The Celtic World (Routledge Worlds)

(Barry) #1

  • The Social Implications of Celtic Art -


can be seen also in later Celtic cemeteries (e.g. Miinsingen-Rain, Switzerland
(Hodson 1968); Diirrnberg-Hallein (Pauli 1978). Hodson (1990: 90f.) estimates
the ritually burying population here as about 400 at anyone time, around its peak in
the sixth century Be. He sees a small elite - salt-barons, both male and female, who
controlled the mining and the trading of the salt - and a more numerous but still
privileged group, and then a yet larger number who were allowed some sort of ritual
burial.
There remains a non-ritually-burying residuum (comparable perhaps to the
serf populations in England of AD 1086, some 15-20 per cent of total popu-
lation (Darby et al. 1952-72, indices under 'serfs'). These people perhaps had
no metal artwork, but their clothing might have been held with thongs and
bone or wood pins, and some of their wood or bone knife and tool handles
might be pleasingly shaped; such people were not always insensitive to graceful
things.
Salt production was technologically much developed around 700 Be with a
Europe-wide network, around the time of the beginning of the Hallstatt cemetery
(Hodson 1985: 198 ff.). The decline of Hallstatt as a wealthy power in the later fifth
century was probably also economic; the Diirrnberg-Hallein community farther to
the west with its more easily accessible salt resources gradually took over the trade
(Barth 1983; Pauli 1978).
Hodson has shown social ranking at burial by highlighting status-significant items
such as wrist-rings, pin-and-coil head-dresses, belt-and shoulder-ornaments buried
with the women (with gold and animal symbolism marking off an elite upper 5 per
cent), and weaponry and other items of iron with the men (Hodson 1990: 99),
imported luxury items such as sheet-bronze vessels, again marking off an upper elite.
But were the armed men a deliberate force intended to protect the commercial value
and safe passage of the distant salt trade? Or were the weapons (daggers particularly)
more a mark of personal prestige (note Moscati et al. 1991: 84)? Some of the daggers
at Hallstatt were probably locally made (Hodson 1990: 66; Sievers 1982: 24) but most
were not, and Grave 555 shows that the salt-traders could draw upon the crack
weaponsmiths of Swabia in the sixth-fifth centuries Be (Figure 21.5; Jope 1983), as
well as the cista-makers of the Kurd area of Hungary (Stjernquist 1967; Jope and
Jacobsthal in press: pI. 12 notes), and other graves (e.g. G696-7, 507) display the skills
of the Este engravers (Megaw 1971: pI. 7; Jacobsthal 1944: pI. 59-60; Hodson 1990:
68-9)·
Daggers were numerous in the Hallstatt cemetery (Kromer 1959, n. 67; Sievers
1982: pI. 8, 10, 55). They can be very instructive as prestige indicators, some worthy
of a Hochdorf chief (Bittel et aI., 143, 1981: fig. 70). They were carried widely across
Europe, as personal weapons, exchange gifts, or in pursuit of trade, and their rank-
ing in the Hallstatt cemetery may be cautiously exploited (Figure 21.4; d. Hodson
1985: 197, fig., quoting Barth's work).
One of the earliest daggers in the Hallstatt cemetery (a 'dirk' in Grave 555,
about 650 Be; Sievers 1982: pI. 1.1) has a hand-grip of intricate construction made
of very thin iron, exactly like that of a dagger from the Thames at Mortlake
(Hodges, in Jope 1961: 309, 329-30, pI. XVII-XVIII). This kind of hilt construction
seems to have been produced by the craft tradition of the Swabian area Gope 1983).

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