular their ductility and colour as well as their potential for being formed into
complex shapes and textured surfaces.
Our appreciation of the place of gold and silver in Celtic art and of the way in
which their properties were adapted to the Celtic aesthetic is inevitably coloured by
a small number of spectacular finds, such as the Snettisham treasure (Clarke 1954;
Stead 1991), the Vix collar Goffroy 1979; Chaume et al. 1987; Eluere 1987a: 114-18),
the Broighter boat (Raftery 1984: 181 -91), or the gold in the Hochdorf tomb
(Biel 1987; Hartmann 1987). There is a natural tendency to assume that these master-
works are at the summit of a pyramid of lesser, plainer objects. In many ways this is
not the case and these finds often do represent the whole achievement of Celtic
goldworking. Even when there is evidence of a hierarchy of gold or silver alloy pieces
from the elaborate to the simple, as at Snettisham, then their context itself makes
them highly distinctive. The question of context forms one of two major themes in
this section of the chapter, as might be expected over a period of time as long as a
millennium, there were several radical shifts in the social and economic position of
gold and silver. The second derives from the metals themselves: their sources, the
ways in which the alloys were made and used and the special skills of the goldsmiths
and how these skills influenced their artistic ambitions. Any discussion of gold and
silver in the Celtic world should also look at these points in relation to the coinage
(Voute 1985; Cowell 1992; Northover 1992). This discussion also confines itself to
the period before the end of the first century AD when Celtic art in Britain
was finally being overlaid by Roman styles; late iron age and early Christian gold and
silverwork in the Celtic west is another story.
LATE BRONZE AGEThe use of gold in the first cultures we specifically label 'Celtic', those of the princes
of 'Hallstatt' central Europe from the seventh into the fifth centuries BC, is radically
different from what went before. We must therefore start this review of the goldwork
with that of the preceding centuries of the Late Bronze Age in Europe. From the
latter part of the second millennium BC the centre of gravity of gold and gold-
working in western Europe is in the lands adjoining the Atlantic and the North Sea.
Three major provinces within this large area have extensive gold industries, each with
a highly distinctive range of products: Spain (e.g. Gonzalo 1989; Ruiz-Galvez 1989),
the Highland and Island regions of the British Isles together with Brittany (Taylor
1980; Eluere 1982), and Denmark (e.g. Hartmann 1982). The first two of these had
sufficient gold reserves of their own to provide for the probable level of production.
Denmark, on the other hand, was dependent entirely on imported metal, as it was
for bronze, but nevertheless stamped its own style on the gold objects made there.
In the British Isles one of the most prominent and characteristic forms of gold
artefact is the flange-twisted gold torque and its lighter, wire-twisted cousins (Eogan
1983 b; N orthover 1989). Although superficially flamboyant, the metalworking skills
they employ are straightforward and require only a few specialist tools. On the other
hand they do display a good knowledge of the properties of the gold alloys used