- The Nature and Function of Celtic Art -
Style in the oppida period, by contrast, is relatively similar throughout Celtic Europe,
despite regional specialization in different classes of material - iron and steel, glass,
salt, and the like - with craft production areas visible within oppida (Collis 1 984b).
Hierarchical workshops serving princely patrons have been postulated for the rich
Early Style products, based in part on a 'feudal' model of society (Champion 1976,
1977, 1982 , 198 5; Collis 1984a; Pare 1991). In the periods of major Celtic expansion
in the fourth to second centuries Be, it seems that production of decorated metal-
work was scattered and decentralized, as were settlements and cemeteries, with iron-
and bronzesmiths itinerant and sometimes part-time. Even in Early La Tene it seems
highly likely that, while some craftworkers were fixed, others travelled considerable
distances to execute particular commissions; the complex trading networks of the
time meant that ideas as well as individuals and objects were widely exchanged.
Especially in this early stage, the production of specific prestige pieces required the
bringing together of a range not only of raw materials but also of technical skills. For
example, the unique pair of wine flagons found at Basse-Yutz on the Moselle
required knowledge of bronze-casting as well as sheet-metal and openwork tech-
niques, metal engraving and chasing, the production of red glass for inlay (Challet
1992), and access to large supplies of imported coral (Figure 20.8) (Megaw and
Megaw 1990a, 1990b).
Material evidence for the location of specialized workshops is tantalizingly vague.
Attempts to distinguish different traditions in the fine goldwork associated with the
early chieftains' graves of the Saar and middle Rhine region are thus still tentative
(Megaw 1972). Recent studies using metal analysis and tool marks suggest two sep-
arate 'schools', one continuing late Hallstatt goldworking practices (Figure 20.7) and
a second, more innovative, group, some of whose most spectacular products, such as
the Erstfeld find (Figure 20.9) (Wyss 1975), found their way to the Alpine regions far
to the south (Figure 20.6) (Rudolf Echt, pers. comm.). As well as specialist gold-
smiths, there seems to have been a group of engravers capable of producing with the
use of compasses highly intricate and mathematically precise patterns decorating
both imported and local wine flagons, the most common vessel of the funerary
symposium which accompanied the noble dead (Frey 1955, 1984; Megaw 1968;
Lenerz-de Wilde 1979). In southern Germany and neighbouring western Austria
tiny cast bronze brooches were made, decorated with animals such as horses, sheep
and boars as well as a range of a fantastic, almost nightmarish, creatures, which also
appear on larger objects. These 'mask brooches' are particularly numerous at such
important industrial centres as the Durrnberg south of Salzburg where the wealth of
the local salt-mining population could command the skills of the best metalsmiths
(Figure 20.10) (Moosleitner, Pauli and Penninger 1974; Pauli 1978; Moosleitner 1985,
1987). Of slightly later date are the 'enamel'-or occasionally coral-inlaid cast bronze
disc torques with decoration in the Vegetal style. These occur as imports in Hungary
and Champagne; the extremely worn condition of some of the easternmost examples
suggests that they were brought by new groups of settlers, though their concentra-
tion in the Upper Rhineland strongly suggests an association with a distinctive local
ethnic group, served by at least two 'workshops' (Muller 1989).
The production of fine pottery was, as with many other cultures past and present,
a matter for even more localized production and distribution, since it is both bulky