- The Social Implications of Celtic Art -
Somerset Gope 1961: 311, 336; Stead 1984a), another from 'Hertford Warren'
near Saffron Walden in Suffolk (with analogies for the dagger hand-grip across the
North Sea; Clarke and Hawkes 1955: 200f., 208, 226; Jope and Jacobsthal in press:
pI. 22), and one in Belgium (Marien 1963). Perhaps exchange gifts are again a likely
explanation for these exotic pieces. Much, indeed, could be said about the distant
human relationships implied by such items as the Mortlake dagger.
We still do not know where any British dagger-chief had a Herrensitz or what his
residence might have been like (but see p. 393), or his relations with hill-forts; the
Heath Row 'temple' was presumably not a residence, but there might have been one
nearby. The occupation site near the find-spot of the Weybridge bucket (d. Moscati
et al. 1991: 84) certainly merits further exploration for such evidence.
So we see how in several ways the daggers and other artwork can shed light on
the social infrastructure of Celtic Britain in the seventh to second centuries Be.
In the latter years of the Hallstatt cemetery, in the later fifth century Be, there is
one of the finest Celtic long swords with decorated scabbard, with a lively scene of
warriors, clearly showing its Atestine sources as well as Celtic items of dress (Megaw
1971: pI.; Jacobsthal 1944: pI. 60). Fighting prowess was so much admired among
Celtic peoples that fine swords might be expected to reveal some social grading. Such
long swords with ornate scabbards must have denoted high rank (e.g. the armed
medical specialist of the small Obermenzing family burial-ground (Megaw and
Megaw 1989: pI.; Megaw 1971: 17; de Navarro 1955; Moscati et al. 1991: 372f.), but
it seems hardly possible to discern any widely accepted sword protocol (Pleiner
1993: 35-70). The wide dispersal across the Celtic world (and through a long time
span) of scabbards with dragon-or bird-pairs at the head (Megaw 1971: pI. 16) we
might like to associate with mercenary activity, but this cannot be justified (Stead
1984b; Megaw and Megaw 1989: 99f.; Moscati et al. 1991: 333-6). The emergence of
the belt-chain sword suspension systems in the third century Be (Moscati et al. 1991:
324-7) is really a manifestation of the upper-middle class levelling of Celtic noble
society.
The social patterns of Celtic Europe changed greatly during the sixth-second
centuries Be. The swaggering Celtic nobility gave way in the fifth-fourth centuries
to less prodigiously wealthy chiefs (but still often buried with a chariot), and Duval
1986: 21) feels already able to write of 'peaceful village chieftains'. Even this more
modest wealth steadily became plebeianized in the fourth-third centuries: we see
the growth of large mainly middle-class cemeteries, e.g. Miinsingen-Rain (Hodson
1968); they were highly organized, of almost urban character, yet apparently serving
a scattered rural population, the artwork plainly showing their middle-class
bourgeois manners. Yet we know almost nothing of their dwellings; perhaps these
cemeteries provided the places (and occasions) for such a rural population to
meet.
During the second century Be the well-fortified quasi-urban settlements, the
oppida, proliferated over Celtic Europe; we really know little of how these grew up.
Manching is too large a site to clarify this problem by itself. Their existence seems
based on industry and trade - was the ritual bough with gold leaves at Manching
(Moscati et al. 1991: 530) a 'civic' emblem? A smaller site might be more informative
on origins, such as Pont Maure, a small rectangular enclosure in the Correze, but