- Chapter Twenty-One -
Figure 21.2 'Celtic aristocracy through Celtic eyes'; face in relief beaten bronze at top of
spine of shield from river Thames at Wandsworth. Later third century Be. (Restoration S.
Rees-Jones. Photo: R.E.H. Reid, Queen's University, Belfast. British Museum.)
hand mirrors Jope and Jacobsthal (in press): pis 238-49). Control and authority over
material resources, and over skilled ateliers is also revealed through artwork.
Gold itself seems to have a special status among Celts already in the seventh
century Be (at Halstatt marking off an elite of about 5 per cent of females: Hodson
1990: 80). In early Celtic Britain gold hardly appears before the first century Be; it
is all concentrated in East Anglia, above all at and around Snettisham in Norfolk,
which must have been a royal repository and where alone in Britain we find a good
gold-working tradition in the third-second centuries Be (Stead 1991b; Jope and
Jacobsthal in press: 123, map). The Snettisham deposits show the systematic burial
of gold treasure as a form of banking (Stead 1991 b). The full political significance of
this East Anglian concentration of the gold has yet to be assessed (see also Chapter
18). Here the world of coinage must be considered also (Chapter 14).