- The Technology of Metalwork -
impression is that the weight of gold available for use was much less than in the Late
Bronze Age. Silver, virtually absent from much of the Bronze Age in northern and
western Europe, also begins to make an appearance.
Metalworking in the later Bronze Age, especially in Atlantic Europe, was domi-
nated by casting technology: objects were cast close to their finished shape with
often only minimal mechanical working and finishing. The transition to the iron-
using system of the Hallstatt C-D periods significantly increased the emphasis on
wrought products, especially of sheet, culminating in such enormous pieces as the
cauldron and couch from the Hochdorf tomb (Biel 1987). The same is true of much
Hallstatt gold with embossed and decorated gold sheet the dominant form: the
Hochdorf tomb again is prominent with the sheet-gold mounts for drinking-horns,
shoes and a dagger sheath and hilt (Eluere 1987a; Furger and Muller 1991). There
may have been several reasons for this shift. If gold was indeed now a symbol of
power rather than simply of wealth, then the display of gold, and the cladding of
large objects in gold, would have been more important than the quantity of gold
actually owned, which might anyway have been more restricted than before. The con-
temporary aesthetic for fine metalwork also shifted to the sort of embossed, chased or
engraved figures, patterns and textures that could be made in thin sheet (e.g.
Situlenkunst). Finally, there was, perhaps, some affinity with the forming of the new
metals, iron and steel, which at that time could only be forged; with these tendencies
it may have happened that the availability of moulding and casting skills became
much more limited. An extensive use of sheet-gold was not new; the earliest
bronze age gold in north-west Europe was almost entirely sheet (Taylor 1980) and
bronze age gold in Denmark was dominated by sheet and wire products.
Besides the sheet appliques and scabbard plates exemplified by the Hochdorf
tomb, more three-dimensional objects were being made. Many are in the form of
bracelets and collars made up from the same embossed, thin gold sheet, for example
in the tomb of Hundersingen, Baden-Wurttemberg (e.g. Eluere I987a: pI. 85-8), but
new ideas and techniques are beginning to enter the world of the Celtic goldsmith.
Finds in Switzerland, notably at Ins and Jegenstorf in Canton Bern, show jewellery
with wire loop-in-Ioop chains and the embossed textured surfaces of the sheet-metal
replaced by the application of granulation and filigree (for bibliography see Furger
and Muller 1991: 114-17). These may have been made by the Celts' neighbours south
of the Alps, the Etruscans, who had learned these new skills from the Greek and
eastern Mediterranean civilizations. It is also possible that one or two Celtic smiths
had also mastered the new style and that some of the items were made in Switzerland.
One of the finest and most controlled applications of filigree is in the terminals of
the Vix collar. This collar, with a thick, smooth sheet body and complex multi-
component terminals with cast, chased, punched and filigree ornaments, is unique
but contains several pointers to developments in the La Tene period, the classic
period of Celtic art from the fifth century Be onwards (Eluere, 1989b).
LA TENE
There are changes in goldworking and gold use associated with the evolution of the
traditions to which we have given the label La Tene although there is also a degree