The Celtic World (Routledge Worlds)

(Barry) #1

  • Chapter Seventeen -


of those princes, producing work for them and fully integrated into the elaborate
system of client-patron relationships which cemented Celtic society. It would
have been at such places that the prestige ironwork, such as the swords and the iron
fittings of the funerary vehicles found in the contemporary tombs, was made. The
control of these craftsmen and the use of their products as gifts to equals and clients
would have been an important element in establishing the status of such rulers.
Whether ironworking was confined to such prestigious establishments is debatable.
The production of the more utilitarian pieces may well have been left to less skilled
smiths integrated into the lower levels of society.
As the Iron Age progressed the blacksmith came increasingly to exploit the
properties of his metal. The fact that each piece is an individual creation allows it
to be designed for its specific purpose, while the ability to join pieces by welding
allows the smith to build up large and elaborate objects in a way which was almost
impossible with bronze. An early example of the use of these techniques was the
development of iron tyres for wheels. Casting a large tyre in bronze would have been
no easy feat, but constructing one in iron was a relatively simple operation. Iron tyres
are found from the beginning of the Iron Age, although for some centuries it was
thought necessary to secure them with nails, but by the later La Tene period the great
force exerted by a hot iron hoop as it cools and contracts was recognized and nails
were dispensed with.
A similar progression can be seen in the evolution of the socket for attaching tool
hafts. In cast bronze it was relatively easy to produce a socket but making one in iron
was more difficult and involved forming 'wings' which were then folded over and
their edges welded together. Functionally much of this work is unnecessary; simply
folding the wings over forms a perfectly effective socket, and by the later La Tene
period we find sockets of this type being used for many tools. At much the same time
the advantages of the shaft-hole, as opposed to the socket, for securing the hafts of
axes and adzes was appreciated and such tools assume the form which they have
retained to the present day. It may seem surprising that it took several centuries for
such apparently obvious changes to be made, or in some cases to be accepted from
the Greek and Roman world, but change is social as well as technological and this is
often a more formidable barrier to innovation.
In the last few centuries Be two changes occurred which greatly increase our
knowledge of later Celtic ironwork. The first was the reappearance of the custom of
making votive offerings in water - rivers, lakes and peat bogs; a custom which greatly
increases the quantity and range of material which has survived. At the same time
there appears to have been a spectacular rise in the amount of iron produced, a rise
which not only led to more objects being sacrificed but to many more surviving on
habitation sites. We may question how new some of the utilitarian types which now
appear for the first time in the archaeological record really were. At least in some
cases new patterns of deposition are probably preserving types, such as tools
and structural fittings, which had had no place among the prestige pieces which had
dominated the funerary traditions that provided the main mechanism of preserva-
tion in the earlier Iron Age. None the less, all the evidence does indicate a vast
increase in the production of iron in the later Iron Age; the enormous quantities
which were required for the nails used in the murus gallicus defences of the late Celtic


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