CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS
OF CELTIC ART
600 Be to AD 600
_.-..... --
Martyn Jope
A
rtwork, which here must include costume, is full of social implications. First, it
has given a fluid, often vivid, means of communication between people, as
individuals (sometimes eyeball-to-eyeball; Jope 1987: pis: XIa, vma; fig. 3b), as
groups, or as institutions. Second, Celtic art has· been a means of displaying social
rank (or aspiration thereto); there can be no doubt of the hierarchic nature of
societies who possessed display works like the Agris helmet (p. 380). It can give some
guidance concerning social level and context within the changing structure of Celtic
communities through more than a millennium, not least during the complex
processes of conurbanization (often oversimplified in discussion) in 'barbarian'
Europe from the sixth to first centuries Be. Artwork has further been a potent factor
in expressing cultural taste and human relations with the supernatural, which
profoundly affect relations between people. It can sometimes also give clues to the
life style and living conditions of different social strata.
Artwork is one of the few means we have of penetrating the social and higher
cultural infrastructure of non-literate or non-recorded peoples, and it can give some
clues to the amount of leisure time available to people of differing social levels
Gope 1983). The taste shown in everyday items, such as knife handles, can reveal
whole facets of humbler personal taste, as, for higher levels, do the grander works
for aristocratic display and ceremony. The latter, whether earthly or supernatural,
have been powerful agents in persuading unity in a common cause, such as allegiance
to a chieftain, or subtribal unity. The carved monoliths atop the 'princely' burial
mounds could be examples (Figure 2I.I; Jacobsthal 1944: pI. 6-15; Bittel et al. 1981:
90-1, 121; Moscati et at. 1991: 88, 126).
The very concept of 'Celtic art' seems itself to carry a certain coherence, as though
distilling an essential social ethos, to represent the visual sensitivity of 'Celticity', a
common cause among those 'barbarian' peoples who had the urge to feel themselves
'Celtic' Gope 1987: 120; Bodmer 1993). It arose from a profound feeling of dissent
from the often rather staid conventions of Greek-style ornament Gope 1987; Megaw
and Megaw 1990), thereby seeming to assert ethnic individuality.
The artwork itself can sometimes tell us directly about the life style, occupation,
costume or social position of individuals depicted. This may be through the eyes and
minds of classical or near-classical artists, or of Celts themselves (Figures 21.2;